﻿ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE AND HEALTH. 93 



gradually lose their accustomed vigor during a period of employment 

 in crowded or badly ventilated places. The air of workshops, printing 

 rooms, mills, etc., sometimes changes young, vigorous looking men 

 almost beyond recognition in the course of one or two years. Outdoor 

 work in towns is far less pernicious, and if houses and streets were 

 more spacious, and work x^laces more airy, the physical degradation 

 would be much less perceptible. The mental and moral effect of living 

 in bad air can hardly be estimated, mixed up as it is with the various 

 other conditions which generally accompany it. The wits are certainly 

 dulled when oxygen is wanting and carbonic acid in excess, but social 

 contact tends perhaps more powerfully to sharpen them. Sharpness, 

 cunning, and alertness increase in towns, but great work demanding 

 sustained intellectual effort is not favored, but vitiated, by bad air. 

 In schools, the loss of attention, the difficulty of keeping on long at a 

 task, and the sympathetic weariness, are very frequently the result of 

 bad ventilation. The schoolmaster has great power to improve the 

 quality, or rather the scope, of his pupil's brains by the admission of 

 plenty of air. School-masters and teachers as a class are not in the 

 list of healthy occupations, although they are above the average of 

 strength when they enter their profession. The air they breathe must 

 be concerned in the disorders which especially attack them. Town air 

 seems to tend to weaken the power of the will, the self-command, and 

 the exhilarating sense of freedom and content which distinguish inde- 

 pendent yeomen or the peasantry of the hill country, who breathe the 

 vital atmosphere. But here again, we fail to discriminate between the 

 effects of physical and of social differences. Since ^'self-reverence, 

 self-knowledge, self-controP' are among the highest human attributes, 

 and most essential for future progress, the effects, direct and indirect, 

 of vitiated air on character might with advantage form the subject of 

 extended and carefully conducted scientific inquiry. 



Intemperance in drink has been commonly attributed to foul air 

 among other influences. There can be no doubt that many a man has 

 become enfeebled by working in bad air, and has taken to drink in the 

 vain hope of keeping up his strength, or with the deliberate intention, 

 for the moment justified, of stimulating his faculties occasionally^ when 

 they flag. Where the air has so little freshness, mind and body are 

 more likely to crave for artificial and less wholesome sustenance. 

 Whether on the whole the indoor workers consume more alcohol than 

 the outdoor may be doubted, but the effect upon them, beyond question, 

 is worse. 



An investigation of the effect of air on mental qualities might be 

 undertaken on the following lines: A number of schools in which 

 ventilation is good to be compared with schools similar in class of 

 scholars, etc., but with bad ventilation of less space, the character of 

 the work and of the scholars to be compared; schools where great 

 improvements in ventilation have been made to be examined as to any 

 notable progress following the improvements j workshops of similar 



