THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTI.l.. 77 



more slowly, but none the less surely. It has been found that the re- 

 duction of the oxygen in atmospheric air by two or three parts in the 

 hundred, and the increase of the carbonic, acid to an e(|iial extent ren- 

 ders that air very deleterious to animals breathing it, while it' the oxygen 

 is reduced to ten parts in the hundred, it is of no further use for res- 

 piration. It may be taken into the lungs, but it no longer relieves the 

 blood of any carbonic, acid, nor furnishes it with any vitalizing oxygen. 

 Though the air still contains eleven parts of oxygen in every hundred, 

 it might as well be composed entirely of nitrogen so far as its value to 

 the living system is concerned. How long lite may be sustained in such 

 conditions may be inferred from the fact that it is usually impossible to 

 resuscitate suffocated animals when breathing has ceased for from three 

 to live minutes. 



Some terrible examples of speedy death from lack of fresh air are 

 on record. The most frequently quoted is that of the Black Hole of 

 Calcutta, a room 18 feet square with two small windows, into which 146 

 prisoners were forced at the point of the bayonet, and in which they 

 were shut up all night in a tropical climate. Ere morning 123 persons 

 had perished. A second instance is that of 300 Austrian prisoners 

 forced into a narrow compartment after the battle of Austerlitz so that 

 LM50 died of suffocation. A third is that of the steamer Londonderry, 

 with its 150 passengers in a small crowded cabin, 70 having perished in 

 a single night, because the hatches were closed down on account of a 

 storm. 



jMany analogous cases can be adduced of animals. Dr. Thayer re- 

 ports from memory the case of a steamer (Hooper ?) from Boston to 

 Liverpool, with 400 cattle on board, which encountered a storm and 

 came through it with only one animal surviving. Mr. Toffey, of Jersey 

 City, lost 30 head out of a cargo of 300 by suffocation in 1880. This 

 happened, he informs us, on a calm sea on a southern route with a tem- 

 perature about 90 F., and the wind astern and light so as just to 

 keep pace with the ship. The air on board the ship became perfectly 

 stagnant, and there was no means of establishing an artificial current. 

 A still more disastrous experience befell the steamer Thaneinore, 

 Captain Sibthorp, of the William Johnson & Co. line. This vessel left 

 Baltimore with 565 cattle on board,of which 228 perished by suffocation 

 before she reached Cape Henry. 



EFFECTS OF MODERATELY VITIATED AIR. 



When air only moderately vitiated is breathed continuously for a 

 greater length of time the results are still very injurious, and in the 

 front rank of diseases so caused stand pulmonary consumption, and 

 other destructive affections of the lungs. Perhaps no better example 

 of this can be given than that of the monkey houses of the Zoological 

 Gardens of London and Paris. While these houses were small and ill- 

 ventilated the monkeys died in large numbers from pulmonary consump- 

 tion, but after they had been enlarged and better ventilated the mortality 

 from this cause nearly ceased. (Arnott.) 



Town dairy cows which are. packed in close ill- ventilated buildings 

 and never allowed to go out are very subject to consumption, while horses 

 kept in no better conditions, but spending nearly half their time in the 

 open air, rarely have phthisis. (With lung plague it will be remembered 

 that the out-door exercise and mingling of herds leads to an increase 

 of the mortality.) Horses newly stabled suffer severely from diseases 

 ef the lungs. The same holds true of human beings. A long list of 



