s;>o 



VENTILATION. 



freshing effects of the morning nir, can wonder at 

 the lassitude and disease that follow the continued 

 breathing of the pestiferous atmosphere of crowded 

 or ill ventilated apartments! It is only necessary 

 to observe the countenances of those who inhabit 

 close rooms and houses, the squalid hue of their 

 skins, their sunken eyes, and their languid move- 

 ments, to be sensible of the bad effects of shutting 

 out the external air. 



The history of the prison, since called the Black 

 Hole, at Calcutta, furnishes a shocking example in 

 illustration of this, in which, of 146 military men 

 confined for a few hours without ventilation, only 

 twenty-three survived the short confinement. The 

 distress, often followed by serious illness, which 

 many people feel in crowded and unventilated 

 churches, courts of justice, theatres, and other 

 meeting-places, furnishes other examples ; and but 

 that the meetings are usually of short duration, and 

 that persons when they feel about to faint escape 

 from them, and thereby warn those remaining to 

 open windows and doors, fatal occurrences even in 

 those situations would not be unfrequent. Where 

 the invisible poison is less concentrated, but of 

 longer continued operation, as formerly in crowded 

 and ill ventilated ships and prisons, fevers of the 

 worst description are the consequence, called gaol 

 and ship fevers, and where this poison exists in a 

 still weaker degree, as not long ago in many of 

 our manufactories, milliners' work-rooms, &c., the 

 health of the inmates was gradually destroyed, 

 while the true cause remained unsuspected. And 

 within a few years, since the establishment of in- 

 fant schools, there have been instances of the chil- 

 dren being collected at first in small rooms, where 

 no fit provision had been made for ventilation, and 

 where sickness broke out among them from the 

 same cause. 



The people work ing in cotton and other factories 

 are observed generally soon to become pallid and 

 sickly, and then scrofulous in various degrees, and 

 many of them at last to sink into early graves ; and 

 this happens chiefly because they and their em- 

 ployers are ignorant of the fatal influence on their 

 health of spending so much of their time in close 

 apartments, of which the ventilation is either left 

 to chance, or is even studiously prevented to pre- 

 serve the warmth useful to the process of manufac- 

 turing. These work people are crowded together, 

 constantly breathing a polluted, noxious air, nearly 

 as noxious to them as to the trouts of a mountain 

 stream is the water of a stagnant pool. Recently, 

 however, wheels or fanners for ventilating have 

 been introduced into many of the factories, by 

 which the air is drawn out or changed with any 

 desired rapidity, while fresh air, artificially warmed, 

 is admitted in its stead. In places where these 

 means have been adopted, the factory operatives are 

 stouter and healthier than elsewhere. 



Besides the contamination of the air from being 

 breathed, there are other matters which tend to de- 

 preciate its purity ; these are the effluvia constantly 

 passing off from the surface of animal bodies, and the 

 combustion of candles and other burning substances. 

 On going into a bed-room in a morning, soon after the 

 occupant has left his bed, though he be in perfect 

 health and habitually cleanly in his person, the sense 

 of smelling never fails to be offended with the odour 

 of animal effluvia with which the atmosphere is 

 charged. There is another case, perhaps still more 

 striking, when a person, fresh from the morning air 

 enters a coach in which several persons have been 



close-sfowcd during a long night. IK 1 who has once 

 made the experiment, will never voluntarily rrpi-iit 

 it. The simple expedient of keeping down both 

 windows but a single half inch would prevent many 

 of the colds and even fevers, which this injurious 

 mode of travelling often produces. If, under such 

 circumstances, the air is vitiated, how much more 

 injuriously must its quality be depreciated when se- 

 veral persons are confined to one room, where there 

 is an utter neglect of cleanliness ; in which cooking, 

 washing, and all other domestic affairs, are n 

 ^arily performed ; where the windows are immova- 

 ble, and the door is never opened but while- 

 one is passing through it 1 It may be taken as a 

 wholesome general rule, that whatever produces a 

 disagreeable impression on the sense of smelling is 

 unfavourable to health. That sense was doubtless 

 intended to guard us against the dangers to \vlii< l> 

 we are liable from vitiation of the atmosphere. If 

 we have, by the same means, a high sense of grati- 

 fication from other objects, it ought to excite our 

 admiration of the beneficence of the Deity in thus 

 making our senses serve the double purpose of af- 

 fording us pleasure and security ; for the latter end 

 might just as effectually have been answered by 

 our being only susceptible of painful impressions. 

 To keep the atmosphere of our houses free from 

 contamination, it is not sufficient that we secure a 

 frequent renewal of the air : all matters which can in- 

 jure its purity must be carefully removed. Flowers 

 in water, and living plants in pots, greatly injure the 

 purity of the air during the night, by giving out 

 large quantities of an air (carbonic acid) similar to 

 that which is separated from the lungs by breath- 

 ing, which, as before stated, is highly noxious. On 

 this account, they should never be kept in bed- 

 rooms. There are instances of persons, who have 

 incautiously gone to sleep in a close room in which 

 there has been a large, growing plant, having been 

 found dead in the morning, as effectually suffocated 

 as if there had been a charcoal stove in the room. 



A constant renewal of the air is absolutely neces- 

 sary to its purity ; for, in all situations, it is suffering 

 either by its vital part being absorbed, or by impure 

 vapours being disengaged and dispersed through it. 

 Ventilation, therefore, resolves itself into the secur- 

 ing a constant supply of fresh air. In the construc- 

 tion of houses, this great object has been too gene- 

 rally overlooked, when, by a little contrivance in 

 the arrangement of windows and doors, a current 

 of air might, at any time, be made to pervade every 

 room of a house of any dimensions. Rooms cannot 

 be well ventilated that have no outlet for the air : 

 for this reason, there should be a chimney to every 

 apartment. The windows should be capable of 

 being opened ; and they should, if possible, be situ- 

 ated on the side of the room opposite to, and fur- 

 thest from, the fire-place, that the air may traverse 

 the whole space of the apartment in its way to the 

 chimney. Fire-places in bed-rooms should not be 

 stopped up with chimney-boards. The windows 

 should be thrown open for some hours every day, 

 to carry off the animal effluvia which are necessarily 

 separating from the bed-clothes, and which should 

 be assisted in their escape by the bed being shaken 

 up, and the clothes spread abroad, in which state 

 they should remain as long as possible. This is the 

 reverse of the usual practice of making the bed, as 

 it is called, in the morning, and tucking it up close, 

 as if with the determination of preventing any puri- 

 fication from taking place. Attention to this direc- 

 tion, with regard to airing the bed-clothes and bed, 



