201 



glasses, in sensitive persons eye-fatigue may induce various 

 reflex nervous symptoms. 



To those allied departments of domestic hygiene, ventilation 

 and warming, he was the first one to give anything like ade- 

 quate heed. On many occasions he urged the need for ven- 

 tilation to prevent that personal vitiation of air indoors which 

 depresses the energies and causes stupor and dull headache. 

 Mr. Small, a London surgeon, credits him with being the first 

 who observed that respiration communicated to the air a 

 quality resembling the mephitic gases of caves, and further, 

 that a noxious character was imparted by the volatile effluvia 

 of persons enclosed in rooms. Franklin attached considerable 

 importance to the use of open chimneys for the extraction of 

 the vitiated air by the upward draught. While in London 

 he was consulted on the ventilation of the House of Commons 

 and recommended that the personal atmosphere surrounding 

 the members might be carried off direct by having outlets in 

 a part of the benches on which they sat connected with ex- 

 haust flues. The merit of the suggestion is shown by the fact 

 that a similar provision has been introduced into the new 

 Johns Hopkins Hospital which embodies the most approved 

 methods of sanitary construction. Connected with the benches 

 in the waiting rooms, and beneath each bed in the wards are 

 grates through which the personal atmosphere passes out to 

 the draught of a chimney. 



Inseparable from the requirement of ventilation and sub- 

 servient to it is that of the heating arrangements. In this 

 matter he made a great stride by the invention of the stove 

 that bears his name. This stove was invented to economize 

 fuel by regulating the air supply to it and by providing large 

 metallic surfaces for warming the air of the room. In a hun- 

 dred years, from Franklin's idea many shapes have been evolved, 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXVIII. 133. Z. PRINTED JUNE 2, 1890. 



