158 PHYSIOLOGY ASD HEAiTH. 



are therefore constructed in reference rather to the conve- 

 nience of the work, and the economy of heating them, than 

 to the health of the workmen. Consequently, these men are 

 sometimes so crowded and confined as to have insufficient 

 air for respiration. In a room ten feet square, and eight 

 feet high, with 800 feet of air, six and sometimes eight men 

 can work, without interfering with each other ; and this is 

 thought good accommodation. 



365. Family rooms, lodging-chambers, cabins, and shops 

 are not the only places where men and women gather in 

 numbers beyond the capacity of the air to support their 

 healthy respiration. Public rooms, lecture-rooms, churches, 

 concert halls, and, above all, school-rooms generally, are 

 badly ventilated. They are not supplied with air sufficient 

 for the ordinary numbers, and still less for the occasional 

 crowds, that meet in them. The general plan of these is to 

 hold many persons ; and the idea of the architect is to so 

 arrange the seats, that the greatest possible number may be 

 gathered into a given space. 



366. A part of these pages on respiration were read as a 

 lecture before an associated audience, which assembled in a 

 hall forty-seven feet long, thirty-seven feet wide, and nine 

 feet high, measuring 15,650 cubic feet. This room is made 

 to hold five hundred persons when full ; and usually from 

 three to four hundred meet there. In the former case, there 

 are thirty-one feet, and in the latter thirty-nine to fifty-two 

 feet of ajr for a person. The sittings of this society vary 

 from one to three hours. 



367. A church which has been recently built has one 

 hundred and eighty-three feet of air for a person, in an av- 

 erage audience, and one hundred and thirty-six feet when 

 crowded. Another has from seventy-five to ninety-nine feet 

 of air for each of the people, according to their numbers. 

 Many other churches afford about the same proportion of 

 air to their occupants. I have not their exact measurement, 

 as of these above stated ; but the foulness of the air which 

 one perceives on entering them late in the forenoon, or in the 



