PROF. C. U. SHEPHARD'S ADDRESS. 253 



believe, that the burning of coals and candles generates a poi- 

 sonous gas, which, when it rises to the proportion of three parts 

 in the hundred of the air, is adequate, in a few hours of time, to 

 produce insensibility and death ! That this ignorance is not 

 imaginary, we have the most unhappy proofs occurring almost 

 weekly, throughout the cold season of the year, in the produc- 

 tion of alarming symptoms, and, not unfrequently, of melancholy 

 deaths. This is a case, where it would seem that nothing short 

 of science can impart the necessary faith. What can appear 

 more harmless, than to breathe the air of a room where the 

 burning fuel yields neither odor nor smoke ! " Why suffer one's 

 self," says the shivering lodger in some contracted apartment 

 without a fire-place, "to be alarmed where no danger is appa- 

 rent ? What if it has been said that charcoal vapors are dan- 

 gerous ; there do not seem to be any of them here : besides, it is 

 difficult to see the reasons of such a prejudice." Meanwhile, the 

 warmth is genial ; and the unsuspecting victim quickly compo- 

 ses himself to a slumber from which he is never again to awake ! 

 The jury of inquest, summoned on the following day, give it as 

 " death from charcoal vapors ;" but the chemist, who reads the 

 verdict in some newspaper, translates it to "death from igno- 

 rance of chemistry ;" for, had the victim, when at the district 

 school in youth, been blessed with the sight of a few experimen- 

 tal illustrations in science, he would as soon have leaped into a 

 well, as have retired to sleep in a close apartment, warmed by 

 an open furnace of charcoal ! 



But a more universal proof of practical disbelief in the prop- 

 erties of the air, and its vitiation by being breathed, is afforded 

 by the general neglect of ventilation in country houses. The 

 architects of our cities and larger towns do indeed appreciate, to 

 a good degree, the phenomena that transpire in the breathing of 

 atmospheric air. They act upon the well-established facts, that 

 every individual, according to his age and size, requires a cer- 

 tain number of cubic feet of pure air, for his daily consumption 

 in the lungs, just as absolutely as he does a certain number of 

 ounces of food, for nourishment in the stomach; and that the 

 air thus breathed has its life-sustaining element first absorbed, 

 and then returned to the air in the condition of the same narcot- 



