284 RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



" And how can you satisfy me," asks some blind lover of stoves, 

 " that the air of a room heated by a close stove is deleterious ? " 

 Very easily indeed, if you will listen to a few words of reason. 



It is well established that a healthy man must have about a pint of 

 air at a breath ; that he breathes above a thousand times in an hour ; 

 and that, as a matter beyond dispute, he requires about fifty-seven 

 hogsheads of air in twenty four hours. 



Besides this, it is equally well settled, that as common air con- 

 sists of a mixture of two gases, one healthy (oxygen), and the other 

 unhealthy (nitrogen), the air we have once breathed, having, by 

 passing through the lungs, been deprived of the most healthful 

 gas, is little less than unmixed poison (nitrogen). 



Now, a room warmed by an open fireplace or grate, is neces- 

 sarily more or less ventilated, by the very process of combustion 

 going on ; because, as a good deal of the air of the room goes up 

 the chimney, besides the smoke and vapor of the fire, a corresponding 

 amount of fresh air comes in at the windows and door crevices to 

 supply its place. The room, in other words, is tolerably well sup- 

 plied with fresh air for breathing. 



But let us take the case of a room heated by a close stove. The 

 chimney is stopped up, to begin with. The room is shut up. The 

 windows are made pretty tight to keep out the cold ; and as there is 

 very little air carried out of the room by the stove-pipe, (the stove is 

 perhaps on the air-tight principle, that is, it requires the minimum 

 amount of air,) there is little fresh air coming in through the cre- 

 vices to supply any vacuum. Suppose the room holds 300 hogs- 

 heads of air. If a single person requires 57 hogsheads of fresh 

 air per day, it would last four persons but about twenty-four hours, 

 and the stove would require half as much more. But, as a man 

 renders noxious as much again air as he expires from his lungs, it 

 actually happens that in four or five hours all the air in this room 

 has been either breathed over, or is so mixed with the impure air 

 which has been breathed over, that it is all thoroughly poisoned, 

 and unfit for healthful respiration. A person with his senses un- 

 blunted, has only to go into an ordinary unventilated room, heated 

 by a stove, to perceive at once, by the effect on the lungs, how dead, 

 stifled, and destitute of all elasticity the air is. 



