Dec. 17, 1875.] t)^ ' [BlasiuS. 



SOME REMARKS ON THE CONNECTION OF METEOROLOGY 

 WITH HEALTH. 



By William Blasius. 



{Bead before the American PhilosopJiical Society, December lltli, 1875.) 



Sometime ago an architect asked me the question whether I could 

 assign a philosophical reason for the well-known fact, that during all 

 ages, cities, where topographical impediments do not interfere, extend as 

 a general rvile from east to west, and that the wealthiest people are al- 

 ways in the advance. As an instance of this kind, I will remind you of 

 the West End in London, and of our fashionable Chestnut, Walnut, 

 Spruce, and Pine Streets, which have grown steadily in this manner from 

 the Delaware to the Schuylkill. 



I had before paid some attention to this question under a somewhat 

 different form, namely : What influence in reference to aerial currents 

 has the position of a city or a dwelling house on the health of the in- 

 habitants ? 



In speaking of a healthy or unhealthy location of a city or a house we 

 hear frequently, in the reasoning on these points, the remarks made that 

 it is on high or low ground, indicating thereby that a house is respectively 

 healthy or unhealthy. This generally conceived impression has doubt- 

 less been derived from the idea that low ground must necessarily form a 

 swamp, ia which malarial gases are generated. Although this may be the 

 case in many instances where no drainage exists and the ground is im- 

 pervious to water, it is not always so ; for the formation of a swamp de- 

 pends more upon the geological formation than upon the altitude. I have 

 seen swamps on mountains as well as on low ground, and houses close to 

 a swamp on low ground perfectly healthy, while those standing on high 

 ground and far off from a swamp wei'e most unhealthy. The cause of 

 malarial diseases must then be found in some other conditions, also. 



Twenty or thirty years ago, when geology became more fully developed, 

 medical men tried to find the cause of many diseases in the nature of the 

 soil or in geological conditions, and I have no doubt that this has, indi- 

 rectly, something to do with our health. A little later some diseases 

 were traced dii-ectly to impure drinking-water. But it is only recently, 

 that physicists began to suspect the air as the principal mischief maker. 

 And if we consider that we eat only three times a day, drink water but 

 twice as much, but drink or breathe air about fifteen times every minute, 

 it becomes at least very probable that the air is the chief culprit that 

 smuggles the poisonous matter into our system. For we inhale eighteen 

 cubic feet of air every hour, or four hundred and thirty-two per day: 

 and three-fourths of our weight has been built up of its material. This 

 enormous consumption of air is performed almost unconsciously, at least 

 without paying any attention to its quality, as we would naturally do ia 

 drinking-water. Because the air is invisible and tasteless the majority 

 of people are scarcely aware of its existence, much less of its impurities 

 A. p. S. — VOL. XIV. 4h 



