VENTILATION. 
♦ 
A TAPER ON THE VENTILATION OF BUILDINGS, READ BY ME. TIFFIN BEFORE THE QUEENSLAND 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, ON TUESDAY EVENING, JUNE 5TH, AT THE COMMITTEE ROOMS OF 
THE BRISBANE HOSPITAL. 
The term ventilation is well understood by 
those who have thought on the subject, but gene- 
rally partakes of another signification by the mass 
of individuals, who imagine that ventilation 
means a thorough draught, without regard to the 
quality of the draught, so long as it does not 
smell disagreeably. 
The meaning of the ventilation of an apartment 
has often been mistaken by the quasi-scientific, 
which has led to many disastrous failures in the 
prosecution of countless pet schemes, by their 
merely devoting their efforts to the ridding an 
apartment of its foul gases, and totally neglecting 
to supply their place by the nicely proportioned 
nitrogen and oxygen indispensible for the healthy 
and enjoyable exercise of the animal functions. 
Since so many and such costly and fatal errors 
have been committed by those entrusted with the 
artificial providing of pure air round, and in the 
permanent tents of our modern huge encamp- 
ments ; Isay, “encampments” because our towns 
and cities are on the primary model of the 
aboriginal camp, which was removed so soon as 
the neighborhood became uninhabitable from the 
accumulation of excrement and domestic detritus 
which tainted the pure air. Civilization having 
reversed the operation, it becomes necessary 
now to remove the filth and to leave the camp 
and render it as sulubrious as was the aboriginal 
camp on the first morning when its blue smoke 
shot up a “ pillar of cloud” through the dew- 
glistening foliage of the primeval wood. Since, I 
say, so many mistakes have been committed in 
this matter, I will on the outset endeavour to 
state what I conceive to be thorough ventilation. 
Thorough ventilation I conceive to be. 1st. 
The dispersion of all unhealthy gases and the 
causes from which they arise. 2nd. The 
supply of pure untainted atmospheric air. 3rd. 
The warming of that air when too cold. 4th. 
The cooling of that air when too hot. It may 
be necessary here to put a proviso. Let it there- 
fore be understood that the ventilation provided 
for one individual will not answer for onl 
hundred nor vice versa ; here, then, is a difficulty 
that is only removable by the unlimited use of 
means, consequently the unlimited use of wealth, 
as I trust will appear before the close of this 
paper. Of the four conditions on which depend 
thorough ventilation the first, viz : — “ The dis- 
persion of all unhealthy gases and the cause 
from which they arise” is unquestionably 
that which deserves the greatest at- 
tention and which requires the most 
diligent consideration, it being the founda- 
tion, and, in fact, embracing the whole four condi- 
tions, and without which no pure air is obtainable 
by any means whatsoever. Consequently it 
appears that “ thorough ventilation” is insepar- 
able from that great scientific topic thorough 
drainage,” a topic that seems incapable of ever 
being drained dry. 
Scientific treatises of any kind are but lifeless 
corpses unless we can introduce them to our per- 
sons and to our homes for their benefit in some 
measure ; therefore I will endeavor to apply these 
remarks which are hackneyed, threadbare, and 
tiresome in every part of the world, but neverthe- 
less here they may be of some slight service, if 
they but tend to feed the flame of this branch of 
science, without adding to its lustre or 
volume. 
We will take our nascent city, Brisbane, as it 
is, without a current of fresh water, and picture 
what sort of air we might have to breathe should 
that unusually copious rain-fall of our district be 
withheld for one summer. I will give that 
beautiful stream, the Brisbane, its due ; it is un- 
contaminated by drainage, but the four boiling 
down places give out some amount of noxious 
and unfavoring gales, and pour down upon it some 
viscid stream of “leafy green,” and the hanging 
woods — those gorgeously festooned scrubs — drop 
their odorous (when decayed) blooms, aiding 
their little mite towards the vitiating, of our river. 
It is not the water, but what the water leaves, that 
