1876 . ] 
PLANTS AS SANITARY SCOUTS FOR HUMAN BEINGS. 
21 
value. But miglit it not be far wiser to inquire into the causes of the leaves turning 
yellow, and the buds dropping off, as they frequently do in living-rooms and window 
gardens ? Is it not, in fact, more than probable that the causes that injure such 
plants as Camellias, also injure the human occupants ? What are the chief causes 
that turn the leaves of plants yellow in living rooms, or make their buds to fall. 
They*are these,—gas and fire-dried atmosphere, sudden draughts, and extreme 
alternations of temperature. Are these more salutary or less injurious to men than to 
plants ? The chances are they are more mischievous to us than to plants. The parched 
atmosphere of our rooms is a constant cause of irritation to weakly or diseased 
lungs. It dries up the natural juices of the body, excites thirst, and causes 
exhaustion, and perhaps one of the most grateful and wholesome changes that 
could be effected in our dwelling-houses would be the genialising, by some skilful 
means, of our gas, lamp, and fire-burnt atmosphere, that delicate women and 
children inhale all day and all night long. The plants cannot stand it with 
impunity, and neither can we. 
Cutting draughts, again, cut the very life out of the leathery leaves of Camellias, 
and cause the buds to fall in showers. They are equally, or perhaps more in¬ 
jurious to us, though the evil effects are not so speedily apparent. Millions of 
rooms are so misconstructed that tlie occupants are almost always compelled to sit in 
a draught, between the window, or door, or open fire-place. The draught is enhanced 
by the heat of the fire and the wider difference obtaining in winter between the 
external and internal atmosphere.. Thousands of cases doubtless of lung disease have 
their origin in these draughts. If they are sufficient to change the colour of Camellia- 
leaves in a few weeks, it can hardly be doubted that the more delicate membranes 
and substances of the human body are equally or more injured and disorganised. 
Again, the sudden changes of temperature are most injurious. The difference in the 
temperature of sitting-rooms between night and day is very great. The plants 
are alternately starved and roasted, and therefore they succumb, and give way, 
become diseased, or die outright. But are not these sudden and severe changes 
equally or more fatal to us ? The differences between the temperature of warm 
sitting-rooms, fireless bed-rooms, and draughty constructed passages are enor¬ 
mous. A prejudice seems to have set in against fires in bed-rooms, which 
is most disastrous in its results. How many delicate women, for instance, sit in 
warm sitting-rooms throughout the day and long evenings, until their physical 
frames are quite enervated and relaxed, and then they retire to a fireless bed-room, 
and breathe throughout the night a temperature of 40° or perhaps under. Suffer¬ 
ing, disorganisation of function, disease, and death, follow on the heels of such 
extreme and sudden alternations of temperature. 
Other resemblances might have been traced between the conditions or influences 
that prove fatal to our own health and lives in living-rooms, and equally so 
to plants,—such as dust, that checks the vital functions, (fee. But enough 
has been said to direct earnest attention to a subject that seems to have been 
almost entirely overlooked, alike by cultivators and medical men. The latter, in 
