1913. 
'1'F-ifcC FtULtAIv NEW-YORKER 
841 
Fresh Air in Sleeping Rooms. 
If a law could be passed and enforced 
requiring, under penalty of heavy fine, 
that every window in every sleeping room 
throughout the land be kept wide open 
every night. Summer and Winter, physi¬ 
cians would find half their occupation 
gone, and would have to double their rates 
to keep up their present incomes. Grant¬ 
ed that a great deal is being said and 
printed nowadays on the importance of 
fresh air by night, and that here and 
there may be found a person who sleeps 
the year round on his veranda, or an¬ 
other who patronizes an arrangement for 
sleeping with head out of the window 
and body in a warm room, thereby gain¬ 
ing local notoriety as well as health, yet 
it must be admitted that the rank and 
file still keep in shut-up rooms, or with 
so inadequate entrance for fresh air and 
egress for foul air that In the morning 
“a bedroom odor” is very perceptible, 
and the daintier ones open their windows 
after they are up and dressed, to “air 
out” their rooms, which are sadly in 
need of airing out. They do not realize 
that a sleeping room that needs to be 
aired out in the morning condemns itself. 
The air should be so pure and fresh all 
night in every bedroom, with all the 
breezes of heaven blowing through its 
open windows, that the occupant on 
awakening in the morning cannot help 
exclaiming, “Oh, how good the air is!” 
The old superstition that “night, air” is 
unwholesome is not often met nowadays, 
but its twin, the fear of drafts, exists in 
vigorous activity, as much of a super¬ 
stition as the other. For, let a person 
lie in bed with enough covers over his 
body to keep it warm as toast (and it 
does not take as many as one would 
think), and all the winds of heaven 
may blow over him and around him and 
upon him and shake the springs under 
him and he won’t take cold, bnt will know 
what true sleeping comfort is. Says Dr. 
Thomas H. Hay in “The Journal of Out¬ 
door Life”: “The man who lives con¬ 
sistently in the open air or in a pure 
atmosphere is indifferent to drafts except | 
that he welcomes a draft as an evidence I 
of continual change and renewal of the | 
amosphere.” 
Physicians tell us germ diseases occur 
more frequently in Winter than in 
Summer, and the reason is not far to 
seek. Disease germs exist around us 
everywhere, Summer and Winter, even 
in the mouths and noses of the most 
fastidious of ns. That anyone keeps in 
health at any season is not dne to a 
scarcity of disease germs but to his re¬ 
sisting power. Fresh air is tonic and 
builds up one’s vitality and power of 
resistance, while impure air is enervating 
and debilitating and puts the system into 
condition to furnish good multiplying 
ground for the germs of infectious dis¬ 
eases. In the Summer, for our own 
comfort, we open our houses more or 
less and stay out of doors as much as 
possible, and so get the benefit of the 
tonic effects of fresh air. In the Winter 
we shut ourselves up in our houses, still 
seeking comfort, lay fancy bags filled with 
sand along the window-sashes to keep out 
“the draft.” set the fires a-roaring, not 
often in fireplaces opening into big chim¬ 
neys, down which the stars look, but 
in iron stoves, and toll everybody who 
opens an outside door to “shut it quick, 
for we can’t warm up all out of doors.” 
Then we sleep or try to sleep every night 
for seven or eight hours in rooms with 
the windows close shut except, possibly, 
a little crack at the bottom of one when 
the wind does not blow hard enough to 
threaten a “draft.” No wonder we arc 
weak and listless in the Spring, and are 
easy prey to patent medicine venders. 
•Some of us do not live till Spring, but 
die of pneumonia, diphtheria, or some 
other germ disease. 
I have a young relative who calls me 
a fresh air toper.” He says he be¬ 
lieves in fresh air as much as anybody, 
hut adds that he also believes in being 
temperate in all things. He says one 
can carry almost anything to excess, no 
matter how good it is. Let Dr. Thomas 
Ha.v answer him: “The advantages of 
breathing a perfectly pure atmosphere 
are to be found in the perfectly adapted 
percentage of oxygen, the minimal per¬ 
centage of carbon-dioxide, and the com¬ 
plete absence of organic impurities. This 
is one of the rare instances in which one 
canuot get too mnch of a good thing. 
There is no limit to the quantity nor the 
benefit to be derived from the breathing 
of fresh air. It should be supplied to 
the lungs at all hours of the day or 
night; in other words, twenty-four hours 
out of the twenty-four.” 
A doctor’s wife was showing me over 
her house. “This is the doctor’s room,” 
she said, opening the door of a large 
room with three windows; “mine is 
across the hall. We cannot occupy the 
same room, for he wall have.all his win¬ 
dows open and the wind blowing right 
on his head.” I looked at the man, 
hale and hearty, magnetic, up-to-date, 
though well along in his seventies, and 
then at his wife, a thin, querulous wo¬ 
man, always complaining of indefinite ill 
health, and wondered whether the foul 
air that she chose to breathe every 
night might not be responsible in large 
measure for her lassitude and vaguely 
defined ills. 
From my earliest remembrance I hare 
been extremely subject to colds, every 
Winter having several attacks, the sever¬ 
est almost always along toward Spring. 
I have always been an advocate of pure 
air in a calm and moderate degree. I 
have never sandbagged my windows to 
keep out “drafts” and have always, Sum¬ 
mer and Winter, slept with one of 
my bedroom windows open more or less 
widely, except on coldest nights. When 
I went a step farther and had an ex¬ 
tension screen, the kind used to keep 
out mosquitoes, covered with cheese-cloth 
and kept it in one of my bedroom win¬ 
dows all Winter, night and day, I thought 
myself pretty progressive. No doubt con¬ 
siderable fresh air did filter through. I 
think I did not suffer so much from 
colds that Winter as usual. But last 
Summer I had screens fitted to the three 
windows of my sleeping-room and re¬ 
moved the lower sashes, partly closing 
the outside blinds when rain would other¬ 
wise have beaten into the room. In 
early Winter the sashes were replaced, 
but all Winter long every night, without 
a single exception, one of the windows 
was kept wide open all night, and when 
snow and rain would permit, which was 
the greater part of the time, all three 
were kept open to their fullest extent. 
There is an old-fashioned fireplace in the 
room, and kneeling down in front of it 
and looking up one can see the sky. 
Many nights it was freezing cold in the 
room, and many nights the wind blew 
perfect gales through it, often so hard, 
directly in my face, that it nearly took 
my breath away. But I never was more 
comfortable than on these cold nights, 
warmly covered and breathing such glor¬ 
ious air all night long, and I was entirely 
free from colds all Winter. It is desir¬ 
able to have, as I had all Winter, a 
warm room to undress and dress in, and 
enough covering must be used to keep the 
body thoroughly warm. An elderly or 
very delicate or bald person would do 
well to wear a sleeping cap or hood, pro¬ 
tecting the scalp and ears. No person 
who has learned the vital importance of 
fresh air and has slept one Winter out 
of doors or with wide-open windows could 
ever go back to sleeping in a shut-up 
room. lie has become critical of the 
quality of the air he breathes, and his 
nose has learned to do its special duty 
of testing the air and determining whether 
or not it is fit for his lungs to take in. 
To such a person the foul air of a 
crowded railway train or street car or 
ill-ventilated church or theatre is nau¬ 
seating. and he would rather walk a 
long distance or forego the pleasure of 
seeing a new play than to breathe it, 
for he knows it is carrying the seeds of 
death. r.oursE prince freeman. 
When you write advertisers mention 
The R. N.-Y. and yon’H get a quick 
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placed anywhere, at¬ 
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Guaranteed effective. 
Sold by dealers, or 
6 sent prepaid tor Jl. 
HAROLD SOMERS, ISO DeKalb Aye., Brooklyn, H. Y 
n l 11 b w — in i uun ar.i.r -nnannu 
FLAX IRON.” Price ami 
transportation charges refunded, if not suited. 
STANDARD SUPPLY CO„ Chatham, N. V. 
Running Water 
in House and Barn at even 9 
temperature Winter or Sum-^5Af|L 
mer at Small Cost. \ ■Vji 
Send Postal for New Watc* Supply FtSMB, 
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of It in actual use. Do it Now. Tllp 
Aermotor Co., 1144 S. Campbell Av., Chicago^!^ 
Aermotor Co., 2d and Madison Streets, Oakland, ill Cal. 
Complete Water 
Tower Outfit 
ONLY 
69 
High grade 1000 
gallon Cypress 
Tank and 20 ft. 
Steel Tower just 
as shown in cut. 
Tank guaranteed against decay 
for five years. Same outfit on 
credit at slightly higher price. 
Complete W ater Works equip¬ 
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today and our New Way Selling 
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THE BALTIMORE CO. 
Baltimore, Maryland. 
Julu-ylugusl 
SEARS ROEBUCK AND CO 
CHICAGO, ILL. 
THIS SALE CLOSES AUGUST 31. 1913 
Six Pairs Men’s 
Socks, 79c. 
Guaranteed to 
Wear 6 Months 
Genuine Amos- 
keag Chambray 
Shirts for Men, 
33c 
Women’s Long 
Silk Gloves, 53c 
Regular $5.00 
Quality Wool 
Filled Blankets, 
$3.87 
Two Dozen Cup 
Shape Pure 
White Pearl 
Buttons for 6c 
Two Dozen 
Yi Pint Heavy 
Crystal Jelly 
Tumblers, 35c 
One Dozen Silk 
Hair Nets 
for 19c 
45-Lb. Felted 
Cotton Mattress, 
$4.98 
Greatest of all Midsummer Sales. 
For sixty days ending August 31st, 
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Don’t send for this book 
if you are already a customer of 
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