State board of health. 
295 
and "windows. From fifty to seventy children are often kept in a 
school room by the hour when the supply of fresh air is not suffi- 
-cient for one fourth that number. If any one doubts this, let him 
visit the primary departments of the schools in this state at a sea¬ 
son of the year when artificial heat is required, when doors and 
windows are closed, and he will find the atmosphere of the room 
not simply impure and oppressive, but offensive and disgusting to 
the sense, and his first impulse will be to escape. If he remains, 
the offended sense soon ceases to protest and the visitor breathes 
the contaminated air with seeming impunity. But the little ones, 
who are compelled to live in such atmosphere day after day and 
month after month, do not thus escape. The more robust live 
through it; but the delicate ones succumb to the poison and fall 
out of the ranks.” 
Happily this subject is now commanding attention in every part 
of the Union. Men remember the quaint saying that, “ our fathers 
who lived in houses of reeds, had constitutions of oaks, but we, who 
live in houses of oak, have constitutions of reed.” The sentence 
serves to arrest the thoughtless to a grave subject, although it is un¬ 
true in its essence. The men who in hyperborean regions would at¬ 
tempt to discharge the functions of life in houses of reeds would not 
transmit to their offspring constitutions of oak. The house must be 
w'ell constructed for shelter from the elements, as well as for venti¬ 
lation, if the highest purposes of life are to be aided by urban ex¬ 
istence. The latest results in vital phenomena sustain the story of the 
/* 
ages that with every century of civilization there is a large apprecia¬ 
tion of individual endurance; a fact that directly contradicts the exis¬ 
tence to which we have referred. The house of reeds was, in many 
respects, as ill ventilated as the most compact dwelling house of 
to-day; and where the largest fires were maintained it was barely 
possible for the resident, perpetually revolving before its blaze like 
a spitted turkey, to thaw one side of his refrigerated body before 
the other had become frozen. Between the two styles of dwelling 
there is merely a choice of evils; but the houses of to-day, ready to 
our hands, systems of ventilation may be devised which will cheap¬ 
ly and greatly enhance the comfort and duration of life. 
A human being requires, at the very lowest estimate, 350 cubic 
feet of air every twenty-four hours; and the authorities assert that 
3G0 cubic inches per minute is the quantity demanded for the re- 
spirating process by every healthy adult. 
