PURE AIR by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 14, 1867

PURE AIR.

By R. F. Cottrell

I HAVE been gratified to learn, as I have traveled from place to place during the last quarter, that there is a general movement with our people, in the direction of the Health Reform. But the subject is not understood as it ought to be. There are many things that need reform. It is not a one-idea thing at all. And perhaps there is no one part of the reform so little realized and understood as that respecting the air which we breathe. We may eat the most wholesome food, and yet if we deprive ourselves of a plentiful supply of the fresh and free air with which God has surrounded us, we shall pine away and die.

There are but few that appreciate the importance of this. In the crowded cars I generally have to open the vents, or ask the conductor to do it; and most of the passengers seem afraid of their best friend, the pure air of heaven. And this is too much the case with our people where I have traveled. When I have said to them that their windows should be fixed to let down at the top, they have seemed to think that their houses were not warm enough to need it. And when the air of the room gets impure almost to suffocation, it is cooled down by opening a door into another room which has not perhaps had a window opened in it for a month or two.

Now this is not the true idea. To cool down the temperature of a heated room with the dead air from another room is not the thing. It is not only the heat, but the impurity of the pent up air that we wish to exchange. It is the pure out-door, atmospheric air that we want to support our animal life. Neither is the object effected by throwing open doors and windows, when the heat becomes unendurable, and so have constant changes from heat to cold and from cold to heat. The temperature should be kept as nearly equal as possible. To effect this, the room should be ventilated as near the top as possible, at the top of the windows when there is no apparatus expressly for it, and an exchange of heated and vitiated air for the pure air of heaven, be constantly going on. Try it without delay, and see if those aching heads are not relieved.

And our sleeping rooms too need the same treatment. Pure air, though it be cold, is better than that which is poisoned by being breathed over and over again. Except in the very stormiest of weather there should be a constant ventilation of our bed-rooms, during the night, and in the morning a thorough change of air by letting the out-door air pass freely through.

Science testifies to the truth of this, and experience responds, It is the truth. My family have slept in a room the past winter, with a window let down six inches at the top as the rule.

In the morning they open the bed and open largely two windows, closing the door to this room from the kitchen, and let it air till noon. Then the bed is made, the windows closed, and at evening, the room is warmed by opening the door, and thus made comfortable for going to bed; when the window is again opened as before, and the pure air of heaven admitted freely to the lungs, while the body is warmly covered in bed. Take cold! We were never so free from colds and headache. And we do not take cold when we go out into the open air. Thank the Lord for the sea of air that surrounds us! Some are afraid of night air, but it is the best we have in the night; and it is not improved by being caged up and loaded with impurities during the day.

I close by recommending to all to read the book entitled, How to Live. The six articles contained in that work, entitled Disease and its Causes, are worth more than ten times the price of the book. It will pay to read. Take the Health Reformer. Its teachings well heeded will benefit you incomparably more than the dollar a year you will save by not taking it. And in all your taking do not forget to take the fresh air.

“Throw open the window, and fasten it there, Fling the curtain aside, and the blind, And give a free entrance to heaven’s pure air, ’Tis the life and the health of mankind.”

R. F. COTTERELL.