p. 78 | Church Ventilation

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 21, 1868

Church Ventilation.

Mr. Leeds devoted a large part of his lectures on ventilation to showing the defects of many of the popular methods of ventilation, and in explaining how a supply of wholesome air may be obtained in school rooms, churches, and private dwellings. The following is a very good example of how not to do it:

“I called one morning about ten o’clock at one of the finest new churches, which was then being occupied as a hospital, and asked for the surgeon in charge. He had not arrived. (They did not often venture in before eleven o’clock, the wards became so foul during the night it took till that time, with the windows up, to get them fit for the surgeon in charge to venture in.) I inquired of the ward master how the building was ventilated. ‘Oh! very well, indeed—they had good ventilation,’ pointing up to a large, splendid ventilator in the ceiling. ‘Do you keep that always open?’ I asked. ‘Oh! certainly,’ he replied. But I always have a great suspicion of those ceiling ventilators, as they are generally shut. So I walked around the ward, and when under it asked him again if he thought that was open. A smile came over his face as he discovered for the first time it was a handsome fresco painting on the solid wall. And this was the only practical attempt at any ventilation in any of the church buildings used as hospitals in all Washington.”