Health in the Air by G. H. Heald

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Sep 1, 1904

Health in the Air

By G. H. Heald

G. H. HEALD

CIVILIZED people, especially those living in the cities, have come to be almost afraid of the air. Perhaps not so much is now said about “night air” as formerly; still many people sleep with rooms tightly closed, and wonder why they awake with a bursting headache, or why they feel more tired when they get up than when they go to bed, or why they lack appetite and ambition.

Notwithstanding all that has been written regarding the importance of having an abundant supply of pure air day and night, there are many who through habit, or indifference, or ignorance, still cling to the practise of shutting all ventilation out from their sleeping and living rooms. There seems to be a belief that free ventilation will increase the likelihood of contracting colds; but an abundance of pure air is the surest method of preventing colds.

In one family a mother and two daughters had been sleeping out all summer, either in camp or on a porch. In November, when the nights became quite cold, the mother and the younger daughter went into the house to sleep, and contracted colds which lasted a number of weeks. The older daughter continued to sleep outside, and escaped a cold.

Stories are told of soldiers, who, after submitting to all kinds of hardship and exposure in bad weather without catching cold, have caught cold on returning home and sleeping inside of a house, and indulging — after a long life of soldiers’ rations — in an old-fashioned “square meal.”

Some may not know, although all ought to know by this time, that most remarkable cures of tuberculosis are wrought by the open-air method. Sometimes this with nothing else is sufficient to check the disease. Patients are kept out on porches or in shanties with one side entirely open.

It is not exposure that causes colds. This has been demonstrated. There must first be a susceptibility to colds, caused by such unhygienic practises as overeating, living in an artificial, hot-house climate during the winter, and breathing impure air. Many people contract colds who have been extremely careful to avoid drafts, wet feet, and other ordinary so-called causes of cold.

We must not overlook the influence of germs in the causation of colds; but germs are always present. They may be more prevalent at one time than another, thus producing epidemics of cold; but they are nearly always present in sufficient numbers to set up an inflammation in the air-passages of any one who, through wrong habits, has undermined his powers of resistance.

On a frosty morning the tendency is to hug the fire; but let one break away from habit, and take a brisk walk over the snow, noticing the tonic effect of the exercise. The step will be elastic and bounding, the face will glow with the increase of circulation, there will be a general buoyancy, and what an appetite!

In summer we stay in to avoid the heat, in winter we stay in to avoid the cold. Except during the hottest weather when heat prostrations are possible, one should get out, sun or no sun. If it is too warm during the middle of the day, one can get out during the early morning hours, perhaps as early as four o’clock, and enjoy nature at her best.

The fresh-air habit, with abstemiousness in diet, is the surest preventive of lung and throat troubles.