p. 10 | Pure Air by John Harvey Kellogg

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 21, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 21.

Pure Air

By John Harvey Kellogg

BY J. H. KELLOGG, M.D.

A GENEROUS Creator has placed at man’s disposal an ocean of air, many miles in depth. Man, and all living things, vegetable as well as animal, are dependent for life upon the life-giving oxygen contained in this aerial ocean. A man may live more than a month without food, and a few days without drink; but when deprived of air or oxygen, he dies in a few moments, showing that pure air is the most essential of all the necessities of life.

Impure air is as potent an agent of death and disease as is pure air of life and health. Poison taken into the stomach is slowly absorbed and distributed to the body; but poison taken into the lungs is in a gaseous form, and at once comes in contact with almost the entire volume of blood in the body, being separated from it only by a membrane of almost inconceivable thinness, the lining membrane of the air passages and air cells, which, if spread out, would cover a surface of nearly two thousand square feet.

Germs.—Tho microscopic in size, they are most potent agents for mischief, on account of their immense numbers, and the marvelous rapidity with which they multiply. Bad air is dangerous partly on account of the presence of these germs, and partly from the presence of foul and poisonous gases.

There are numerous causes of impure air, among the most common and dangerous of which may be mentioned the following:—

Vaults and cesspools are common receptacles of all kinds of filth and are to be found connected with nearly all houses in the country, and in small towns and villages. They send into the air volumes of pestilential, germ-laden gases, which not only contaminate the out-of-door air, but are carried by the winds into human dwellings and breathed by human lungs, often communicating disease and death, which is mistakenly attributed to Providence.

Drains from the house, which usually communicate with a vault, cesspool, or sewer, in most cases constitute an open door for the entrance of germs and dangerous gases. Drain pipes should always be ventilated.

The kitchen sink, stationary wash-bowls and bath tubs, and water-closets, are likely to become sources of danger, through the accumulation of impurities about them, or the entrance of gases from the sewer through defective plumbing. Avoid stationary wash-bowls in bedrooms. Have the water-closet and bath tub in a room separated from the living rooms, and well ventilated. Clean underneath daily.

Hen-coops, piggeries, barn-yards, and cow-pens, are among the chief contributors to air impurity in the country, and in small towns. These should be kept clean and disinfected.

The house cellar, with its decomposing meats and vegetables, its general accumulation of rubbish, its moldy walls, and damp, germ-infected air, is a magazine of disease under thousands of households. Cellars are healthful if well drained, well ventilated, frequently sunned, and never made the receptacle of decomposable substances.

Unkempt pantries, full of sour, moldy odors, and dark, unventilated closets, rank with the odors of soiled and musty garments, are potent sources of bad air, the remedy for which is obvious.

Carpets filled with dust throw up a cloud of germs when trodden upon or swept, and moldy walls, poisonous wall-paper, and filthy wood-boxes, intensify the impurity of the air of sitting-rooms, which may be already made hazardous to breathe from other sources. Cover the floor when necessary with rugs instead of carpets. Keep free from dust by shaking daily. Have no paper upon the walls, and no wood-boxes in living rooms.

Dark, damp, fusty parlors, into which the sun never shines, keep bright carpets and upholstery, but make pale faces and lack-luster eyes.

Damp, unventilated bedrooms, with beds and bedding damp, unaired, unsunned, and musty, are veritable death traps. Many an itinerant clergyman has traced a fatal illness to a horrible night spent in the clammy embrace of a “spare bed.” Such a bed and such a bedroom teem with germs.

Thousands of lives are annually sacrificed by breathing the poison-laden and overheated air of rooms warmed by coal stoves, with defective draft and leaky furnaces.

But the most constant and dangerous source of air impurities is human beings. Each breath thrown off from the lungs, contains impurities sufficient to render three cubic feet, or three-fourths of a barrel, of air unfit to breathe again. It is apparent, then, that the air of an unventilated room of ordinary size must very soon become not only unfit to breathe, but absolutely poisonous. Yet there are plenty of persons who, altho most fastidious as regards what they eat and drink, will breathe air the most impure for hours with entire complacency.

Why stifle and gasp and pine within air-tight walls, with every crack and crevice barricaded against God’s life-giving oxygen, which is “free as air” to all who will accept it, and which, even at this moment, perhaps, is moaning and sighing, even howling about outside, for a chance to come in and invigorate you?

The sovereign remedy for bad air is cleanliness. Nothing should be left to decay or mold within, beneath, or around a dwelling-house. Garbage, and other household waste, should not be left to accumulate, but should, so far as possible, be burned each day, while it is still incapable of harm. Whatever can not be destroyed should be removed from the premises.

Disinfection is an important means of combating bad air. Sulphur is a cheap and efficient disinfectant for musty or moldy rooms, or rooms in which persons have been sick with offensive or contagious diseases. The room should be tightly closed, and the sulphur burned in an iron vessel, set on bricks. Burn five ounces of sulphur to each hundred cubic feet of air to be disinfected.

To disinfect drains and cesspools, pour into them several gallons of water containing two pounds of copperas to the gallon. Abundance of fresh air and sunshine are excellent disinfectants, which should never be forgotten.