DAMP ROOMS by Selected

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 17, 1888

DAMP ROOMS.

By Selected

HUNDREDS of children die each year from the effect of sleeping in damp rooms, and scores of ladies go coughing around with severe colds, which become seated on the lungs and will terminate in consumption and death, from their gross ignorance or neglect of the simple laws of health. Light, warmth, and pure air are as necessary to health as food and drink.

During the summer, little care is needed but to throw open the doors and windows and let in the sunlight and pure air which everywhere abound. It is during the rainy season that special precautions are necessary. No room should be occupied which cannot be warmed and dried every day when it rains, and twice a week during the whole rainy season. Every occupied room should have a stove or fire-place in which a little fire should be built morning or evening; but where, from the imperfect construction of the house, this is impossible, the simplest substitutes should be adopted.

Dwelling rooms are allowed to gather dampness until, in extreme cases, the water stands in drops on the walls, and wall-paper moulds and drops off, and then "a mysterious providence"—nothing but ignorance and wet weather combined—allows the children to be swept off with diphtheria, croup, fever, and consumption. If a fire cannot be built in a room where children sleep, bring out the bedding and dry it by the fire, open the windows sunny days, and if a particle of dampness remains carry a large kettle of coals into the room frequently and let it dry out the moisture.—Selected.