Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 5, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 30.

Health and Temperance.

Ventilation.

AT a recent sanitary convention at Iowa, Michigan, in reply to a sapient suggestion that ventilation could be successfully accomplished by making a hole in the floor for the foul air to "run out," the assistant secretary made the following remarks:—

"The gentleman has overlooked the law of diffusion of gases, in obedience to which law gases in contact for any length of time must become intimately mingled. This would entirely prevent such outward flow of the carbonic acid by its own weight, as the gentleman would have us believe could be brought about by providing an outlet to the open air at or near the floor. He has also overlooked the fact that carbonic acid gas is not the most injurious of the products of respiration.

"As stated by the lecturer, the organic matter thrown off from the skin and lungs is the most harmful of respiration. This organic waste matter, when rebreathed, acts as a direct poison upon the animal economy. It is less in quantity than the expired carbonic acid, but occurs along with that, so that when we have established the presence from expiration of an excess of carbonic acid in any room, we have at the same time proved that a more deadly, if not so easily detected, enemy is present. The organic waste matter rises with the warm, expired air to the ceiling, whence, as it cools, it is gradually diffused downward."

Those who have carefully examined our poorly ventilated State prisons have repeatedly had demonstrated to them, by the sense of smell, if not otherwise, that the upper layer of air, in a room occupied by large bodies of men, becomes soonest charged with foul emanations. In sleeping wards, where cells rise above each other in from three to five tiers, the impurity of the air, as shown by the sense of smell and general feeling of oppressiveness, increases as one ascends from one gallery to another, until, toward morning, on the uppermost gallery near the ceiling, the stench and oppressiveness of the air becomes almost intolerable; and this, too, in spite of the fact that in the State House of Correction, at Ionia, numerous openings have been provided in the outer walls near the floor for the express purpose of ventilation."—Good House-keeping.