IN WHAT DOES EFFICIENT VENTILATION CONSIST?
How MUCH fresh air do we need? An average person, in middle life, exercising in a normal manner, uses in respiration, according to Dalton, an amount of air measuring one hundred and forty times the bulk of his body, in twenty-four hours; the very old and the very young use less, while a man exercising briskly will "spoil" considerably more. All the blood in the body makes the entire round of the circulation in twenty seconds, so that three times in every minute all the red globules of the blood, which are the oxygen carriers, must each have its fresh modicum of oxygen. People sometimes erroneously apply such measurements as these to the calculation of cubic space required for health in an apartment; but if they think of nothing beyond, they have only half solved the problem. Dalton says: "The successful ventilation of a room depends not so much on the quantity of air which it contains as on that introduced and expelled within a certain period. The air of a small room, if properly renewed, may be amply sufficient for respiration, while that of a large room, if it remain stagnant, will become unfit for use." It is the lack of means for getting rid of these products of human combustion in many of the rooms of palatial office buildings, well supplied with steam heat, that they become injurious to the most robust, and most unendurable to persons of a delicate organization. There is very clear proof that the salubrity of a room does not depend on its size. In London there is a series of industrial dwellings known as the Allen-Waterlow buildings, the sites selected with no reference to good or bad soil, but solely so as to be near the work of the occupants. It was through the enthusiasm of Mr. Allen, named above—who was himself a practical mason—that Sir Sydney Waterlow was persuaded to procure the funds needed, and the first principle laid down was to construct in such a manner as to give safety to every room and every individual. They put up their first "Improved Dwelling" in 1860. Careful statistics have been kept from the first, and it appears that the death rate in these buildings is less than it is in the aristocratic West End—in fact, is less than in the best parts of rural England; yet the rooms average 9x13 and 13x12 feet by 8 feet high, giving634636 feet of cubic space; but this is shared by more than one person. Some of the apartments have but two rooms and a scullery, but each is a complete separate home, with sanitarily perfect plumbing. But other buildings have this, with no such light death rate to show. The greatest factor in the salubriousness of these buildings appears in the statement that every room has an open grate, with a constantly warmed flue communicating with the outer air. In the sleeping rooms a simple open grate is found; in the kitchens, a stove grate, which the English laborer's wife makes into an open grate, so as not to waste her precious "black diamonds," the moment her cooking is done, by turning down the damper. With these constantly warmed air ducts once in twenty feet, there can be no stagnant air. We shall have to inaugurate a flue crusade in America before our palatial office buildings will be perfectly, i. e., healthfully, ventilated. Look at some of the old New England schoolhouses, perched up on brick piers, with the children sitting elbow to elbow in them, and all the "airts that blow" coming up through the cracks in the floor and in at the ill-fitting windows. Did anybody ever hear of "closeness" in connection with them? What does ventilation mean? The Latin ventus means "wind," and the English definition of wind is "rushing air," and it is not till the air about us ceases to rush, and becomes stagnant, that we realize the blessing and comfort of rushing air. How people swelter and groan, "The air is so close," when a warm fog, with no breath of air stirring, envelops us! A whole city can be so imperfectly ventilated as to become dangerous. In the second week of December, 1873, London had one of the densest fogs that ever visited it. The products of combustion from thousands of smoke stacks and chimneys, and the emanations from its millions of human lungs, and all the deleterious effluvia from all other sources, were caught and held right in the houses, or on the respiratory levels; no merciful rushing air swept them away. The Registrar General's report showed 780 more deaths than had been known in any previous week for ten years, and the details of the record showed that the physical disturbances were almost incredibly profound; and a curious confirmation of the fact that atmospheric pollution caused the morbific condition came from a very unexpected source. The Smithfield Club Cattle Show in the midst of London was in operation on the 9th and 10th of that month, and the Times of the 11th relates that the show was interfered with by the sickness and death of many animals, and that others were rescued only by being sent out into the pure air of the country. The human mortality of this unventilated week, with no rushing air, was far greater than in the panic week of cholera in 1866. How shall we secure safe ventilation—a constant renewal of air about us, yet in such a manner as not to cause draughts—for the foul air is slow poison; a blast of cold air may slay like a sword? The old proverb says:— "If the wind strikes you through a hole,
Go count your beads and mind your soul;"
and the million subtle ills that come from "a sudden check of perspiration," says Dr. Austin Flint, "everybody knows about, but not the wisest physician can explain." In England it is against the law to sell infected clothing; but there is reason to believe that it is often given to tramps and gypsies, and yet these out-of-door people almost never have the "catching" diseases. The free air of heaven desiccates and blows away the germs. Shall we then all become tramps and gypsies? Certainly not till our country is furnished with a new climate. Our air must be impounded—shut up—and warmed for at least six months of every year, and in this day of elaborate and costly and "scientific systems" of ventilation, when a world of intellect is being spent on trying to get good ventilation, by dispensing with and circumventing the simplest and most direct methods, of a flue from each room communicating directly with the outer air, and when some of these "systems" that have cost thousands of dollars are failures, one doesn't like to dogmatize; but it is perfectly certain that the simple, direct, efficient method of opening doors and windows, especially in intervals when apartments are not occupied, is much overlooked and neglected, while the owner maybe is dreaming of "systems," on the same principle that a man goes searching all over for his spectacles while they are calmly resting on his forehead. Schoolteachers are learning that it is a valuable help to ventilation to open the windows while pupils are out at recess, and we must all learn that rebreathed air is poison; and, though it is an expensive process, we must make sure that fresh air enough is taken in and properly warmed to feed each hungry blood corpuscle its due quota of oxygen three times each minute. When men undertake to win in a philanthropic cause, they act on the motto, "Agitate, agitate, agitate," and when individuals resolve to preserve a high state of health, they must "ventilate, ventilate, ventilate."—Independent.