WHAT IS FRESH AIR? by Dr. C. W. Lyman

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 27, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 42.

WHAT IS FRESH AIR?

By Dr. C. W. Lyman

BY DR. C. W. LYMAN.

THERE is all but universal agreement among mankind that good air is a prime necessity. However, vast differences exist in the standards of what bad air is, and as to how fresh air must be to be fit for consumption. Too often it is that only one coming into a room from without is able to declare that its air is dead and foul. When we habitually, or even for a relatively short period, breathe air that is not of the best, the sensibilities become dulled that should protest and warn us. We are more likely to ourselves protest against raising windows and getting a fresh supply if a visitor from without apprise us of the condition of things and propose such a measure. Hence do we not need constantly to consider the liability of air in rooms to become stale and impure? Must we not exchange it for a fresh supply without necessarily having a warning from our senses?

One of the most instructive experiments ever made in physiology was that in which Richardson of England discovered that, if oxygen was inhaled into the lungs and then, after being exhaled, was freed from carbonic acid gas and other impurities, it had also lost some other property, and was now incapable of supporting life in a warm-blooded animal. As he expressed it this oxygen was "devitalized." Combustible bodies would burn in it as brilliantly as ever, and cold-blooded animals could breathe it and support life. But it could no longer be appropriated by the blood of animals like ourselves. If electric sparks were passed through it, its lost property was restored to it.

This points to the conclusion that every cubic inch of air that has once passed through human lungs, including the portion of oxygen that is not taken up by the blood and is exhaled again, needs to be expelled from a living room. It needs to pass out and away into the outdoor atmosphere, to be reëlectrified by vegetation, storms, or sun ere it is breathed again. This suggests that the great differences in the effects of the air on our spirits may be due to changes in what may be provisionally called the electric condition of the air. In this way, it may be, the exhilaration felt after a smart thundershower is brought about, as also the depression produced in many New Englanders by easterly and by southwesterly winds.

Vegetation, soil evaporation, and other natural agencies seem to play upon this condition in the air, giving it, in various parts of the country, more or less vivifying characteristics that are all its own in a given locality. A person coming from the Adirondacks to other parts of this State feels at once (and the perception lasts for days) that the air, though country air, is relatively lifeless and lacking in some quality which his lungs have learned to love. If he comes to the city, he tastes pollution in each chestful inhaled, and feels a stupefying influence settling in upon him.—New York Voice.