Earlier text: Causes of Consumption.Our disadvantage in this comparison is attributable, in considerable part, to the lack of humidity in our atmosphere. Without the evidence of facts, we might, a priori, argue, that excessive dryness of the air would produce dryness and irritability of the air-passages. From time immemorial, watery vapor has been used as a remedy in irritation and inflammation of the respiratory organs. A hundred times have my consumptive patients expressed surprise that the wet weather, in which I have insisted they should go out, as usual, has not injured them,—that they even breathe more freely than on pleasant days. Of course, I tell them, if the body is well protected, the more moist the air, the more grateful to the lungs. There is no possible weather which can excuse the consumptive for keeping in-doors. Give him sufficient clothing, protect his feet carefully, and he may go out freely in rain, sleet, snow and wind. Ignorance of this fact has killed thousands. That point of temperature at which the moisture of the air first becomes visible, is known as the dew-point. According to one authority, the mean dew-point of England, from the first of November to the last of March, is about 35 degrees; that of our Northern States about 16. Now suppose a house in England is kept at a temperature of 70 degrees, the drying power would there be represented by 35. A house with the same temperature in Albany, for-example, would possess a drying power of 54. This great contrast in the atmosphere of the two countries is strikingly illustrated by the difference between the plump body and smooth skin of the Englishman, and the lean, juiceless body, and dry, cracked skin of the Yankee. It is also shown by the well-known difference in the influence of house-heat upon furniture. Our chairs, and sofas, and wood-work, warp and shrink, while nothing of the sort occurs in England. As we cannot increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere of our continent, we must limit our practical efforts to the air of our houses. If we use a stove, its entire upper surface should be made a reservoir41for water; ornamental work, of but little cost, may be used to conceal it. The furnace may be made to send up, with its heat, many gallons of water daily, in the form of vapor. In justice to stoves and furnaces, I must say here, that, in the facility to do this, they possess one advantage over open fire-places. By adding artificial moisture in this way, to the air of our houses, we not only save our furniture from drying and shrinking, but protect our skin, eyes, nose, throat and lungs from undue dryness, and from the affections to which it would give rise. It is found necessary, in our cloth manufactories, to maintain a moist atmosphere in order to successful spinning. Intelligent managers have assured me that coughs and throat difficulties are comparatively rare in the spinning department. We must all have observed, that, while the air of a hot kitchen is comfortable, that of a parlor at the same heat, from an air-tight stove, is almost suffocating. The kitchen has a hot stove, but the steam of its boiling kettles moistens the air. Your country aunt, who has lived over her cooking-stove for years without serious inconvenience, after spending an afternoon in your parlor, heated by a stove or furnace, returns home “glad to get out of that hot, stifling air.” And yet the thermometer may have indicated that the kitchen was ten degrees warmer than the parlor. The dry heat of the parlor produces headache, irritability, and perhaps a sense of stricture in the chest. If we would avoid these, a dry chapped skin, an irritable nervous system, and a dry hacking cough, we must add the needed humidity by artificial means. Almost every writer on consumption regards humidity in the atmosphere as one of the principal causes of this disease. If the moisture is in such excess that it becomes visible in the form of fog, it may act prejudicially upon the respiratory apparatus; but, so long as its relations with the temperature are such that it remains in an invisible form, it must ever tend to preserve in the lungs a condition farthest from irritability. Again, humidity in its influence upon the respiratory42apparatus, is determined in considerable part by the clothing of the body. If insufficiently clad, and exposed to an excessive humidity, the general vitality may be so depressed, and the blood so driven from the surface, that disease of the lungs will result. But if the body be well guarded, moisture in the air, except when in great excess, and in very low temperatures, will ever serve to preserve in the respiratory apparatus, freedom from the dryness and irritability which constitute a prominent feature in most diseases of these organs. A striking illustration of its benefits is found in the comfort which phthisical persons derive from that condition of the atmosphere which accompanies a rain-storm in the summer, and again, by the relief which such patients experience in visiting the western shores of our continent, or an island in the ocean, where the air is loaded with humidity. FURNACES AND STOVES. Since the introduction of furnaces and stoves, diseases of the respiratory apparatus have greatly multiplied. The heat from these, dries the life juices out of the throat and lungs. When I am asked to see a consumptive, and find my patient in such an atmosphere, I begin by saying, “no treatment will save you if you continue to poison your lungs in this air.” If in the shutter of a dark room, you make a small aperture, you will observe in the jet of light, that the air of the best ventilated room is full of floating particles. In their ordinary condition they do not seriously injure the respiratory apparatus; but it has been shown by reliable observers, that when these motes are exposed to contact with a heated stove or furnace, they are carbonized and become poisonous to throat, lungs and blood. If this be true, it is a new and good objection to stoves and furnaces. The common idea that the air itself may be burned by a hot stove, is not well founded. I do not say it is impossible to ventilate a room warmed by furnaces or stoves; but, with the present ignorance on the subject of ventilation, and insensibility to atmospheric influences, not one house in a43hundred thus heated, will be well ventilated. If the machinery by which the needed change of air may be secured, is left to the control of the occupants of the house, bad ventilation will be the rule. OPEN FIRES VS. STOVES AND FURNACES. An open fire is number one among house blessings. If possible, it should be a wood fire with a large fire-place. Such a fire is a great luxury. It fills the family circle with satisfaction and sociability. To keep up the draught, the entire air of the room is constantly changed. Even if the room be small, and the company large, the excretions of the lungs and skin cannot so accumulate as to make the room smell close. Strange that people will not have this delightful blessing in their houses at any cost. Let them, if need be, go without silks, broadcloths, a piano, and finery of every kind, and have this excellent purifier and comfort in their homes. Who would not go miles to visit an old-fashioned log house with its great roaring fire? In whose childish reminiscences is not that cracking, rushing fire the most beautiful of memories? Why not have it all back again? If a small part of the money which we spend in foolish, mischievous fashions, were given to the reintroduction of this good old-fashioned blessing, we should all be healthier and happier. Next to the wood fire, the open grate, with coal, is best; and, if the draught be good, it is a good ventilator. In an institution for the treatment of weak chests, which we shall soon open in Boston, we shall make open wood fires play an important part. FIRES IN BEDROOMS. Most people think that sleeping in cold rooms is essential to health. This is a mistake. An open fire greatly improves the atmosphere of a bedroom. By it, the air of the room is constantly changed. With it, the window will be kept open. With a fire, less bed clothing is needed—an important advantage,—for a large number of blankets not only interferes with circulation and respiration, but prevents the escape of the gases which the skin is constantly emitting. Except there be wind, ventilation of any room depends upon a difference in temperature between the air inside and that outside.44If the thermometer inside indicate a temperature 10 degrees below the freezing point, and outside the same, there will be no ventilation. All motion in the air originates in a difference of temperature between different points. If we would secure the constant introduction of air from the great ocean outside, into our bedrooms, we must raise the temperature within, considerably above that without. NIGHT AIR. Consumptives, and all invalids, and indeed persons in health, are cautioned to avoid the night air. Do those who offer this advice forget that there is no other air at night, but “night air?” Certainly we cannot breathe day air during the night. Do they mean that we should shut ourselves up in air-tight rooms, and breathe over and over again, through half the twenty-four hours, the atmosphere we have already poisoned? We have only the choice between night air pure, and night air poisoned with the exhalations from our skins and lungs, perhaps from lungs already diseased. Many persons indulge a very silly dread of a draught. It is only by motion in the atmosphere that our lungs obtain the purest air. If at night the air move briskly directly over your bed, your lungs will receive precious supplies. If you cannot endure this direct draught, you must deny yourself a great luxury. I once thought that a draught at night directly over my head, was a thing to be avoided. Now I seek it as one of the real blessings of life. My wife, who inherited a consumptive taint, was ever guarding against night air. Now she sleeps with two open windows at one end of the bed, and an open door at the other. Neither of us have had a cold for several years. Every one must exercise his own judgment and prudence. I should be sorry were my words to lead any one into an injurious exposure. But among the many hundreds—I might say thousands,—whom I have advised to sleep with open windows, I have never known a single person to be seriously injured, even temporarily; and I may add, that almost without exception, so far as I have known, they would not return to their former45habit of sleeping in unventilated rooms. At first you may contract a cold, but if you bathe freely in cold water, and employ vigorous friction upon the parts exposed while in bed, even this may be avoided. But after a few weeks’ experience it will be quite unnecessary for the physiologist to lecture you on the subject. You will yourself take to exhorting your friends upon the importance of well ventilated bedrooms. One of the compensations of our great war, will be found in the conviction among a million returned soldiers that night air is not a poison, and that draughts are less dangerous than Minie balls. Of course I am not unaware that what I have said on sleeping in a draught will meet with very general reprobation, but it is not the only case in which false education and prejudice have undertaken to ignore a great natural. I can adduce the experience of thousands in favor of a free exposure to night air and winds, and after a wide observation, I have never met one person who has tried such exposure for one month and spoken against it. A writer pertinently speaks on this point after the following fashion: “Man acts strangely. Although a current of fresh air is the very life of his lungs, he seems indefatigable in the exercise of his inventive powers to deprive himself of this heavenly blessing. Thus, he carefully closes his bed-chamber against its entrance, and prefers that his lungs should receive the mixed effluvia from his cellar and larder, and from a patent little modern aquarius, in lieu of it. Why should man be so terrified at the admission of night air into any of his apartments? It is Nature’s ever-flowing current, and never carries the destroying angel with it. See how soundly the delicate little wren and tender robin, sleep under its full and immediate influence; and how fresh, and vigorous, and joyous, they rise amid the surrounding dewdrops of the morning. Although exposed all night long to the heavens, their lungs are never out of order; and this we know by the daily repetition of their song. Look at the new-born hare, without any nest to go to. It lives and thrives and becomes strong and playful under the unmitigated inclemency of the falling dews of night.46I have a turkey full eight years old that has not passed a single night in shelter. He roosts in a cherry tree, and is in primest health the year through. Three fowls, preferring his to the warm perches in the hen-house, took up their quarters with him early in October, and have never gone to any other roosting-place. The cow and the horse sleep safely on the ground, and the roe lies down to rest on the dewy mountain-top. I myself can sleep all night long, bareheaded, under the full moon’s watery beams, without any fear of danger, and pass the day in wet shoes, without catching cold.—Coughs and colds are generally caught in the transition from an over-heated room to a cold apartment; but there would be no danger in this movement, if ventilation were properly attended to,— a precaution little thought of now-a-days.” Dr. James Blake advises the consumptive to join with several friends, procure horses and wagons, and set off upon a long journey, sleeping in the open air, no matter what the weather. He seems to think this the only way in which it is possible to induce the consumptive to sleep in the fresh air. Doctor Jackson gives the case of a consumptive young man (he does not state the condition of his lungs) who was cured by sleeping in the open air on a hay-stack. This advice and experience do not quite harmonize with the common terror of night air. But while I believe that breathing the pure out-door air all night is an important curative means in this disease, I do not believe that sleeping in the open fields in a stormy night is the best means for securing pure night air, in the case of a feeble woman; on the contrary, I think it might be more pleasantly, and quite as effectually secured in a comfortable house with open windows and an open fire. No doubt the lives of thousands would be saved by destroying their houses, and compelling them to sleep in the open air; not because houses are inevitable evils, but because they are so badly used. Windows are barred and closed, as if to keep out assassins; draughts defended against, as if they were bomb-shells; and the furnace-heat still more corrupts the air, which47has done duty already—to how many lungs, for how many hours? Let the consumptive thank God for the blessing of a house, but let him use it wisely. How my heart has ached, to see the consumptive patient put away in a bed, behind curtains, in an unventilated room, the doors and windows carefully closed, to shut out the very food for which the lungs and system were famishing! I do not wonder that Blake, Jackson, and many others, have advised an out-door life of the wildest and most exposed sort to invalids of this class; but I do wonder that they have not equally insisted upon abundance of air for them, as pure as that of the fields and mountains, in their own homes, and in the midst of friends and comforts.—Weak Lungs by Dio Lewis. How beautiful and enlivening is the sunlight! How it gladdens the eyes and stimulates the powers of all living creatures as it dawns upon the earth in its morning freshness! “It is the very life of nature, without which every thing material would fade and perish.” Just in what way it acts upon plants or animals or men, to impart to them life and vigor, the wisdom of man is not yet able to show, but it is known that neither can exist in any thing like normal conditions without an abundant supply of this element or agent. Plants will grow where there is but little light, but they will always be pale and sickly under such circumstances, and instinctively reach toward the light. Every person has seen illustrations of this in the case of vegetables growing in cellars. A potatoe will send out a vine two or three feet, entirely colorless, and with scarcely any development of leaves, and if there is any where in the apartment an aperture letting in a ray of light, like a star shining in the darkness, the vine is sure to clamber toward it. So it is known that human beings living in entire darkness, as in dungeons and mines, grow pale and feeble and diseased. A more pitiable class of human48beings probably exists nowhere in our world than the miners in England—where men, women and children do not come to the surface of the earth and to the light for months together. Those poor people who live in great cities, in streets so narrow that the sunshine never visits their apartments, or in basements, suffer greatly in health from lack of light, and their children are particularly liable to malformations and scrofulous development. In great hospitals in which some of the rooms are nearly destitute of light, it is found that the patients occupying these, recover in a proportion very much below that of those who occupy well-lighted rooms. We pity the miner, those who are confined in dungeons and those who live in dark lanes. But there are thousands of the more favored classes, who, so far as the sunlight is concerned, might about as well live in dim basements as in their dwellings. Men build fine houses and take great care to have large windows with panes a little larger than their neighbors’ and then cover them so constantly with blinds and drapery that the sun is not permitted to have a good, free, open look into their sitting-rooms, parlors or chambers from May till November. At the Spring and Autumn house-cleaning, the house is thrown open for a short time, but the remainder of the year it is a semi-dungeon. Women live in such dim light till their eyes and whole systems become accommodated to it and they imagine that it is not only more pleasant, but better than broad day-light. They can not go out into the sunshine without shading themselves by some arrangement of carriage tops, sun-bonnets, umbrellas or parasols, without suffering. They have established a chronic, morbid relation to God’s glorious gift of light. This is ruinous to health and elasticity of spirits. And all, in the first place, to save the colors in a carpet or to give a delicate shade to the complexion. I would rather never see a carpet and have the complexion of a mulatto, and be permitted to have intimate acquaintance with sunshine, than to be mistress of the most magnificent palace that was ever erected, if I must keep the blinds closed and curtains down. Men build churches with large, high windows, as if while seeking to commune with Him who dwells in light, and in whom is no darkness at all, they meant to have a symbol of His spiritual presence in the floods of external light in which they should bathe. But instead, they cover the windows with blinds which are never intended to be opened, and are so arranged that they cannot be opened. For all practical purposes the house might as well have been lighted by two nine-paned windows of seven by nine glass. The “dim religious light” is appropriate in those churches whose object is to afford persons a place to mourn and confess their sins and repent in sack-cloth and ashes. If there are any, where the people go to rejoice and offer thanksgiving and praise, they should be well lighted. Light promotes gladness, and consequently healthiness of body and soul. Undoubtedly one reason why exercise in the open air is more beneficial than in the house is because of the greater degree of light out of doors. Parents should let their children play freely in the sunshine. They always like it when left to themselves. It is cruel to keep little girls in the house, or send them out only in deep sun-bonnets. It is good to allow the warm rays to come down on their bare heads and necks and arms and feet. It is better for the digestion than salts—better for the intellect than spelling-books. It will be a happy day for children when mothers shall learn its value.—Letter Box. NOTWITHSTANDING the great number of deaths from the casualties of railroad traveling—collisions, capsizings, running off the track, running under draw-bridges, &c.,—we believe many more deaths result from being confined in the cars than from being tumbled out of them. In cold it seems to be a choice of evils—death by wounds and bruises without, or death from infection within. Not long since, in a trip to and from Philadelphia, we examined three or four crowded cars, without50finding a breath of fresh air. Every window was closed; and the red-hot stove, the effluvia from human bodies—not always of the cleanest—the smell of liquor, the scent of tobacco, and the smoke of two oil-lamps, commingling in one deep, thick, dank, suffocating stench, reminded one more of the valley of Gehenna than of accommodations for travelers. We watched our opportunity, and the first vacancy on the window side of a seat came into our possession, and, presto, up went one window—a very little, however, so as not to excite alarm and provoke a controversy. Soon a large, portly, red-faced, gouty-looking individual took the other end of our pew. He was well bundled in coats and overcoats, his neck and face wrapped up in fur to his eyes; and of course he was very sensitive to the weather, and moreover, troubled with a “hacking cough.” He was hardly fairly squared in his seat before he espied the raised window, or felt the “chilling blast” along the projecting peak of his florid proboscis. “Please to close the window—that window, sir; have the goodness to shut the window,” were the hurried salutations he uttered half entreatingly, and rather more than half-commandingly. “Can’t do it, sir; can’t live so; do not like to breathe this air that has been breathed so many times already,” was our hasty defense. We did, however, lest worse might come to worst, drop the window to within half an inch of the bottom, and so, by applying our inhaling apparatus close to the crevice, managed to maintain a communication with the surrounding atmosphere for the remaining fifty miles. But our friend did not have to sustain his dangerous proximity to fresh air long; for at the next depot a seat was vacated, which he readily seized, and where he seemed to have found a people of “one smell and one mind” on the subject of ventilation. Such has ever been our experience on the railroads. Not one person in a hundred appears to know or care any thing about this subject. The editor of the Tribune, having recently enjoyed a trip to the West a la railroad, gives vent to his sensations on the subject in the following strain. We commend his remarks as51well as our own to the attention of the conductors everywhere: I went West over the Erie, and returned over the Pennsylvania Central—both excellent roads—the Erie I think the best managed and run of any long road in the country. In regularity, punctuality, and freedom from accident, it can hardly be exceeded. The Pennsylvania is not run so fast, especially toward this end, but is run regularly, safely, and is doing a large business. But the horrible recklessness of human health and life evinced in the want of ventilation on these as on most other roads, deserves the severest reprehension. Why do not Grand Juries take action on this wholesale slaughter? Every night sees hundreds of trains running this way and that, with thirty to fifty passengers in each car, so shut in that there is not so much pure air entering any one as three men need to breathe. Thus, in five minutes after the door has been closed, the whole atmosphere of the car is putrid, and every inmate is thence inhaling rank poison until the doors are opened again. Enter one of these cars as the train stops at a station, and the effluvia is enough to knock down a horse, though those who have depraved their perceptions by gradual acclimation to it may not mind it. The emigrant or second-class cars, being more densely crowded and less frequently opened, are especially noxious, and are doubtless causing thousands of typhus fevers and kindred diseases, of which the source is unsuspected by the sufferers. Messrs. Presidents, Directors and Superintendents! do you know that you are poisoning your customers by wholesale? If you don’t, ask any tolerably educated physician to ride one night in your cars, and tell you what he thinks of their atmosphere. If you do know the fact, why do you persist in murdering people by the thousand? Don’t talk about patent ventilators, but bore five hundred auger-holes in the floor and roof of each passenger car at once, and see that these are kept open until you can determine what to do next. Do something, and do it at once.—Water-Cure Journal. The evils resulting from breathing, night after night, an atmosphere becoming more and more vitiated as the morning approaches, probably equal, if they do not exceed, those resulting from the intemperate use of spirituous liquors. Indeed it is questionable whether a craving for stimulants has not been occasionally created by this abominable yet prevalent custom of keeping the windows of a sleeping apartment either entirely closed or opened but a “crack.” They should be widely opened every night throughout the year, unless the weather is intensely cold, or the wind unusually violent, or some other valid reason exists for mitigating the draught. Were this practice universally adopted, a surprising reduction would be quickly manifested in the frequency of morning headache and nausea, dyspepsia, chronic catarrh, croup, diphtheria, influenza, measles, scrofula, consumption, scarlet fever, small-pox, typhus fever, felon, whitlow, erysipelas, and many other disorders, which are more often induced by an infected atmosphere than any other cause. In recommending a draught I am not advocating a whirlwind or hurricane, but merely such a current of air as will supply the lungs during each night with from eight to ten thousand installments of pure, fresh, free oxygen, in a quantity fully equal to any possible demand of the human system. Stagnant air cannot supply this want, neither can air that is in motion, if it be not perceptibly so; nothing less than a draught, moderate but decided, and continuing throughout the night, can meet in every respect the requirements of health. Of the many and remarkable advantages of sleeping in the open air, or what may be regarded as the same thing, I can speak from thirteen years’ experience. Commencing the practice rather abruptly in the winter of 1850, and without suffering any serious inconvenience from the initial trial, I became in a few weeks nearly as invulnerable to the assaults of a freezing cold blast as a salamander to fire. From that time to the present I have not once suffered from any pulmonary affection, and, except in very rare instances,53have been utterly exempt from any illness that could be traced to a night-draught exposure. In short, a practice which . . . I have rigidly observed for a series of years, as one of the most important of all the means that I have hitherto adopted for indefinitely promoting health, strength, and development. The following are a few examples to illustrate the importance of a thorough system of ventilation, in cases where little if any complaint had been made of inattention to this hygienic measure: There was once in Glasgow an assemblage of buildings attached to a factory, which were occupied by about five hundred persons—one family to each room. For a long period an immense deal of sickness had pervaded the buildings, which the inmates seemed to regard as a mysterious dispensation of Providence, for they absolutely refused to adopt such sanitary expedients as had been repeatedly advised them. At length the proprietors of the establishment, despairing of ever making the inmates appreciate the importance of occasionally opening windows, resolved to apply a system of ventilation which should be thorough, continual, and utterly beyond the control of those subjected to it. They accordingly connected each room, by means of tubes, with the chimney of the factory furnace, and compelled every occupant, whether willing or unwilling, to expose daily and nightly to a draught of air. The result was that sickness of every kind rapidly diminished, and one disease, typhus fever, which had frequently raged as an epidemic, became for eight years “scarcely known to the place.” In 1842, at Norwood School, in England, scrofula made its appearance among six hundred children, and destroyed a great number of them. The disorder having been attributed to an insufficiency and bad quality of food, a scientific investigation was made, and a decision given that the food was most abundant and good—that “defective ventilation and consequent atmospheric impurity” was the cause of the sickness. A thorough system of ventilation was immediately applied, and scrofula rapidly disappeared, nor did it ever recur, though the number of pupils was gradually increased to eleven hundred. In a hospital at Dublin, 2,944 deaths took place in four years. A better system of ventilation having been resorted to as a means of lessening the mortality, it was found that during the next four years the number of deaths was only 279. The above facts are merely selected from a long array of a similar character, which tend to show the paramount importance of breathing an uncorrupted atmosphere. It is certainly no exaggeration to say, that were the public as particular as they should be, and easily might be, about the quality of that subtile fluid which enters and departs from an average pair of human lungs about a thousand times an hour, and nearly nine million times in a year, the bills of human mortality would be reduced one-third at least, and the average duration of human life be nearer seventy than forty.—Sel.