Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
ventilators were carefully closed, and the newcomers, with the rest,
settled off to sleep and slept soundly for nearly four hours, with the
exception of a few minutes' interval at Grantham. When aroused on
nearing London they, like the other occupants of the compartment, were
haggard and leaden-hued, their fresh color was entirely gone, and they
looked and moved as if exhausted. I examined my own face in the
lavatory mirror at the beginning and end of the journey and could see
but little alteration in my color; if anything, it was rather improved
by the end of the journey. The second case occurred early in 1897. I
was asked to see a woman, aged about forty-eight years, who had been
treated in a neighboring town for many weeks for bronchitis and asthma
following influenza. She had relapsed about a week when I first saw
her. She was then sitting up in bed; her face was leaden-colored, her
skin was clammy and sweating, with a feeble, quick pulse, and the
heart sounds were indistinguishable owing to wheezing; there was some
crepitation at the bases. The temperature was about 101° F. The
weather was cold, but after wrapping her up, with a hot bottle to her
feet, the window was well opened. Her color improved in a few minutes
and the sweating ceased soon after. But it and the blueness returned
if the window was shut for any time. It was directed to be kept open
night and day, and I could see from my house that this order was
carried out. Although on one night the thermometer showed 14° F. of
frost the chest was clear of noises and she was convalescent in eight
days. If fresh air needs warming she ought to have died. Why do most
men feel so tired after an afternoon's work in a crowded out-patient
room? Why is a long journey in a full railway carriage, even with a
comfortable seat, so exhausting to many people? Personally an hour or
two in a full carriage with the windows shut will give me numbness in
my feet and legs and knock me up for the day, while a railway journey
in an empty carriage with open windows does not affect me at all. But
most people will be willing to admit that any kind of crowd is tiring.
It is to me difficult to resist the impression than an overdose of
waste products, whether of one's own or other people's, must generally
interfere with the metabolism of nerve tissue. Women as they grow
older are apt to live much indoors. I believe the fat, flabby, paunchy
woman, whether purple or pale, with feeble, irritable heart and
"inadequate" kidneys, is usually the victim of rebreathed air. A
"close" room will infallibly give me an abdominal distention and
borborygmi within half an hour, and I am inclined to think the purity
of the air breathed by the dyspeptic quite as important as his regimen
or his teeth. It must, I think, sooner or later be recognized that
many of the increasing ills which it has been the fashion to charge on
the "hurry and brain fag" incidental to a high state of civilisation
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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