We sleep in a small bedroom from which every breath of fresh air is
excluded, because we believe night air to be unhealthy, [Footnote: There
is a singular prejudice against the night air. Yet, as Florence
Nightingale aptly says, what other air can we breathe at night? We then
have the choice between foul air within and pure air without. For, in
large cities especially, the night air is far more wholesome than that of
the daytime. To secure fresh air at night, we must open the windows of our
bedroom.] and so we breathe its dozen hogsheads of air over and over
again, and then wonder why we awaken in the morning so dull and
unrefreshed! Return to our room after inhaling the fresh, morning air, and
the fetid odor we meet on opening the door, is convincing proof how we
have poisoned our lungs during the night.
Each room should be supplied with two thousand feet of fresh air per hour
for every person it contains. Our ingenuity ought to find some way of
doing this advantageously and pleasantly. A moiety of the care we devote
to delicate articles of food, drink, and dress would abundantly meet this
prime necessity of our bodies.
Open the windows a little at the top and the bottom. Put on plenty of
clothing to keep warm by day and by night, and then let the inspiring
oxygen come in as freely as God has given it. Pure air is the cheapest
necessity and luxury of life. Let it not be the rarest!
SCHOOLROOM VENTILATION.--Who, on going from the open air of a clear,
bracing winter's day, into a crowded schoolroom, late in the session, has
not noticed the disagreeable odor, and been for a moment nauseated and
half stifled by the oppressive atmosphere! It is not strange. See how many
causes here combine to pollute the air. If the room is heated by a stove,
quantities of carbonic-oxide and carbonic-acid gases, as well as other
products of combustion, driven by downward drafts in the flue, escape
through seams and cracks and the occasionally opened door of the stove. In
the case of a furnace, the same effect is too often experienced, and the
odor of coal gas is a common one, especially when the fire is replenished.
The insensible perspiration is more active in children than in adults;
they, moreover, rush in with their clothing saturated with the
perspiration induced by their sports; so that, on the average, each pupil,
during school hours, loads the air with about half a pint of aqueous
vapor. The children come, oftentimes, from homes that are close, ill-
ventilated, and uncleanly; and frequently from sick rooms, bringing in
their clothing the germs of disease. (See p. 304.) Some of the pupils may
even bear traces of illness, or have unsound organs, and so their breath
and exhalations be poisonous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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