Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
When people are ill the rooms should have fresh air entering at all
times. Sick people give off more poisons than do those in good health
and they need the oxygen to burn up the deposits in the system.
An early morning stroll while most people are in bed is very
instructive. It will be found that some houses are shut up as tightly as
possible and that only a few are properly ventilated. A person who
insists on keeping his window open in winter is often looked upon as a
freak. What is the result of this close housing? The first result is
that the blood is unable to obtain the required amount of oxygen and is
poisoned by the rebreathing of the air in the room. In the morning the
sleeper wakes feeling only half rested, and it takes a cup of coffee or
something else to produce complete awakening. The evil results are
cumulative, and after a while the bad habit of breathing impure air at
night will be a great factor in building disease of some kind.
One reason why some are so afraid of fresh air, especially at night, is
that they become so autotoxemic through bad habits, especially improper
eating habits, that a slight draught causes them to sneeze and often
catch cold and they believe that the fresh air causes the irritation.
This is not so. The irritability comes from within, not from without.
After becoming accustomed to good ventilation at night it is almost
impossible to enter into restful slumbers in a stuffy room.
Savages are singularly free from respiratory diseases, and the reason is
without doubt that they do not house themselves closely. In some parts
of the world they fear to let civilized men enter their abodes, for they
may bring respiratory diseases.
Not only the homes, but public places, such as street cars, theaters,
schools and churches are too often poorly ventilated. Sleeping, or
rather dozing in church is so common that it is a matter of jest. My
experience has been that drowsiness comes not from the dullness of
sermons, but from the impossibility of getting a breath of good air in
many churches.
Please remember that exhaled air is excretory matter, and that it is
both unclean and unwholesome to consume it over and over again.
Draughts do not cause colds. Cold air does not cause colds. Wet clothes
do not cause colds: These things may be minor contributory factors, but
the body must be in poor condition before one can catch cold. Colds are
generally caught at the table. Lack of fresh air also helps to produce
colds, as well as other diseases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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