Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms. What better illustration
could be given of the utter contempt with which the laws of bodily
health are treated, than the condition of these places? Our lawyers are
our highly educated men. They have been through high-school and college
training, they have learned the properties of oxygen, nitrogen, and
carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die under an exhausted
receiver, and of course they know that foul, unventilated rooms are bad
for the health; and yet generation after generation of men so taught and
trained will spend the greater part of their lives in rooms notorious
for their close and impure air, without so much as an attempt to remedy
the evil. A well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover among
court-rooms. Young men are constantly losing their health at the bar;
lung diseases, dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their
vitality. Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have
actually fallen dead as they stood pleading,--victims of the fearful
pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths
of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and
of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable
examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet,
strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and
give the body an equal chance with the mind in the pressure of the
world's affairs.
But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all buildings devoted
especially to the good of the soul, are equally witness of the mind's
disdain of the body's needs, and the body's consequent revenge upon the
soul. In how many of these places has the question of a thorough
provision of fresh air been even considered? People would never think of
bringing a thousand persons into a desert place, and keeping them there,
without making preparations to feed them. Bread and butter, potatoes and
meat, must plainly be found for them; but a thousand human beings are
put into a building to remain a given number of hours, and no one asks
the question whether means exist for giving each one the quantum of
fresh air needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims will
consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating, getting red in the
face, with confused and sleepy brains, while a minister with a yet
redder face and a more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through
the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the mysteries of faith.
How many churches are there that for six or eight months in the year are
never ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of doors? The
foul air generated by one congregation is locked up by the sexton for
the use of the next assembly; and so gathers and gathers from week to
week, and month to month, while devout persons upbraid themselves, and
are ready to tear their hair, because they always feel stupid and sleepy
in church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account