The Royal Road to Health; Or, the Secret of Health Without DrugsTyrrell, Chas. A. (Charles Alfred)
Science
The Royal Road to Health; Or, the Secret of Health Without Drugs
Tyrrell, Chas. A. (Charles Alfred)
Enema; Health; Health -- Popular works; Health promotion; Hygiene
When it is taken into account that the lungs of an average sized man
contain upwards of six hundred millions of minute air cells, the
surface area of which represents many thousands of square feet, the
danger of exposing such a vast area of delicate tissue to the action
of vitiated air can be readily estimated. No matter how nutritious the
food may be that is taken into the stomach, no matter how perfect the
processes of digestion and assimilation are, the blood cannot be
vitalized without fresh air.
It is estimated that the blood is pumped through the lungs at the rate
of eight hundred quarts per hour, and that during that period it rids
itself of about thirty quarts of carbonic acid gas, and absorbs about
the same amount of oxygen. Think for a moment of the madness of
obstructing this interchange of elements which is perpetually going on
and on which life depends!
It is more especially during the hours of sleep that fresh, pure air
is needed, for that is when Nature is busiest, repairing and building
up, and calls for larger supplies of oxygen to keep up the internal
fires, but her efforts at repairing waste are rendered futile if you
diminish the supply of the vitalizing element and compel her to use
over again the refuse material she has already cast off.
The late Prof. Willard Parker, in a lecture delivered before a class
of medical students, made a very forcible illustration of how the air
of a room was vitiated, in the following impressive words: "If,
gentlemen, instead of air you suppose this room filled with pure,
clean water, and that instead of air you were exhaling twenty times a
minute a pint of milk, you can see how soon the water, at first clear
and sparkling, would become hazy and finally opaque; the milk
diffusing itself rapidly through the water, you will thus be able,
also, to appreciate how, at each fresh inspiration you would be taking
in a liquid that grew momentarily more impure. Were we able to
see the air as we see the water, we would at once appreciate how
thoroughly we are contaminating it, and that unless there be some vent
for the air thus vitiated, and some opening large enough to admit a
pure supply of this very valuable material, we will be momentarily
poisoning ourselves, as surely as if we were taking sewage matter into
our stomachs." Don't leave the matter of a good supply of air to
servants. See to it yourself and see that you are not robbed of it. It
would be better to trust your eating to an attendant than your
breathing. Do that yourself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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