THE HOUSE: VENTILATION.
Having settled the four requisites in any home, and suggested the points
to be made in regard to the first one,--that of wholesome
situation,--_Ventilation_ is next in order. Theoretically, each one of us
who has studied either natural philosophy or physiology will state at
once, with more or less glibness, the facts as to the atmosphere, its
qualities, and the amount of air needed by each individual; practically
nullifying such statement by going to bed in a room with closed windows
and doors, or sitting calmly in church or public hall, breathing over and
over again the air ejected from the lungs all about,--practice as cleanly
and wholesome as partaking of food chewed over and over by an
indiscriminate crowd.
Now, as to find the Reason Why of all statements and operations is our
first consideration, the familiar ground must be traversed again, and the
properties and constituents of air find place here. It is an old story,
and, like other old stories accepted by the multitude, has become almost
of no effect; passive acceptance mentally, absolute rejection physically,
seeming to be the portion of much of the gospel of health. "Cleanliness is
next to godliness," is almost an axiom. I am disposed to amend it, and
assert that cleanliness _is_ godliness, or a form of godliness. At any
rate, the man or woman who demands cleanliness without and within, this
cleanliness meaning pure air, pure water, pure food, must of necessity
have a stronger body and therefore a clearer mind (both being nearer what
God meant for body and mind) than the one who has cared little for law,
and so lived oblivious to the consequences of breaking it.
Ventilation, seemingly the simplest and easiest of things to be
accomplished, has thus far apparently defied architects and engineers.
Congress has spent a million in trying to give fresh air to the Senate and
Representative Chambers, and will probably spend another before that is
accomplished. In capitols, churches, and public halls of every sort, the
same story holds. Women faint, men in courts of justice fall in apoplectic
fits, or become victims of new and mysterious diseases, simply from the
want of pure air. A constant slow murder goes on in nurseries and
schoolrooms; and white-faced, nerveless children grow into white-faced and
nerveless men and women, as the price of this violated law.
What is this air, seemingly so hard to secure, so hard to hold as part of
our daily life, without which we can not live, and which we yet
contentedly poison nine times out of ten?
Oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, and watery vapor; the last two being a
small portion of the bulk, oxygen and nitrogen making up four-fifths.
Small as the proportion of oxygen seems, an increase of but one-fifth more
would be destruction. It is the life-giver, but undiluted would be the
life-destroyer; and the three-fifths of nitrogen act as its diluent. No
other element possesses the same power. Fires and light-giving combustion
could not exist an instant without oxygen. Its office seems that of
universal destruction. By its action decay begins in meat or vegetables
and fruits; and it is for this reason, that, to preserve them, all oxygen
must be driven out by bringing them to the boiling point, and sealing them
up in jars to which no air can find entrance. With only undiluted oxygen
to breathe, the tissues would dry and shrivel, fuel burn with a fury none
could withstand, and every operation of nature be conducted with such
energy as soon to exhaust and destroy all power. But "a mixture of the
fiery oxygen and inert nitrogen gives us the golden mean. The oxygen now
quietly burns the fuel in our stoves, and keeps us warm; combines with the
oil in our lamps, and gives us light; corrodes our bodies, and gives us
strength; cleanses the air, and keeps it fresh and invigorating; sweetens
foul water, and makes it wholesome; works all around us and within us a
constant miracle, yet with such delicacy and quietness, we never perceive
or think of it, until we see it with the eye of science."
Food and air are the two means by which bodies live. In the full-grown
man, whose weight will average about one hundred and fifty-four pounds,
one hundred and eleven pounds is oxygen drawn from the air we breathe.
Only when food has been dissolved in the stomach, absorbed at last into
the blood, and by means of circulation brought into contact with the
oxygen of the air taken into our lungs, can it begin to really feed and
nourish the body; so that the lungs may, after all, be regarded as the
true stomach, the other being not much more than the food-receptacle.
Take these lungs, made up within of branching tubes, these in turn formed
by myriads of air-cells, and each air-cell owning its network of minute
cells called _capillaries_. To every air-cell is given a blood-vessel
bringing blood from the heart, which finds its way through every capillary
till it reaches another blood-vessel that carries it back to the heart. It
leaves the heart charged with carbonic acid and watery vapor. It returns,
if pure air has met it in the lung, with all corruption destroyed, a
dancing particle of life. But to be life, and not slow death, thirty-three
hogsheads of air must pass daily into the lungs, and twenty-eight pounds
of blood journey from heart to lungs and back again three times in each
hour. It rests wholly with ourselves, whether this wonderful tide, ebbing
and flowing with every breath, shall exchange its poisonous and clogging
carbonic acid and watery vapor for life-giving oxygen, or retain it to
weigh down and debilitate every nerve in the body.
With every thought and feeling some actual particles of brain and nerve
are dissolved, and sent floating on this crimson current. With every
motion of a muscle, whether great or small, with every process that can
take place in the body, this ceaseless change of particles is going on.
Wherever oxygen finds admission, its union with carbon to form carbonic
acid, or with hydrogen to form water, produces heat. The waste of the body
is literally burned up by the oxygen; and it is this burning which means
the warmth of a living body, its absence giving the stony cold of the
dead. "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" may well be the
literal question for each day of our lives; and "pure air" alone can
secure genuine life. Breathing bad air reduces all the processes of the
body, lessens vitality; and thus, one in poor health will suffer more from
bad air than those who have become thoroughly accustomed to it. If
weakened vitality were the only result, it would not be so serious a
matter; but scrofula is soon fixed upon such constitutions, beginning with
its milder form as in consumption, but ending in the absolute rottenness
of bone and tissue. The invalid may live in the healthiest climate, pass
hours each day in the open air, and yet undo or neutralize much of the
good of this by sleeping in an unventilated room at night. Diseased
joints, horrible affections of the eye or ear or skin, are inevitable. The
greatest living authorities on lung-diseases pronounce deficient
ventilation the chief cause of consumption, and more fatal _than all other
causes put together_; and, even where food and clothing are both
unwholesome, free air has been found able to counteract their effect.
In the country the balance ordained in nature has its compensating power.
The poisonous carbonic acid thrown off by lungs and body is absorbed by
vegetation whose food it is, and which in every waving leaf or blade of
grass returns to us the oxygen we demand. Shut in a close room all day, or
even in a tolerably ventilated one, there may be no sense of closeness;
but go to the open air for a moment, and, if the nose has not been
hopelessly ruined by want of education, it will tell unerringly the degree
of oxygen wanting and required.
It is ordinarily supposed that carbonic-acid gas, being heavier, sinks to
the bottom of the room, and that thus trundle-beds, for instance, are
especially unwholesome. This would be so, were the gas pure. As a matter
of fact, however, being warmed in the body, and thus made lighter, it
rises into the common air, so that usually more will be found at the top
than at the bottom of a room. This gas is, however, not the sole cause of
disease. From both lungs and skin, matter is constantly thrown off, and
floats in the form of germs in all impure air. To a person who by long
confinement to close rooms has become so sensitive that any sudden current
of air gives a cold, ventilation seems an impossibility and a cruelty; and
the problem becomes: How to admit pure air throughout the house, and yet
avoid currents and draughts. "Night-air" is even more dreaded than the
confined air of rooms; yet, as the only air to be had at night must come
under this head, it is safer to breathe that than to settle upon carbonic
acid as lung-food for a third, at least, of the twenty-four hours. As
fires feed on oxygen, it follows that every lamp, every gas-jet, every
furnace, are so many appetites satisfying themselves upon our store of
food, and that, if they are burning about us, a double amount of oxygen
must be furnished.
The only mode of ventilation that will work always and without fail is
that of a warm-air flue, the upward heated air-current of which draws off
the foul gases from the room: this, supplemented by an opening on the
opposite side of the room for the admission of pure air, will accomplish
the desired end. An open fire-place will secure this, provided the flue is
kept warm by heat from the kitchen fire, or some other during seasons when
the fire-place is not used. But perhaps the simplest way is to have ample
openings (from eight to twelve inches square) at the top and bottom of
each room, opening into the chimney-flue: then, even if a stove is used,
the flue can be kept heated by the extension of the stove-pipe some
distance up within the chimney, and the ascending current of hot air will
draw the foul air from the room into the flue. This, as before stated,
must be completed by a fresh-air opening into the room on another side: if
no other can be had, the top of the window may be lowered a little. The
stove-pipe _extension_ within the chimney would better be of cast-iron, as
more durable than the sheet-iron. When no fire is used in the
sleeping-rooms, the chimney-flue must be heated by pipes from the kitchen
or other fires; and, with the provision for _fresh_ air never forgotten,
this simple device will invariably secure pure and well-oxygenated air for
breathing. "Fussy and expensive," may be the comment; but the expense is
less than the average yearly doctor's bill, and the fussiness nothing that
your own hands must engage in. Only let heads take it in, and see to it
that no neglect is allowed. In a southern climate doors and windows are of
necessity open more constantly; but at night they are closed from the fear
referred to, that night-air holds some subtle poison. It is merely colder,
and perhaps moister, than day-air; and an extra bed-covering neutralizes
this danger. Once accustomed to sleeping with open windows, you will find
that taking cold is impossible.
If custom, or great delicacy of organization, makes unusual sensitiveness
to cold, have a board the precise width of the window, and five or six
inches high. Then raise the lower sash, putting this under it; and an
upward current of air will be created, which will in great part purify the
room.
Beyond every thing, watch that no causes producing foul air are allowed to
exist for a moment. A vase of neglected flowers will poison the air of a
whole room. In the area or cellar, a decaying head of cabbage, a basket of
refuse vegetables, a forgotten barrel of pork or beef brine, a neglected
garbage pail or box, are all premiums upon disease. Let air and sunlight
search every corner of the house. Insist upon as nearly spotless
_cleanliness_ as may be, and the second prime necessity of the home is
secure.
When, as it is written, man was formed from the dust of the earth, the
Lord God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
_living soul_."
Shut off that breath of life, or poison it as it is daily poisoned, and
not only body, but soul, dies. The child, fresh from its long day out of
doors, goes to bed quiet, content, and happy. It wakes up a little demon,
bristling with crossness, and determined not to "be good." The breath of
life carefully shut out, death has begun its work, and you are
responsible. And the same criminal blunder causes not only the child's
suffering, but also the weakness which makes many a delicate woman
complain that it "takes till noon to get her strength up."
Open the windows. Take the portion to which you were born, and life will
grow easier.