=Essentials of Life.=--Air, water, and food are the great essentials of
life. A man may go for days without food, and for hours without water,
but deprive him of air, even for a few minutes, and he ceases to live.
In quantity, the daily consumption of air far outmeasures the other
two; in purity, it receives the least consideration. The city and the
State alike exercise some oversight of the food and water supply of the
people. Impurities in these often appeal to the sense of sight or smell
or taste, and the individual is put on his guard. The intangible air is
laden with the foulest and most poisonous substances, and is as freely
inhaled as if it could make no difference to the health.
=Lung Capacity.=--The quantity of the air we breathe is also important.
We may eat too much food, even though it be absolutely pure and
wholesome, but we cannot consume too much pure air. The larger the lung
space, therefore, the better for health and strength.
The full lung capacity of the average adult is about 330 cubic inches,
but an ordinary inspiration does not take in more than one-eleventh
part of that volume. The value of full, deep breathing, and of large
lung capacity becomes at once apparent. The larger the quantity of air
consumed, the greater the amount of life-giving oxygen conveyed through
the blood to all parts of the body. No form of physical exercise,
therefore, can exceed in value the breathing exercises described in
another chapter.
=Rate of Breathing.=--It is estimated that we breathe once during every
four beats of the heart, or about eighteen times a minute. The relation
between the heart and lungs is so close that whatever modifies the
pulse affects the breathing. When the heart action is hurried, more
blood is sent to the lungs, requiring more rapid action on their part.
About every fifth breath the inspiration is longer and fuller, the
effect being to change more completely the air of the lungs.
=Holding the Breath.=--While respiration is, for the most part,
involuntary, we may arrest the breathing for the space of twenty to
thirty seconds. If we first fortify the lungs by taking several deep
inspirations and expelling the impure air as fully as possible, we may
hold the breath for a minute or two. This power will prove of advantage
if we have occasion to pass through a room or hallway filled with
smoke, or to remain under water for a brief time. The pearl-fishers, as
a result of training, remain under water from three to four minutes.
=Importance of Pure Air.=--Pure air means pure blood. The air of the
mountain tops or by the sea fills us with life, while that of narrow
streets, crowded rooms, unventilated dwellings, schools, churches, and
theatres is depressing, weakening, and death-dealing.
So far from the aristocracy having a monopoly of blue blood, it flows
through the veins of high and low alike. It goes out from the lungs
bright and rich with oxygen; it comes back to the heart dark with the
waste and poisonous matters which it has gathered in its course.
Atmospheric air is composed of several gases, the principal elements
being oxygen, nitrogen, and watery vapor. All animal life requires
oxygen for the combustion of the material supplied through the blood.
The blood makes its circuit through the body three times a minute.
It comes to the lungs laden with poisonous matter. Nearly one-third
of the excretions of the body are eliminated through the lungs. The
average adult contaminates about five thousand cubic inches of air with
every breath. The importance of having an abundant supply of pure air
at all times is obvious.
In ordinary respiration an adult abstracts sixteen cubic feet of oxygen
from the atmosphere every twenty-four hours, and adds to it fourteen
cubic feet of carbonic acid in the same time. If the individual were
confined in a close apartment, in which the air could not mingle
with the atmosphere without, the processes of life could not long be
maintained.
History furnishes many instances of the direful effects of crowding
a number of human beings into a limited space without ventilation.
One hundred and fifty passengers were confined in the small cabin of
a steamship one stormy night, and when morning came only eighty were
found alive. Three hundred prisoners, after the battle of Austerlitz,
were crowded into a close prison, and within a few hours two hundred
and sixty of them had died.
The effects of foul air are not usually so sudden nor so striking.
More frequently they consist of a general deficiency of nutrition,
loss of vigor of body and mind, and of the power of resistance to
disease. Consumptive patients, in a large majority of cases, come from
the classes whose occupations confine them to ill-ventilated rooms. A
cramped position of the body while at work, and want of good wholesome
food, contribute to the mortality from this cause.
Absolutely pure air is rarely found in nature. Even in the open country
there are three parts of carbonic acid in ten thousand parts of air. In
cities and towns, the out-door air contains from four to five parts of
carbonic acid. When, in dwellings and churches and halls, it reaches
six to seven parts, its impurity is detected by the nose, the lungs
suffer from a lack of oxygen, and the room feels close and stuffy.
The amount of carbonic acid in the breath is about five per cent.
Air once used is therefore unfit for purposes of animal combustion.
If breathed into a jar containing a short lighted candle, it will at
once extinguish the flame. It would also prove fatal to small birds or
mice. When the carbonic acid reaches one part in ten of common air, it
becomes fatal to man.
Headaches, dullness, drowsiness, and labored respiration are the
first symptoms of this lung poison. Faintness, convulsions, and
unconsciousness are a later stage. School-houses, churches, theatres,
and factories should be so well ventilated that the proportion of
carbonic acid would not exceed two parts in one thousand.
=Effects of Breathing Impure Air.=--Air which is only slightly
vitiated, if breathed day after day, for a considerable time, produces
most serious results. Its effects are seen in pale faces, loss of
appetite, depressed spirits, and a lack of muscular vigor.
An investigation made some years ago showed 86 deaths per 1,000 in
a badly ventilated prison, and of these, 51.4 per 1,000 were due to
phthisis, or consumption. In the House of Correction, in the same
city, which was well ventilated, the death rate was 14 per 1,000, and
of these only 7.9 were occasioned by phthisis. The organic particles
thrown off from the lungs of diseased persons are responsible for the
prevalence of phthisis and other lung diseases. It is also a well
established fact that a bad atmosphere promotes the rapid spread of
such specific diseases as small-pox, typhus, and scarlet fever.
=Constant Supply.=--Of so great importance is the matter of having a
constant supply of unvitiated air that sanitariums for consumptives
are now becoming common in which the principal feature is to have the
patients enjoy a continuous out-door existence, day and night, being
wrapped up and otherwise protected from cold and dampness. Consumptive
symptoms often yield to this treatment.
=Individual Habit.=--Habit has much to do with our appreciation of
pure air. If we recognize its value to health and to all the mental
and physical activities, and insist upon a plentiful supply of pure
oxygen, the habit soon becomes a second nature, and we instinctively
feel uncomfortable upon entering an ill-ventilated room. In northern
climates, economic considerations often interfere with the highest
sanitary regulations. Householders, school boards, and church trustees
frequently save fuel at the expense of health.
We may, however, by spending much time in poorly ventilated rooms,
become so accustomed to the depressing influence of the impoverished
atmosphere that we suffer a sort of semi-stupor without being conscious
of the fact. How great a wrong is inflicted upon children in the
school-room and in the crowded factory, by subjecting them, day after
day, for months and years, to a vitiated atmosphere, laden with the
poisonous exhalations from lungs and skin! Their growing bodies are
stunted and their awakening intellects dulled, and the seeds of disease
and weakness are implanted to develop into a harvest of wretchedness
and misery in later life.
=Sea Air.=--When the breeze is off the ocean, the air is practically
free from the exhalations of animals, the smoke and soot of chimneys,
and the gases of sewers. The curative value of sea-air is well known.
It comes richly laden with ozone, and its effect upon sojourners at the
sea-side is very stimulating. Many persons are not strong enough to
endure sea-bathing, yet gain much benefit from the sea-air.
=Mountain Air.=--The air of the mountains is pure. It is usually still,
and seldom foggy. Being more rarefied than that of the low-lying
valleys, it contains less oxygen in proportion to volume, but its
lesser density gives to the oxygen greater activity.
The body loses heat less rapidly in rarefied atmospheres, so that there
is probably less need of heat-production on the mountain than on the
plain, combustion being less active. The rapid and great variations of
temperature of the mountain regions stimulate the vital processes and
contribute to the curative agencies of those altitudes.
=Night Air.=--There is a prevailing prejudice against night air. By
many persons out-door air is shut out of the sleeping room as if it
were pestilential. Analysis as well as experience shows that the most
vitiated and unwholesome night air is that which has been breathed
over and over again in a close sleeping apartment. Admit the outside
air freely if you desire health. Guard against draughts, and use just
enough bed covering for comfort.
=Air of the School-Room.=--A plentiful supply of pure air is desirable
wherever there are people to breathe it. In no place is it more
important than in the school-room. Confined for six hours each day
during the period of life when the best health conditions are required
for the proper growth of mind and body, the child thus robbed of the
needed oxygen is wronged. The adult who voluntarily subjects himself
once or twice a week for two hours to the poisonous atmosphere of
church, lecture hall, or theatre, may experience a temporary headache,
but is soon revived after reaching the fresh air. The child, ignorant
of the wrong he is made to suffer, and incapable of providing better
conditions, breathes the poisonous exhalations from fifty pairs of
lungs, day after day, and thus has sown in his system the seeds of
disease.
=Illuminating Gas.=--Many persons die every year by inhaling
illuminating gas. People unacquainted with the use of gas fixtures
often blow out the light instead of turning the key. A prevailing
custom in some families is to keep the light burning low during the
night. A variation of pressure in the pipes, or a sudden draught of
air, extinguishes the slender flame, and gas escapes into the room,
often with fatal results.
Leaky pipes or faulty fixtures may have the same effect. If the key be
loose, tighten the screw that holds it in place. If there is a leak
in the pipe or joint, which may be determined by applying a match, a
gas-fitter should at once be summoned. Delay is dangerous and may prove
fatal.
If a room be heavily charged with gas, get the windows and doors open
as soon as possible. Do not go near with a light, lest an explosion
follow. Naphtha and benzine are also highly explosive. When either is
used to clean clothing, the work should be done in the open air, and
never where the fumes may come in contact with the fire of stove or
range, or with the flame of candle or lamp.
Gas burners, oil lamps, sperm candles, all forms of illuminants,
consume the oxygen of a room and increase the carbonic acid. An oil
lamp of ordinary dimensions gives off as much carbonic acid as an adult
person. A man, seated in a room of moderate dimensions and using a
good oil lamp, will require 6,000 cubic feet of fresh air every hour
in order to keep the air from becoming vitiated beyond the point of
wholesomeness. Gas from coal, coke, or charcoal fires is as dangerous
as illuminating gas.
Heaters, ranges, stoves, and furnaces should be kept in complete order,
so that no gas shall escape. Its entrance into a bedroom is often so
stealthy as to stupefy the unconscious sleeper and destroy life without
awakening him.
=Sewer Gas.=--Of all forms of vitiated air in cities, none is
responsible for such serious derangement of health as that which is
polluted by the air or gas from sewers and waste pipes. Some physicians
and sanitarians hold that sewer air is often the direct cause of
typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and cholera. Others maintain
that the sewers and pipes furnish favorable breeding places for the
germs of these diseases, which germs are carried through the air and
produce their effects. The important matter is to keep the waste
pipes flushed and well trapped. Some precautions against sewer gas are
treated in the chapter on Dwellings.
=Influence of Climate and Temperature.=--Diarrhœal diseases, both of
adults and children, are most frequent during hot weather. In July,
August, and September there are from ten to twelve times as many cases
as at other seasons of the year. Proper diet and suitable clothing will
go far toward protecting the individual from the ill effects of climate
and season.
The mortality from consumption and other forms of lung diseases is
greatest in March and April, and least in August and September.
September and October claim the greatest number of deaths from typhoid
fever, followed closely by August and November. The mortality from
diphtheria and croup is highest in November and December, and lowest in
August and September. Of suicides, the largest number occur in May, and
the fewest in February.
=Hygienic Value of Winds.=--Prof. Dexter, of the University of
Illinois, has made a careful study of the effects of calms on
the records of the public schools, the police courts, and the
penitentiaries. All air movements not exceeding four miles an hour
are regarded as calms. Over 497,000 observations were considered
and tabulated. These show that during calm weather the absence from
school on account of illness is three times as great as that during
all other kinds of weather, including the very cold, wet, and windy.
During calms, the criminal records show less disorder and violence,
more policemen are laid off, more errors are made by clerks in banks,
and more deaths are reported. This is in accordance with the principle
that oxygen is the great source of mental and physical energy. When
oxygen is deficient, we are less capable of action, either for good
or evil. The slowly-moving air-currents of a large city are robbed of
their oxygen, and vitiated by the exhalations of thousands of men and
animals. A brisk wind brings in a fresh supply of vitalized air to take
the place of the old, and to promote physical and mental energy. Old
Boreas is a better friend than we have been wont to believe.
=Nature’s Balance.=--By a wise provision of nature, the carbonic acid,
which is so destructive to all animal life, constitutes the chief food
of plants. These absorb the carbon and give out oxygen, and in this
way the animal and vegetable kingdoms tend to preserve the balance of
nature. Except for this wonderful provision, the human family would be
threatened with annihilation.