[Concluded.]

A very large quantity of fresh air is spoiled and rendered foul by the act of breathing. You, yourself, spoil not less than a gallon every minute. In eight hours’ breathing a full-grown man spoils as much fresh air as seventeen three-bushel sacks could hold! If you were shut up in a room seven feet broad, seven feet long, and seven feet high, the door and windows fitting so tightly that no air could pass through, you would die, poisoned by your own breath, in a very few hours; in twenty-four hours you would have spoiled all the air contained in the room, and have converted it into poison, provided you could have lived therein so long.

One hundred years ago the English were allowed by the Great Mogul or Emperor of India, to build warehouses and dwellings in certain parts of his Empire. One of these mercantile settlements or factories, as they were called, was planted on the bank of a large river just where Calcutta, the capital city of Bengal, now stands.

In the year 1756, the nabob, or tributary king of the province of Bengal died, and was succeeded by a very young man, who bore the outlandish looking title of Surajah Dowlah. This young barbarian cast a covetous eye on the neighboring British factory, and one summer day attacked the place suddenly with a large army. The small party of English who were in the factory, despairing of their ability to effect any successful defense, tried to make their escape to some ships which were lying in the river.

Several of the fugitives reached the vessels in safety. But in the confusion of the flight, one hundred and forty-six individuals fell into the hands of the victorious nabob. These, his officers thrust for the night into a small cell, which was used as the prison of the fortress, and was known under the dismal name of the Black Hole of Calcutta. This cell had but two small square holes for windows, and was only eighteen feet long and fourteen feet wide, so that the last person of the one hundred and forty-six had to be crushed in upon the rest with violence, as the door was closed and locked. The anguish of the crowded captives soon became so great, in this vile hole, that the neighborhood resounded with the noise of their struggles and cries. As the night wore on, these sounds, however, gradually sunk into silence. When the morning came, and the door of the prison was opened, the reason of this silence became sadly apparent. In the place of the one hundred and forty-six prisoners who were shut up on the previous day, they took out one hundred and twenty-three corpses, and, twenty-three miserable beings, who looked more like ghastly spectres than men, and who could hardly be said to be alive. This occurrence furnished one remarkable instance of the deadly power of the poison vapors which are poured out from the inside of living beings. Now I will tell you about another case of a similar kind.

A few years ago, a vessel started from Cork in Ireland, to take a large number of emigrants to a ship just about to sail from Liverpool. A violent storm sprung up in the night, as the vessel was crossing the Irish Channel, and the captain, fearing that the alarmed passengers would interfere with the sailors, and render it difficult to work the ship, sent them all below into the hold, and covered them closely down with the hatches. The imprisoned passengers soon found that they were suffocating, and called and knocked loudly for help, but their cries either were unheard or disregarded. In the morning the hatches were removed, and to the horror of the captain and his crew, the hold was found half full of dead bodies and dying people, instead of containing living men and women. Such are the fearful consequences which follow, when human beings are forced to breathe the same air over and over again.

You are very much shocked, both at the savage cruelty of the Indian tyrant, and at the carelessness and ignorance of the Irish captain. But what will you think of yourself if I now show that you do, in a small degree, every night, what they did on so large a scale? What was it that caused the closeness of this room before we opened the window? It was the presence of precisely the same kind of poison, as that which killed the prisoners at Calcutta, and the passengers in the hold of the ship. That poison did not destroy you in a single night, only because it had not gathered in sufficient strength to do so. Your room was not more than half as large as the Black Hole of Calcutta, but there were only two of you shut up in it instead of one hundred and forty-six. The air of your room was merely hurtful instead of being deadly. But the fact still remains. When you rose in the morning, that air was not fit for a human creature to breathe.

When you rise to-morrow morning, just go out of doors for five minutes, and observe carefully the freshness of the air. That air is in the state in which God keeps it for breathing. Then come back suddenly into your close room, and your own senses will at once make you feel how very far the air of your chamber is from being in the same wholesome and serviceable condition.

This is one way, then, in which people produce derangement in their bodies, and cause their works, or organs, to get choked up and clogged. They are not careful always to keep fresh air immediately around them. They suffocate themselves slowly; taking, perhaps, a long time to complete their task, but, nevertheless, accomplishing it none the less surely. Individuals who dwell in crowded towns, and, therefore, have to live by day as well as by night in close, impure apartments, go down to their graves, even before they have reached their prime; and their thin pale faces, dull sunk eyes, and languid movements, tell they are doing so, with painful clearness. It is well known that people who dwell in towns and work in close rooms, as a rule, die seventeen years earlier than men who dwell in the country, and work in the fields by day.

Country folks escape this severe penalty, because even when they half smother themselves by night, the thoroughly fresh air in which they spend the day goes a great way toward the removal of the mischief. Still they are by no means free from all penalty. You yourself have suffered from breathing bad air. Do you remember last autumn, when I came to see you sick in bed with the fever? Do you recollect how your limbs ached, and your skin burned then, and how you tossed restlessly from side to side, without being able to sleep, your mouth and tongue being brown and parched with dryness which water could not moisten? You could not raise your head from the pillow; and once when I asked you how you felt, you answered me by telling me something about the corn stacks and the last harvest, being quite unconscious of what you were saying. What do you think was the matter with you then? Your body and blood were full of poisonous vapor. And what do you think had made them so? Why, fresh air had not done its work of purification as it ought. You had been breathing a great deal of impure air, and were paying the penalty for having done so. If you had seen the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta an hour or two before they died, you would have found them exactly in the same state.

The term “fever” is taken from a Latin word which signifies “to burn.” The skin and the body feel burning hot in fever, because impure poisonous blood is flowing everywhere through their vessels, in the place of pure blood, and the blood is poisonous because it has not been freed from its poison-vapors as fast as they have been bred in, or thrown into its streams. In the worst forms of fever the blood gets so impure that it steams out, through the breath, vapors which are able to produce the same kind of disease in other people, and which are, under these circumstances, termed infection. The infectious poison-vapors of fever get so strong when they are received into close rooms, and are not allowed to be blown away, that they often kill persons who breathe them in that state, very quickly.

But you want me to explain how all the mischief, which results from breathing foul air, may be prevented. Come down with me into the garden, and creatures that you believe to be of far inferior powers to yourself, shall give you a lesson.

You keep bees. Here is a hive, I see, crowded with the busy insects. By the numbers that I observe clustering about the low arched door, and bustling out and in so incessantly, I learn that the industrious little fellows must be very closely packed together in their straw house. There must be many thousands of them dwelling together in a place that can not, at the most, equal more than a couple of square feet; and there is not a single window in the straw wall; no opening of any kind but the low, and half-choked entrance. Really, if those bees need to breathe, you who have furnished them with their dwelling must be nearly as bad as the cruel nabob, who shut up his prisoners in the Indian Black Hole!

Those bees certainly do need to breathe every bit as much as men and women; and what is more, they manage to breathe ten times better than you do at night. Notwithstanding all the crowding there is within their close dwelling, the air never gets there into the poisonous state in which the air of your sleeping room is by the morning. The bees take care that it shall not do so. Just bend down your ear and listen near the hive for a minute. Do you hear that incessant low humming? That is the bees hard at work, making an artificial wind. It is the sound of a couple of score of broad, stiff fans, flapping to and fro with great rapidity. Look, I drop this piece of light thistle-down near the door of the hive, and you see it is at once blown away from it by a steady draught. If you could see through the straw walls, you would notice twenty little sturdy fellows holding on to the floor of the hive with their feet, just within the door, and flapping their wings backwards and forwards without a moment’s pause. Now and then one or two tired insects drop out from the line of the fanners, but their places are immediately filled by fresh recruits, who lay hold of the floor and fall vigorously to work with their wings. This is the appointed band of air-purifiers, plying their business for the good of the entire community, and wafting a fresh breeze continuously through the hive. The bees take it by turns to carry on this necessary labor, and some of them are always at it. The humming caused by the rapid vibrations of their fans, scarcely ever ceases. It has been ascertained that air taken from the inside of a hive, is quite as pure as the fresh air that floats in the open space around; so perfectly do these little earnest workmen perform their purifying task.

The industrious bees, then, are an example to mankind. If people dwell in close rooms, they must cause an artificial breeze of fresh air to blow through them. Having shut out the great wind, that it may not chill too much by its uncontrollable currents, they must introduce such a little wind as they can keep thoroughly under control, but which nevertheless is sufficient to perform the office of purification as far as it is required. This process of causing an artificial wind to blow through the inside of a dwelling is called ventilation, from a Latin word which signifies “to blow” or fan with the wind.

In very hot climates where dwellings need to be ventilated for the sake of coolness, as well as for purification, men follow precisely the example set by the bees. They hang up broad and stiff canvas fans, which they call punkas, near the ceiling, and cause these to flap backwards and forwards constantly, by pulling them to and fro with ropes. In more temperate climates, it is rarely found necessary to take all this trouble, for the air readily makes currents of its own accord inside of rooms, if only allowed to do so. All that is necessary is the furnishing of a free passage into the room, and a free passage out, and it will then make a clear march through. One opening will not do, when fans are not kept going, because then the entering and departing air would meet face to face and obstruct each other. There must be “in” and “out” doors, just as one sees in much frequented offices and banks, in great towns.

A very effectual plan for securing the ventilation of a dwelling room consists in carrying a pipe of perforated zinc across the house, from outside wall to outside wall, just beneath the ceiling, allowing the ends to pass through the walls quite into the open air; then whichever end of the pipe chances to be most towards the quarter of the heavens from which the wind is blowing, should be closed with a plug, a free passage being left for the escape of the heated air through the opposite end. A number of holes should also be made through the door, near its bottom, until altogether they afford as much room to passing air as the inside bore of the zinc pipe. If you cannot manage to fix such a zinc pipe across the ceiling, why take out one or two of the panes of the window, and put into their place, plates of what is called perforated zinc (zinc plates pierced full of holes), such as you may buy for a trifle at any ironmongers. That is the next best thing you can do.

As soon as some arrangement of this kind has been completed, you will find that the air begins to move gently through the room, cold fresh air coming in through the holes in the door, and warm impure air being pressed out before it through the perforated zinc tubes or plates. This takes place partly because the external wind rushes, in its hasty way, against the openings through which the air is intended to enter, and forces itself in; but also, and more particularly, because the inside air gets warmer than the outside, and is then compelled to shift its quarters on that account.

The air contained inside of inhabited rooms gets warmed by the bodies and breaths of the persons living there. Then it is lighter, bulk for bulk, than the colder air outside, for warmth stretches and lightens everything. But as heavy things fall or press down to the earth more strongly than light ones, the cold air always squeezes into the room through the lower openings, and pushes the warm impure air out before it, through the upper ones.

When you light a fire in your room during cold weather, it makes a quick and strong draught through the room, for the same reason. Fires, indeed, are among the most powerful ventilators that can be brought into play. Let your fire out, and go on sitting in the room with two or three of your neighbors, and you will find the air of the room will be close and foul in half-an-hour, although it was quite fresh before. While the fire is burning, the chimney takes upon itself the office of the holes in the zinc tube or zinc plate fixed in the window, and the heated air of the room is pushed up through it by the fresh cold air which rushes in through all other openings and crevices. It is only in rooms where no fires are burning—as for instance, in your sleeping room—that holes through the walls and windows can serve as outlets for impure air.

But if you live with several companions, in small rooms, as some workpeople are compelled to do by their occupation, those rooms cannot get properly ventilated, even although fires are burning. Some of the poison-vapors, poured out from your living bodies with the breath, are so light that they are at once driven up to the top of the room, and collect there gradually, spreading lower and lower as they become more abundant. They can not get out through holes made in the walls or windows because, as we have seen, the fire causes streams of cold air to press in there.

A plan has been contrived, however, to ensure perfect ventilation even in small and crowded rooms, provided fires be burning. This plan consists in making an opening into the inside of the chimney, near to the ceiling, and fixing a balanced valve in it in such a way that the valve-plate is opened by outward draughts, but immediately closed by inward ones. Then the impure vapors lurking near the ceiling are continually being swept away, into the current of the chimney, through this valve.

You are sure you have no money to spare to buy valves, and zinc tubes and plates, or to pay to workmen for making holes in your walls, and in your doors and windows. I admit that properly these trifling things should be done at the expense of the landlord to whom the house belongs. It should be as much his duty to make a house fit to live in, so far as due ventilation is concerned, as it is to keep it dry by covering it with a roof of tiles or slate. As landlords, however, are commonly themselves ignorant about these matters, you must learn to look to the affair for yourself. You will be the sufferer if the right thing be not done, therefore it is alike your interest and your duty to see that it is done.

Suppose then that you have a hard landlord who will do nothing for you, and that you are so poor you can not spare a shilling or two for the purchase of metal tubes or plates. Then I will tell you what I would do, if I were in your shoes. I would borrow a large gimlet of the carpenter, and I would bore a row of holes through the upper part of the window frame in my bedroom, just above the glass, sloping them downwards a little, so that the rain may not be able to run in; next I would never quite shut the door of the chamber, and I would bore other holes through the frames of the windows down stairs, to act as channels of inlet. A few rough pegs of wood would serve to close some of the holes, if at any time too much air entered the room in consequence of a strong wind blowing outside. This is what I would do, rather than I would submit to be poisoned at night because I was poor.

A single round hole, a little more than half an inch across, would allow as much air to pass through it, as would be sufficient to supply the breathing of one person, provided the air were driven along by the movements of a fan, or by other mechanical contrivance, with the force of a very gentle breeze. Generally, however, it does not move so fast as this through rooms, when only caused to do so by the greater pressure of external colder air. It is, therefore, better that the ventilating openings, both for inlet and departure, should altogether make up much more than a hole half an inch across.

It is not possible to have too much fresh air in a room, provided only an uncomfortable and chilling draught is not allowed to blow upon the body of the inhabitant. You may easily prevent any discomfort or mischief from draught, even where a great abundance of air is admitted, by hanging a curtain to catch it and turn it aside. You will find, however, that there is very little chance of any troublesome draught when no fire is burning in the room, to make the air rush in with increased power, for it is fires, as you will remember, which cause quick and strong currents.

The warmer and stiller the external air is, the more difficult it becomes to secure free ventilation through the inside of rooms. In the calm hot nights of summer, the windows of sleeping rooms should on this account be left partly open all night long. It is better to breathe air moistened with night dew than it is to breathe air laden with poison vapors.

But if it be important when people are well that they shall have an abundance of fresh air moving through their dwellings, it is of far greater consequence that there shall be a thorough ventilation kept up in rooms where there is sickness. In all kinds of fevers the blood is overloaded with poison vapors, and these can not get out of the body unless they are blown away by pure air. The sick person can not be freed from the poison vapors that are clogging up his vital organs until fresh air is supplied abundantly. Do you remember what it was that first made you better, when you had the fever last year? Can you not recall to mind how all the doors and windows of your room were kept constantly open, and how angry I was whenever I came to your chamber and found them fast closed! Have you forgotten how delicious the fresh air felt to your parched and poisoned frame, and what luxury there was in the clean linen when supplied to your body and to the bed, and in the cold water when it was sponged over your skin?

If ever you are called upon to attend a neighbor or a relation who has to suffer from infectious fever, as you then did, be sure you furnish to that sick person the same comfort and alleviation which were provided for yourself.

Let this be your plan for nursing the sick: Open wide the doors and windows of your chamber. Keep the body of the patient and the room very clean. Change the linen both of the person and the bed very often. Allow only the very simplest kinds of food and drink to be given, and that in small quantities at a time. Prevent all noise and confusion around the bed. There are very few persons indeed who will not recover speedily from attacks of even the worst kinds of fever, if this simple and prudent plan of treatment is steadily pursued.

The poison-vapors of fever and other infectious diseases are very deadly when in their greatest strength, but remain so for a very short time when left to the influences and operations of nature. They can not bear the presence of fresh air. If they are mixed with a great abundance of it as they come out of the mouths of sick people, they directly cease to be dangerous poisons. All that is necessary to prevent infectious fevers from being communicated from person to person, by means of the breath, is to take care that fresh air is continually passing through the sick room. Attendants and visitors may remain with perfect safety in rooms where even the worst kinds of fever are prevailing, if they keep all the doors and windows of the chamber open, and are careful not to catch the breath of the patients until it has passed through some two yards of space, where there is perfectly pure air.

Such, then, is the “worth of fresh air.” It keeps the body healthy and strong. It blows away and destroys the invisible and dangerous poisons which are steamed forth from putrid and decaying matters, and which are to the delicate organs of the living frame much worse than dust and dirt are to clock-work. In disease it is nature’s chief remedy; the best medicine of the best Physician, furnished gratis, because he is full of bounty, as well as of great skill. Never let it any longer be a reproach to you, that you ungraciously turn away such a precious gift and priceless boon from your doors. Rather open wide your windows, as well as your doors, and welcome it with all your heart. Go to the bee, consider its ways, and be wise!

Flattering pleasures, fountain of delights, fertile in miseries, what do you wish with me? Shameful lusts of the flesh and of the world, why do you not quit me when I have quitted you? Begone honors, pleasures, which war against me; all your happiness, subject to change, falls to the ground in a moment of time; and as it has the brilliancy of glass, it has also its brittleness.—Corneille.