Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    472/896 (page 8)
    quantity mixed with a small quantity of air. Everybody has heard of the results of explosions in coal mines, and how, whilst a great number perished from the direct effects of fire and shock, yet a considerable number perished from what is known by the name of after damp or choke damp, and among them very many of those gallant fellows—for more gallant fellows did not exist —who have perished in going down the mines and endeavouring to rescue those who had been imprisoned within. The lesson to be got from that is to take care and breathe air that is not over- loaded with carbonic acid. But there is something more given off from the lungs than car- bonic acid. Moisture comes off from the lungs, and in variable quantity. Everybody knows that from breathing against a window or against a looking-glass, which is always colder than their breath. But that is not so important as what I have now to direct your attention to—namely, that we give off from our lungs also a quantity of what is called—it is a regular technical expression —organic or animal matter. What its precise nature is, we are not prepared to say; but we know something of its properties. I am not going to detain you with the proofs that we have of this fact. But you must take it from me as a fact that we regularly give off in quantity from our lungs, and partly from our skins, a matter that is of the same general nature as the matter that makes up all the textures of our bodies. But, then, it has the property that, being very thin and diffused through the air, it is very liable to undergo decomposition; in short, using the old principle of call- ing a spade a spade, it has a great tendency to become rotten, and it undergoes the change all the more readily because it is in the presence of moisture and warmth, the circumstances most favourable for decay and decomposition to go on. And then the matter has a nasty, unpleasant, foetid smell, and becomes not only exceedingly unpleasant but exceedingly noxious. It has, however, one very valuable quality—it is a most reliable danger signal. If you wish to know whether the air in a sleeping-room is in a good state or not, go out into the lobby, or still better, to the outer door after your children have been an hour or two in bed