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.

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    constant getting in of air under doors, through the chinks of the windows, nay, even through the walls themselves a certain but very small current passes. Now, if we close up every opening into our room as to make it as like the air-tight box as possible, then in a very short while you are just in the position of the man locked up in the box—the air has become so vitiated by your breathing that it is impossible to continue in the limited supply of air without suffering in health. In order to obviate this, there must be some means of letting fresh air in. But that will be of little use, and it would not come in at all, unless there is also a means of letting the foul air out. And, therefore, there must be both a means of outgoing and a means of incoming for the air. Now, we know very well that in a great number of work- rooms and so forth, the air is exceedingly bad. In the rooms of seamstresses, and the compositors' rooms in many printing offices, the air is exceedingly bad, because there is not only the breathing of human beings, but the burning of a great quantity of gas re- quired for the business. Until recently little or no attention was paid to such questions. But improvement has come with the attention now paid to public health, and I hope such lectures as are given here will have some effect upon this and similar questions. But it very often happens that the fault is not on the part of those to whom the premises belong, but on the part of those obstinate work-people who, because they feel the slightest amount of cold air getting in about them, think that they are going to be killed outright by it, and immediately shut up the holes. Now, if .they suffer in their health, it is in that case their own fault. The object of ventilating a place is to let in the air without causing a current to come in so rapidly as to produce what is commonly called an unpleasant draught. The air should come in very slowly. It has been estimated that it should not move at a greater rate than one or two feet a second, or from 60 to 120 feet in a minute. What are the means of ventilating in a sleeping room, or in a