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.

    66/896 (page 50)
    in church—so that persons very much concerned in church affairs, and very much interested in the oratorical reputation of their clergymen, should see that the ventilation of their churches is perfectly carried out. But carbonic acid is capable of inducing actual disease, even if it does not always kill us outright. I take the following in- stances from the work of Dr. Andrew Combe on the Principles of Physiology —a book which forms a richer repository of inter- esting physiological facts than any other book I know. Here is first an interesting story about the poet Crabbe :— When ten or eleven years of age, he was sent to a school at Bungay. Soon after his arrival he had a very narrow escape. He and several of his school-fellows were punished for playing at soldiers, by being put into a large dog-kennel, known by the name of the 6 Black Hole/ George was the first that entered; and the place being crammed full of offenders, the atmosphere soon became pestilenti- ally close. The poor boy in vain shrieked that he was about to be suffocated. At last, in despair, he bit the lad next him violently in the hand. ' Crabbe is dying; Crabbe is dying/ roared bhe sufferer; and the sentinel at length opened the door, and allowed the boys to rush out into the air. My father* said, 1 A minute more, and I must have died.' Another instance is quoted by Combe from Walpole's Letters. A parcel of drunken con- stables took it into their heads to arrest everybody they met, and thurst them into St. Martin's Round-house. Five or six-and- twenty persons were thus shut up all night with closed doors and windows. In the morning four were found suffocated for want of air, two died shortly after, and a dozen more were ' in a shock- ing way.' A similar but less tragical case, says Combe, occurred at Tain in Boss-shire, where several persons arrested for rioting were almost suffocated by being confined in a small closet that liad been used as the safe of a bank. These instances show us the great power which this carbonic acid has upon animal life to affect it injuriously. Let me now show you to what extent carbonic acid exists in * Combe is quoting from Crabbe's Memoirs, written by the Poet's Son.