The influence of the atmosphere on our health and comfort in confined and crowded places / by Leonard Hill [and others].

Date:
[1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence of the atmosphere on our health and comfort in confined and crowded places / by Leonard Hill [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/110 (page 2)
    Everyone thinks that he suffers in an ill-ventilated room owing to some change in the chemical quality of the air, be it want of oxygen, or excess of carbon dioxide,- the addition of some exhaled organic- poison, or the destruction of some subtle property of the air by its passage over steam coils, or other heating or conducting apparatus. We hear of ‘‘ devitalized ” or “ dead ” air and “ tinned ” or “ pot- ted ” air of the battleship. The good effects of open-air treatment, of sea and mountain air, are no less generally ascribed to the chemi- cal purity of the air. We maintain that the health-giving properties are primarily those of temperature, light, movement, and relative moisture of the circumambient atmosphere, and, leaving on one side those gross chemical impurities which arise in mines and in some manufacturing processes, that the alterations in chemical composi- tion of the air in buildings where people crowd together and suffer from the effects of ill ventilation, have nothing to do with the causa- tion of these effects. Satisfied with the maintenance of a specious standard of chemical purity, the public has acquiesced in the elevation of sky-scrapers and the sinking of cavernous places of business. Many have thus become cave-dwellers, confined for most of their waking and sleep- ing hours in windless places, artificially lighted, monotonously warmed. The sun is cut off by the shadow of tall buildings and by smoke—the sun, the energizer of the world, the giver of all things which bring joy to the heart of man, the fitting object of worship of our forefathers. The ventilating and heating engineer hithertO' has followed a great illusion in thinking that the main objects to be attained in our dwellings and places of business are chemical purity of the air and a uniform, draughtless, summer temperature. Life is the reaction of the living substance tO' the ceaseless play of the environment. Biotic energy arises from the transformation of those other forms of energy—heat, light, sound, etc.—which beat upon the transformer, the living substance. Thus, when all the avenues of sense are closed, the central nervous system is no longer aroused and consciousness lapses. Laura Bridgeman, paralyzed in almost all her avenues of sense, fell asleep whenever her remaining eye was closed. The patient who lost one labyrinth by disease and, to escape unendurable vertigo, had the other removed by operation, was quite unable to guide his movement or realize his position in the dark. Rising from bed one night, he collapsed on the floor and remained there helpless till succor arrived.