Sanitary principles of school construction / by Edwin Chadwick.

  • Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sanitary principles of school construction / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    One consequence of the defective warming is, that doors and win- dows are shut “ to keep out the cold.” Then comes the pernicious effect of the confinement of the children in the atmosphere polluted by their breaths and by transpiration from their skins, usually unwashed, or only hands and face washed, and from dirty clothes. As a relief, some of the windows are in part opened, and the cold air is let in for ventilation. The corners where this is done have been called “ rheu- matism holes.” Sometimes when the windows are kept closed, the confined air is heated to an extent that creates perspiration, even in winter time. Eruptive diseases are often the consequences of pre- cedent functional derangements, and when there are outbursts of epidemics in children’s institutions or in large schools, they frequently occur among the children grouped at one end, and the first case observed is a new comer, who has been for a time the centre of the group attacked, the infected breath having been pumped out upon the surrounding children for several days before the eruption has appeared on the new comer. In general hospitals, it is known, that if they are well ventilated, cases of typhus fever may be put in every second or third bed, with an interval of about four feet between each bed. Cases of scarlatina—it is considered as settled—must be placed at wider intervals, as of every seventh bed. But if the ventilation be defective and confined, a foul atmosphere is created which will endanger the nurses. By adequate dilution with fresh air the poison is rendered inocuous. By crowding and additional doses of foul air it is made destructive. Obstruct the ventilation, or crowd the cases still more, and an atmosphere is created which endangers the medical attendants. Thus in the ill-warmed schools, in which windows and doors are kept closed to keep out the cold air, foul atmospheres, poisoned by the incipient disease common amongst the poor, are created for the children. In some weathers and school conditions, a mother in sending her child to such schools, is sending it into a pre- paration of fever, or into measle-mixtures, or of small or chicken pock, or of some form of disease. Children, thus infected in the schools, frequently bring the infection into crowded and ill-ventilated homes, where several sleep in the same bed. If surprise is expressed at the sudden extensive outbursts of epidemics in crowded habitations, here is one contributary source of them. Compulsory attendance in ill- warmed and ill-ventilated long time schools is commonly compulsory bodily deterioration. Such conditions endanger, and frequently ruin, the constitutions of teachers. It is proper to mention, as respects the higher class of female schools, boarding schools as well as in second- class schools, that great pain is inflicted, and bodily disorder occa- sioned by heads kept heated by unduly protracted mental labour, and feet kept cold by bodily inaction. By graded schools, as I have shown, especially by half-time schools, three children may be taught well in half the time in years, for the expence now commonly incurred for teaching one comparatively ill. The school board for London have set an important example in the adoption of large school organisation. But such provisions