On the smokeless fire-place : chimney-valves, and other means, old and new, of obtaining healthful warmth and ventilation / by Neil Arnott.

  • Arnott, Neil, 1788-1874.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the smokeless fire-place : chimney-valves, and other means, old and new, of obtaining healthful warmth and ventilation / by Neil Arnott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    that more than five-sixths of the whole heat produced in an ordinary English fire goes up the chimney with the smoke to waste. This estimate is borne out by the facts observed in countries where fael is scarce and dear, as in parts of Continental Europe, where close stoves are used to prevent the waste. With these about a fifth part of what would be consumed in a common open fire, suffices to maintain the desired temperature. To save a third part of the coal burned in London alone, would save more than a million sterling a-year ; and when coal is very dear, as during severe winters, the saving would be much greater. Then it is to be considered that coal is a part of our national wealth, of which, whatever is once used can never, like corn or any produce of industry, be renewed or replaced. To the existence of coal-mines in Britain is probably due the invention here, and the rapidly extended use of the improved steam-engine of modern time, through which the condition, not of Britain only but of the whole world has been so signally advanced. To consume coal wastefully or unnecessarily, then, id not a slight improvidence, but a serious crime com- mitted against future generations. 3. Defective Heating and Ventilating IN Dwellings. Since London attained its present magnitude, about a thousand a-week has been the average mortality; but during severe winters the cold and its conse- quences increase that weekly mortality by six or seven hundred, proving that against the cold, the existing arrangements for warming and ventilating are insuf- ficient. That not a little of the premature mortality B 2