Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/204

192 cubic feet, of air expired by each sleeper during the night of eight hours. This expired air contains 4 per cent. of carbonic acid. .·.100:77.77::4=3.11 cubic feet of carbonic acid exhaled by each sleeper during the night. Suppose the number of sleepers occupying the bedroom to be four, this will give 3.11×4=12.44 cubic feet as the quantity of carbonic acid which is exhaled by the four sleepers during the eight hours of night. The room itself contains 960 cubic feet of air, and through this 12.44 cubic feet of carbonic acid would have been diffused by the termination of the night. It therefore follows that, if no fresh air entered the room, and if in consequence the carbonic acid had no means of escape, the air of the apartment would, at the end of the eight hours of night, contain 1.29 per cent. of this gas: a quantity sufficient to produce serious results.

This statement, however, does not represent all the facts of the case. It must be remembered that the oxygen contained in the air of the room would be constantly undergoing reduction by respiration during the night. If the quantity thus consumed were determined from the quantity of carbonic acid exhaled, allowing for the fact that 15 per cent. more oxygen is taken into the blood than is contained in the carbonic acid of the air expired, it will be found that from one-third to one-half of the oxygen originally contained in the air of the room would have been consumed by the end of the night. This reduction in the quantity of oxygen, and the great increase of carbonic acid, would affect the body in two ways: firstly, by a deficiency of oxygen; and, secondly, by an excess of carbonic acid, in the air respired. Hence the reduction of the one and the increase of the other would render the air far more injurious than if only one of these changes in its constitution had taken place.

The actual result is not, however, in strict accordance with this calculation, because fresh air, although in limited quantity, does find its way into the room, and carbonic acid does, to a limited extent, find its way out. These, therefore, would modify the constitution of the air of the room at the close of night; but they would still leave it with an excess of carbonic acid injurious to life.

It is found that when air moderately impregnated with carbonic acid is inspired it greatly impedes the exhalation of more from the lungs; and that the greatest quantity of carbonic acid which exists in prebreathed air never exceeds 10 per cent. It is much to be feared that to this degree of vitiation the air of the bedrooms of the poor and of others not unfrequently rises by the too prevalent system of excluding fresh air, and by the frequent absence of provision for the escape of that which has already passed through the lungs.

Can it then be a matter of surprise that death from diseased heart should so often occur during the night?

In thousands of instances of cardiac disease life is thus sacrificed, where, had but proper ventilation of the bedrooms been observed, the