Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/205

 subjects of such disease might, despite the cardiac mischief, have continued to live for an indefinite time.

It has frequently been my duty, during a practice of nearly thirty years in the midst of a large community prone by the habits and particular avocations of the people to heart-disease, to investigate cases of "found dead" in bed, and I have often been compelled to refer the immediate cause of death to the effect of carbonic acid liberated by respiration and confined to the apartment, in destroying the sensibility and contractility of the heart, rather than to the direct influence of the diseased heart itself.

I remember that on one occasion I was summoned to a case which had occurred in a bedroom fifteen feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet high. In this room, with the door and window closed, no fewer than twenty persons slept night after night! Can any one doubt that the air of such a room would be charged to excess with carbonic acid exhaled by respiration? Those who perished in this manner were beyond the age of forty; and, in every instance examined, the right side of the heart was either primarily affected by tissue-degeneration, or by disease consecutive to mischief in the left side of the heart and lungs.

Often indeed in the dwellings of the middle and higher classes of society the provisions for ventilating both their bedrooms and their day-rooms are miserably inadequate to preserve health. The consequence is, that cardiac disease is promoted to an inconceivable extent. ''There is no other disease in which the demand for cold, fresh air is so urgently pressed by the patient as in cardiac disease. There is none in which a constant supply of pure air is more needed—none in which it is more grateful to the patient, or in which it has a more immediately beneficial effect.'' At all times and seasons—in the depth of winter—by day and by night—a patient suffering from a paroxysm of cardiac asthma will hurry to the open door or window, and there, with his body hanging half out, will remain, with scarcely any vestments upon him, breathing the cold air until the paroxysm has ceased. Ought not this urgent, this powerful supplication of Nature to teach us the importance of ventilation, and of a full supply of fresh air in the treatment of heart-disease?

I hesitate not to say that free ventilation—the free admission of pure air into the apartment by day and by night—is one of the most important remedial measures which can be adopted in the treatment of this disease.

Where this means is defective, but where, nevertheless, the vitiation of the air of the bedroom does not exceed 1 per cent. of carbonic acid, a sensible effect is produced upon those who have slept within its influence. They complain, on leaving their bed, of weakness; their limbs tremble; they feel somewhat giddy, and their head feels heavy, or it aches. The least effort disturbs the heart's action, which is