Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/386

372 filth-disease, arises largely from indigestion, and forms the basis, so to say, or is in fact the first stage of all the so-called filth-diseases. Whatever interferes with digestion or depuration, or depraves the vital organism in any manner, produces an impure condition of the body a condition of disease; and a continuance of disease-producing habits must inevitably result in periodical or occasional "eruptions," the severity of which will depend upon the degree of one's transgression. Among the causes of this impure bodily condition are (1) impure food, (2) excess in diet, and (3) impure air. Our homes, offices, shops, halls, court-houses, churches, and, with rare exceptions, all living-rooms, private or public, are insufficiently or not at all ventilated; and, except while in the open air, a very large proportion of our people, in all the walks of life, habitually breathe an atmosphere vitiated by being breathed over and over again; they are starving for want of oxygen, and are being poisoned by carbonic acid. In default of sufficient oxygen the best of food can not be transformed into pure blood there will always be a corresponding indigestion; nor can the carbonic acid be eliminated freely in an impure atmosphere. We have, then, serious "interference with digestion and depuration," whenever we remain even for a single hour of the twenty-four in an "in-door" atmosphere, i. e., an atmosphere that is not in tolerably free communication with the great body of air without. The only offset for restriction in oxygen is restriction in diet and exercise; but a combination of this character would produce enfeeblement of the system, though if a proper balance were maintained there would arise no febrile symptoms such as we are considering. We have plenty of people living in unventilated rooms who, so far as exercise is concerned live a well-balanced life; but seldom do these, any more than the robust and active, practice any sort of voluntary restriction as to quality or quantity of food nausea and lack of appetite being the only safeguards. Persons of this class are great sufferers from colds. Impure air, although a prevailing source of disease, is not absolutely essential in provoking this disorder; an unwholesome diet alone being sufficient. In none of my own experiments have I suffered any restriction in the matter of pure air. But for this depraved condition—this chronic state of impurity—that I have undertaken to describe