Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/253

Rh below and around them. Altogether it is something like a great room, half a mile wide, with mountain-walls covered with snow, two or three thousand feet high, and floor of snow; open above, with the sun's rays pouring down, and the heat being reflected from every side and from below, by a million million snow-crystals, warming the bodies of the invalids; while the mountain-walls keep off the winds, and the quiet air is perhaps 10° or 20° below freezing.

This is Nature's sanitarium (though the picture may be a little overdrawn above the reality), and such a sanitarium, in miniature, we may have in every house, and in every school and college, if we will, by discarding our present abominable air-heating arrangements, and using, instead, open fires, in proper positions and at proper elevations for obtaining the best results (either with or without reflecting walls), and with ceilings of perforated tin plate, for the double purpose of reflection and ventilation. We want no little, inefficient, pepperbox ventilators, nor an air-supply that will send a perceptible current of cold air upon one side of us. The perforated, metallic ceiling might be stamped with appropriate artistic designs, which the light would bring out and make pleasant to the eye. In public halls this might be beautifully and appropriately carried out by an artist of good taste. In any case the reflecting surface must be made of the proper material, as some substances (a common looking-glass, for instance) reflect light from an open fire, but not the heat, well.

In a large room several grates on different sides would be required, and to obtain the best results they should be set at somewhat different altitude and in different position from the ordinary setting. Indeed, they may be made to give out double the heat they usually give. The front surface of a fire is the main efficient heating surface. Hence the grate should be made several bars higher in front than common, and if it is set higher up in the wall than usual and inclined forward at the top, it will be found to radiate downward and warm the floor much more effectually. But all these improvements in the shape, position, and setting of the grates can be easily come at by a little practice and philosophy. The main thing to be done is to quit the use of debilitating hot air, and warm the body by radiant heat, giving the lungs cool, refreshing, bracing air to breathe. It is a most important matter. Money can not measure the value that such a change in our method of warming houses and schools would be to the nation. We would be healthier and happier, and in the course of generations would have appreciably and measurably more perfect physical forms, more active brains, clearer minds, and better morals&mdash;better morals, I say, if for no other reason than that of our obeying the laws of Nature, which are the laws of God.