Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/118

108 matter that it would not be tolerated in a sitting-room for a moment. The amount of space allowed in bedrooms and dormitories is frequently altogether insufficient. Doors and windows are tightly closed, and there is practically little ventilation going on for six or eight hours of sleeping time, whereas in sitting-rooms the admission of air is promoted by persons passing in and out.

This steady nightly poisoning goes on in many public institutions, I am afraid, in the "houses" of some public schools, and the dormitories of charitable institutions. They are well ventilated during the day, closed at night, and the allowance of cubic space is quite insufficient to supply fresh air enough with the very small influx which can take place.

Night nurseries, again, especially in large towns, are liable to be grossly overcrowded. I have seen a small, low room in the attics of a London mansion used as a sleeping apartment for five or six children and a nurse which had not space or ventilation enough for two persons.

Without indorsing the whole of the pathology suggested in your excellent paper, I am sure you are right in attributing a large proportion of ill health, contagious disease, and especially the increased virulence of this, to air fouled by organic matter.

Prof. W. H. Flower writes:

Mr. Lawson Tait writes:

—Contemporary Review.