Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/616

598 buildings and street architecture. In the former it is bad taste; in the latter it is bad taste plus the evils that spring from a foul atmosphere. Profuse embellishment, in a large town, is only another name for traps to catch soot.

Passing from the perverted taste shown on the exterior, we must notice the unscientific arrangements in the interior of our average domestic dwelling.

Pure air is as absolute a necessity to human beings as good food and untainted water. Bad air kills, however, by inches only, while innutritious food and foul water do their evil work with quick precision—both, in the end, leading to the same results—impaired vitality, disease, and a high rate of mortality. Nature undoubtedly has a great power of adaptation; but, under a prolonged state of unfavorable sanitary conditions, that capacity is harshly exercised. Every abnormal condition of physical existence, arising from bad air, insufficient food, or undue exposure, and producing no immediate results, necessitates the drawing of sanitary bills on futurity to be paid with heavy interest; and the very poor, from necessity, and the rich, from ignorance and apathy, spend shortened lives of prodigal thoughtlessness, ending in vital bankruptcy. Hence the crowded inhabitants of the back slums of large towns live, unconsciously, their life of lowered health, under conditions which would kill off the fox-hunting squire in a month. This depressed level of vitality and deferred penalty furnish one explanation of the general indifference to pure air.

Another cause may be found in its omnipresence and the continuity of its use. Providence has bestowed on mankind a limitless amount of pure air. It surrounds us, it is always ready without effort; its chemical composition never varies, and it costs no money. If the supply were less ample, or it could only be obtained by an outlay of money or labor, or its use were intermittent, we, no doubt, should value it at its intrinsic worth, be more jealous of its misuse, and study more closely its influence upon health.

The nineteenth-century house, however, has no special provision for the admission of fresh air, and, except in warm weather, its entrance is jealously prevented. Ventilation is change of air, and, unless scientifically arranged, and especially warmed in cold weather, such change of atmosphere means cold currents, with their attendant train of colds, catarrhs, bronchitis, neuralgia, rheumatism, and the evils that spring from them. Again, perfect ventilation means the realization, in a great measure, of the condition of air out-of-doors; and few persons, probably, have estimated the enormous flow of air requisite to effect this. The ordinary notion is, that the proper renewal of the air in a room ought to be measured by the quantity passed through the lungs of an individual in any given time. But an ounce of poison may vitiate a gallon of water; and nothing short of the removal and renovation of the whole of the tainted portion, as fast