Popular Education. Ira Mayhew
There were present forty-three scholars, the teacher, five patrons, and myself, making fifty in all. Immediately after entering the school-house, one of the trustees remarked to me, "I believe our school-house is too tight to be healthy." I made no reply, but secretly resolved that I would sacrifice my comfort for the remainder of the afternoon, and hazard my health, and my life even, to test the accuracy of the opinions I had entertained on this important subject. I marked the uneasiness and dullness of all present, and especially of the patrons, who had been accustomed to breathe a purer atmosphere. School continued an hour and a half, at the close of which I was invited to make some remarks. I arose to do so, but was unable to proceed till I opened the outer door, and snuffed a few times the purer air without. When I had partially recovered my wonted vigor, I observed with delight the renovating influence of the current of air that entered the door, mingling with and gradually displacing the fluid poison that filled the room, and was about to do the work of death. It seemed as though I was standing at the mouth of a huge sepulcher, in which the dead were being restored to life. After a short pause, I proceeded with a few remarks, chiefly, however, on the subject of respiration and ventilation. The trustees, who had just tested their accuracy and bearing upon their comfort and health, resolved immediately to provide for ventilation according to the suggestions in the article on school-houses in the last chapter of this work.
Before leaving the house on that occasion, I was informed an evening meeting had been attended there the preceding week, which they were obliged to dismiss before the ordinary exercises were concluded, because, as they said, "We all got sick, and the candles went almost out." Little did they realize, probably, that the light of life became just as nearly extinct as did the candles. Had they remained there a little longer, both would have gone out together, and there would have been reacted the memorable tragedy of the Black Hole in Calcutta, into which were thrust a garrison of one hundred and forty-six persons, one hundred and twenty-three of whom perished miserably in a few hours, being suffocated by the confined air.
What has been said in the preceding pages on the philosophy of respiration was first given to the public nearly ten years ago, in a report of the author's in the State of New York. He has since seen the same sentiments inculcated by many of our most eminent practical educators, some of whom had written upon the subject at an earlier date. Allen and Pepy showed by experiment that air which has been once breathed contains eight and a half per cent. of carbonic acid, and that no continuance of the respiration of the same air could make it take up more than ten per cent. Air, then, when once respired, has taken up more than four fifths of the amount of this noxious gas that it can be made to by any number of breathings.
Dr. Clark, in his work on Consumption, remarks as follows: "Were I to select two circumstances which influence the health, especially during the growth of the body, more than others, and concerning which the public, ignorant at present, ought to be well informed, they would be the proper adaptation of food to difference of age and constitution, and the constant supply of pure air for respiration." Dr. William A. Alcott, who has given especial attention to this subject, after quoting the preceding remark of Dr. Clark, adds: "We believe this is the opinion of all medical men who have studied the constitution of man, and its relation to outward objects."
A distinguished surgeon[14] of Leeds, England, goes somewhat further in praising pure air than most of his contemporaries. "Be it remembered," says he, "that man subsists more upon air than upon his food and drink." There is some novelty in this remark, I admit: but is it not truthful? Men have been known to live three weeks without eating. But exclude the atmospheric air from the lungs for the space of three minutes, and death generally ensues. We thus see that life will continue with abstinence from food three thousand times as long as it is safe to protract an atmospheric fast.
Let us take another view of the subject. Men usually eat three times in twenty-four hours. This is all that is necessary to, or compatible with, the enjoyment of uninterrupted good health. But we involuntarily breathe nearly thirty thousand times in the same length of time. We need, then, fresh supplies of pure air ten thousand times as often as it is necessary to partake of meals. Is it not apparent, then, that man subsists more upon air than upon his food and drink?
The atmosphere which we so frequently inhale, and upon which our well-being so much depends, surrounds the earth to the height of about forty-five miles. The surface of the earth contains about two hundred millions of square miles, and it is estimated that there dwell upon it eight hundred millions of inhabitants. This gives to each individual about eleven cubic miles of air. But the air is breathed by the inferior animals as well as by man. It is also rendered impure by combustion. If by both of these causes ten times as much air is consumed as by man, there is still left one cubic mile of uncontaminated atmospheric air to every human being dwelling upon the surface of the earth. This would allow him to live more than twice the age allotted to man, without breathing any portion of the atmosphere a second time. And still, as if to avoid the possibility of evil to man on this account, the beneficent Creator has wisely so ordered, that while we do not interfere with the laws of Nature, there is not even the possibility of rebreathing respired air until it has been purified and restored to its natural and healthful state; for carbonic acid, the vitiating product of respiration, although immediately fatal to animals, constitutes the very life of vegetation. When brought in contact with the upper surface of the green leaves of trees and plants, and acted upon by the direct solar rays, this gas is decomposed, and its carbon is absorbed to sustain, in part, the life of the plant, by affording it one element of its food, while the oxygen is liberated and restored to the atmosphere. Vegetables and animals are thus perpetually interchanging kindly offices, and each flourishes upon that which is fatal to the other. It is in this way that the healthful state of the atmosphere is kept up. Its equilibrium seems never to be disturbed, or, if disturbed at all, it is immediately restored by the mutual exchange of poison for aliment, which is constantly going on between the animal and vegetable worlds. This interchange of kindly offices is constantly going on all over the earth, even in the highest latitudes, and in the very depths of winter; for air which has been respired is rarefied, and, when thrown from the lungs, ascends, and is thus not only out of our reach, whereby we are protected from respiring it a second time, but this (to us) deadly poison falls into the great aërial current which is constantly flowing from the polar to the tropical regions, where it is converted into vegetable growth. The oxygen which is exhaled in the processes of tropical vegetation, heated and rarefied by the vertical rays of the sun, mounts to the upper regions of the atmosphere, and, falling into a returning current, in its appointed time revisits the higher latitudes. So wisely has the Divine Author ordered these processes, that air, in its natural state[15] in any part of the world, does not contain more than one half of one per cent. of carbonic acid gas, although, as already stated, air which has been once respired contains eight and a half per cent. of this gas, which is at least seventeen times its natural quantity.
There are other agencies than carbonic acid gas which in civic life render the atmosphere impure. Of this nature is carbureted hydrogen gas, which is produced in various ways. This, says Dr. Comstock, is immediately destructive to animal life, and will not support combustion. It exists in stagnant water, especially in warm weather, and is generated by the decomposition of vegetable products. Dr. Arnott expresses the conviction that the immediate and chief cause of many of the diseases which impair the bodily and mental health of the people, and bring a considerable portion prematurely to the grave, is the poison of atmospheric impurity, arising from the accumulation in and around their dwellings of the decomposing remnants of the substances used for food and in their arts, and of the impurities given out from their own bodies. If you allow the sources of aërial impurity to exist in or around dwellings, he continues, you are poisoning the people; and while many die at early ages of fevers and other acute diseases, the remainder will have their health impaired and their lives shortened.
There are many instances on record where the progress of an epidemic has been speedily arrested by ventilation. A striking instance is given by the writer last quoted. "When I visited Glasgow with Mr. Chadwick," says he, "there was described to us one vast lodging-house, in connection with a manufactory there, in which formerly fever constantly prevailed, but where, by making an opening from the top of each room through a channel of communication to an air-pump common to all the channels, the disease had