Jeffersonian Republican. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1840-1853, 1852-04-15
From The ". Y. TrlJUae.
Ventilation,

The fundamental truth that air inhaled BY
breathing is essential to the preservation of
animal, including human life, we may pre-
sumo to be generally understood. Eany one
could be found to doubt it he might easily be
convinced by trying the experiment and not
breathing for three or four minutes. But the
intimately related and equally important
truths that every human being has lungs or
air chambers wherein the inhaled air or breath
is consumed or worked over by process skin,
to combustion-that oxygen which forms one
fifth of the air is thereby extracted from the
residuum, or nitrogen, and employed to clar-
fy the blood of its constantly accommodating
impurities-that the blood which, thus fresh
ly renovated with oxygen, has been elected
into arteries of a bright red color, and in a
thoroughly liquid state, is returned through
the veins saturated with carbon an other
impurities, and thence dark, sluggish and
clotted, that it must now be renovated by
fresh air, containing large proportion ofox-
ygen, for which purpose the air already in the
lungs at once inhaled or respired therefrom is
no filter than the ashes of yesterdays fuel
would be to make new fire for to day--that for
this purpose every adrlt, healthy human be-
ing needs to inhale about eighteen breaths
per minute, of about one pint of fresh pure
air, each, making over two gallons of air per
minute-and that the inhalation instead of
air already deprived ofoxygen and loaded with
impurities by respiration is a process alike
baneful to health, strength and life-these
truths are not generally understood, or their
importance could not fail TO be realized and
respected.
Ii is not possible that men and women
would consent to be shut up in close, crow
ded, low rooted car, having possibly one or
two small, utterly inadequate appertures
for the escape of vitiated air, none at all for
the ingress of that which is pure, and that,
while thus poisoning themselves, they would
raise a row, against any one who should kind
ly and slightly raise the window by his side,
if they only knew what they were doing
Nor would they build costly churches and
commodious halls for public meetings, and
there huddle for hours, enduring discomfort
and imbibing the seeds of fatal disease, if
they only knew that copious ventilation was
the very first requirement for such halls, and
that they might far better, even during tenn
pest, sit there without any roof at all over
their heads, than with roof which imprls-
ons and returns upon their lungs the poison.
Gus, corrupting exhalations from their owr
chests and bodies.
So with private dwellings. man has
toiled hard and long for competence, and
having finally attained it, resolves upon bull
ding house after his own heart. He grud'
geS no expense to secure an agreeable loca'
ton and prospect, pure water, spacious rooms
tasteful draperies, ample bedding, elegant
furniture, &C., &C., providing carefully and
bountifully for every want but the FIRST and
greatest of all-pure fresh air. He might
have secured this in every room of this man.
sion for some paltry twenty or thirty dollars;
yet he neglects it, and leaves his children tc
tester in their own corruption night after
night, until they finally sicken and die fol
want Of that element which God abundantl,
and freely supplied for their sustenance, bu
which he In bis dense ignorance has pcryerse
" shut out and rejected