The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1855-01-31
WHY EpDEMcs RAGE AT NIGHT.


IT was in one night that four thou
sand persons perished of the plague in
London. It was by night that the army
of Sennacharib was destroyed. Both
in england and on the Continent large
portion of the cholera cases, IN its sew
eral forms, have been observed to have
occurred between one aud two o'clock
in the morning. The danger of expo
sure to the night air has been a theme
of physicians from time immemorial !;
but it is remarkable that they never yet
called in the aid of chemistry to account
for the fact.
tits at night that the stratum of air
nearest tho ground must always be the
NEST charged with the PARTICLES of ami
malized matter given out from the skin,
and deleterious gasses, such as -carbonic
acid gas-the product of reputation
and sulphurated hydrogen the product
of the sewers. In the day, gases, and
varios substances of all kinds. rise In the
air by the rarefaction leaves, they fall
by an increase of gravity, ifIimperfectly if
mixed with the atmosphere; while the
gases involved during the night, instead
Of ascending, remain at nearly the same
leve. 1t is known that carbonic acid
at low Temperature partakes so nearly
the nature Of fluid shat 1t may be pour
ed out of one vessel into another. 1t
rises at the temperature at which 1t Is
exhaled from the lungs, but its ten'' en-
cy is towards the floor or the bed Of the
sleeper in cold and unventilated rooms.
At Hamberg, the alarm of cholera at
a0poo narfo Of The oif a0
great, that many refused to go to bed,
in their sleep. Sitting up, they proba-
bly, kept their stoves or open fires burn
ing for the sake of warmth gives the ex-
pansion to any deleterious gases present,
which would best promote their escape
and promote their dilution in the at
mosphere The means of safety were
then unconsciously assured. At Sierra
Leone the natives have practice, in
the sickle season. of keeping fires con,
stantly burning in their huts at night,
assigning that the fires keep away evil
spirits, to which, in their ignorance,
they attribute the fever and ague. Lat
terly, Europeans have begun to adopt
the seme practice, and those who have
tried it assert that they have now en-
tire immunity from the tropical fevers
to which they were formerly subjeo ted.
In the epidemies of the middle ages
fires used to be lighted in the streets for
the publication of the air, and in the
plague of London, in 1855, fires in the
streets were at one time kept burning
necessarily, till extinguished by vio-
olent storm of rain. Lattarly, trains
of gunpowder have been fred, and can
mons discharged, for the same object;
but it is obvious that these measures,
although sound in principle, must nec-
essarily, out of doors, be on too small a
scale as measured against an ocean of
atmospheric air, to produce any sensi-
BILE effect. Within doors, however, the
case is different. It is quite possible
to heat room sufficiently to produce a
rarefaction and consequent dilution of
any malignant gases it may contain,
and it is, of course, the air of the room,
and that alone, at night which comes in
contact with the lungs of the person
sleeping Westminster Reviet0