The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1879-02-13
Cooked Air.

THERE is one very good reason why
people "take cold'' in winter-time.
Most of the wcll-to-do spend their lives,
when indoors, in cooked air. The
lower down the thermometer goes the
higher the burning coal is piled; all the
chinks and cracks are stopped that
would let any fresh air in, and its main
chance, indeed, is when the front door
opens for twenty seconds, or when the
beds are made in the sleeping-rooms.
In the living rooms of the family there
is no occasion, many people think, to
raise the windows ever, except to wash
them on periodical cleaning days, or to
shut in the shutters. So carpets and
furniture, and people, lungs and skin,
are dried and baked in the hot, dry
rooms, until ingenious persons can
bring out electric sparks from their
finger ends by skating rapidly up and
down the room in their wooden slippers.
Out from this kiln-dried atmosphere
into the winter streets and into the
very cold or very damp air, plunge the
folks who live in these air-tight rooms.
They put on plenty of wraps, but they
wear the same foot-gear and they carry
the same lungs out into the streets with
them and the same sensitive skin.
Then they go into friends houses and
sit in other hot rooms with all their
wraps On, or they sit in church-pews
the women, at least, heavily muffied in
furs and wOOlens, for a matter of two
hours.
(Why a man will take off his over
coat in church and women cling to
their jackets as to an article of faith, is
among the puzzles for the wise to set
tie, or for the rext hundred questions
of an inquiring worldly Again, they
90 out into the damp streets, and it is
a wonder to all doctors and thinkers
that they do not all "take," and keep,
too, that congested state of the lungs,
and membranes, and chilled blood
vessels that we class under this one
convenient term of "cold."
Perhaps the houses are not kept any
warmer than they ought to be, when
people are taking but little exercise.
But they certainly are nearly all of
them too dry and lacking in constantly
renewed pure air. It has been before
remarked in the Ledger that folks who
are extremely particular about wearing
their own clothes, and who would by
no means consent to take the cast-off
garments of neighbor-one and all of
them are perfectly comfortable to
breathe over and over again the cast-off
and soiled air from each others lungs,
when it is cooked especially; for in
summer time they do insist on change
of it, and do get their houses ventilated.
Janitors of public building, in short
sighted economy of fuel, will shut up
all the apertures by which fresh air
might get in, lest they should suffer
some heat to escape thereby, and are
rewarded by sleepy audiences, especial
ly when the gas-burners are at work,
also draining the cooked air of what
little life it has. There are some peo-
ple-many it is to be hoped-who open
an inch or two of their bedroom win
dows every night to insure modicum
of fresh air to sleep by. But these do
not in the least care to have fresh air
to be awake in, it seems, for they are
content to have their furnace draw all
its supplies from the tightly-sealed Gel
lar and from the stale atmosphere of
the ash-boxes and vegetable bins in the
subterranean apartment. When we
live in fresh air within doors as with
out, with its proper proportion of
moisture for the skin and breathing
apparatus to keep up their healthy
tone, it is likely we shall have found
out one way at least of how not to take
cold.-Phsladelphia Ledger.