New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1880-02-25

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Mr.. Kingsley referred to the practice u
the poor in times of distress pawning
their bedsteads and keeping their beds,
and added: Never, if you have any
influence, let that happen. Keep the
bedstead, whatever else may 60, to save
the sleeper from the carbonic acid on
the floor" Another advice to builders
is to let all bedroom windows open at
the top as well as at the bottom. In
the matter Of providing for ventilation
in buildings, he adds:
Let me impress, not only on parents
and educators, but on those who employ
workpeople. and above all on those who
employ young women in shops or in
workrooms, the necessity Of using some
such contrivances. What their condi-
ton may be in this city, know not;
but most painful it has been to me in
other places, when looking through
warehouses or workrooms, to see the
sodden, sickly countenances Of the girls
who are passing the greater part of the
day in them; and painful, also, to breathe
an atmosphere of which habit had, alas,
made them unconscious, but which, to
one coming out of the open air, was
altogether noxious, and shocking, also;
for it was fostering he seeds of death,
not only in the present, but in future
generations" -....-
Every one, writes the author, will
agree that good ventilation is necessary
in hospital, because people cannot get
well without fresh air. Do they not see,
BY the same reasoning, good ventilation
is necessary everywhere, because peo-
pie cannot remain wei without fresh
air? ~s
In answer to the question, Why
make all this fuss about ventilation?
Our forefathers got on very well with
out it," DIR. Kingsley declares that our
forefathers usually got along very ill in
these matters, and when they got on
well it was because, in spite of them
selves, they had good ventilation. We
invite attention to what is 50 clearly ex-
pressed on these points. First, as to
the ill way in which our forefathers got
along, he says:
To quote few remarkable instances
Of longevity, or to tell me that men
were larger and stronger On the aver
age in old times, is to yield to the old
fallacy of fancying that savages were
peculiarly healthy, because those who
were seen were active and strong. The
simple answer is that the strong alone
survived, while the majority died from
the severity of training. Savages do
not increase in number; and our ances-
tors increased but very slowly for many
centuries. l am not going to disgust
my audience with statistics of disease;
but, knowing something, as I happen to
do, of the social state and of the health
of the Middle Ages, have no hesitation
in saying that the average of disease and
death was greater than it is now. Epi-
denies of many kinds--typhus, ague,
plague, all diseases which were caused
more or less by bad air-devastated this
land and Europe in those days with q
horrible intensity, to which even the
choleras of our times are mild. The
back streets, the hospitals, the jails, the
barracks, the camps-every place in
which any large number of persons con-
gregated--Were so many nests of pesti-
lence engendered by uncleanliness,
which defiled alike the water which was
drunk and the air which was breathed;
and, as single fact, of which the tables
of insurance assure us, the average of
human life in England has increased
twenty-five per cent. since the reign of
George l., owing simply TO our more
rational and clearly habits of life.''
On the second point, as to the en-
forced ventilation of former days, and
how it has been superseded by modern
inventions, DR.. Kingsley says:
"But, secondly, I said that when
our ancestors got on well they did so
because they got ventilation in spite of
themselves. Luckily for them, their
houses were ill-built, their doors and
windows would not shut. They had
lattice-windowed houses, too, to live
in, one of which, as can testify from
long experience, is as thoroughly ven
tilating as living in lantern with the
glass broken out. 1t was because their
houses were full of draughts, and still
more, in the early Middle Ages, be-
cause they had no glass, and stopped
out the air only by a shutter at night,
that they sought for shelter rather
than for fresh air, of which they some-
times had too much; and to escape the
wind built their houses IN holes, such
as that in which the old City of Win
chester stands. Shelter, I believe, a.
much as the desire to be near fish in
Lent, and to occupy the rich soil of the
valleys, made the monks of old En-
gland choose the river banks for the
sites of their abbcys. They made q
mistake therein. Which, like most mis-
takes. did not 60 unpublished. These
low situations, especially while the
forests were yet thick on the hills
around, were the perennial haunts of
fever and aguc, produced by subtle
vegetable poisons, carried in the car
bonic acid given off by rotten vegcta-
ton: So there again they fell in with
mans old enemy, bad air. Still. ~
long a. the doors and windows did not
shut, some free circulation of air 70.
manned. But, now, our doors and win
dows shut only too tight. We have
plate glass instead of iattices; and we
have replaced the draughty and smoky,
but really wholesome, open chimney,
with its wide corners and settles, BY
narrow registers, AID even by stoves.
We have done all we can, in fact, to
seal ourselves up Theoretically from
the outer air, and to breathe our own
breaths over and over again; and we
pay the penalty of it in thousand
ways unknown 10 our ancestors.
through whose rooms all the winds Of
heaven whistled, and who were glad
enough to shelter themselves from
draughts in the sitting-room by the
high screen round the fire, and in the
sleeping-room by the thick curtains Of
the f0ur-post bedstcad, which is now
rapidly disappearing before higher
civilization. We. therefore, absolutely
require to make for ourselves the very
ventilation from which our ancestors
tried to escape,