The Pickens sentinel. [volume] (Pickens, S.C.) 1871-1903, 1883-01-25
Ventilation.

partial or complete despair. For, from
the beginning, the mission OF man has
been to fight day and night against the
admission of the element, without which
existence is impossible. Black death,
plague, leprosy, all manner of diseases
have been the witness of his victory
over an element which, excluded, can
always find its own revenge, and even
to-day, with all the enlightenment of
this most enlightened century, the battle
still goes on.
Theoretically, we admit that it must
rule. Practically, we deny it hour by
hour. Millions of dollars have been
spent in perfecting systems, all of which
have come to nothing. The Senate
Chamber and House of Representatives
at Washington are both deliberately
arranged in such fashion that sunlight
and air are alike impossible, and the
latter can only come from force-pumps
in the cellar. 1t is true that air-holes
under each seat arc warranted to give O.
pure atmosphere, but repeated personal
observation has shown that when the
openings are not used by our respected
lawmakers as spittoons, they are plug
gcd with paper, this being the case with
so large o proportion of them that one
need not ut all wonder at the character
of the legislation going on above.
In our churches, theaters and all
public places, tho same ingenious meth
DDS prevail, and If, as sometimes in
railway cars, ventilators are opened,
there is always some enterprising man
with cane or umbrella who shuts them,
and then returns well pleased to his
place, to breathe with calm enioyment
the rejected effluvium of all the laboring
lungs about him. We, who would
shrink from drinking from strangers
or even friends cup, or eating from o.
plate already soiled by use, drink in un-
hesitatingly the breath-not as it enters
the lungs, pure outer air, but as it is
thrown OH-laden not only with the
natural weight of deadly carbonic acid
gas, but with whatever personal pecu-
liarity of disease or habit the breather
may own-reeking with tobacco or
liquor, with foul fumes of indigested
food-with deadly germs from diseased
lungs or other organs.
The picture is disgusting, but Is it
ovordrawnP And if not, can any words
be too strong against the passive ac-
ceptance of such a condition of things P
For precisely as one should shrink from
contact with leprosy or loathsome sore,
breathing an air tainted by passage
through every sort of lung and as truly
foul and indecent for ones own use az
would be the food chewed by another
and handed on to ones own plate for
| consumption. Yet people go on calmly,
or if moved TO temporary action, pass
quickly from energy to apathy. The
Judge on his bench falls in an apoplep-
lie tit induced by want of air! Women
faint and are carried out of crowded
theaters, where even if slight Ventila-
ton exists, everyRgas-jet means the con
| sumption of air enough for eighteen
lungs, no allowance having been made,
however, for any such added draught
upon resources. And in churches,
rising at all points and thronged with
seekers after spiritual life, the same
results are found and disease and death
i'll subtle disguises have their way with
the body and thus with the soul.
The average school-Oom is as fatal,
and children in them are tho victims of
slow murder, passing from pale and
nerveless childhoad to pale and nerve
less man or womanhood. If air were
only on sale and to be bought the world
would be earning money for its purchase
and would count no toll too great for q
share in the precious possession. But
as it is Gods free gift, the portion of all,
We shut it out or contentedly poison il,
day and night.
A full grown man averages about one
hundred and tifty-four pounds in weight.
One hundred and eleven of this is oxy-
gen, drawn from the air we breathe,
food and Dir being the two means by
Which bodies live. But food without air
Is useless. Only when it has first been
dissolved in the stomach, carried bv ab-
sorption into the blood, and, at last, by
means of circulation, brought into con-
tact with the oxygen of the air taken
INTO our lungs, does it begin to either
feed or nourish, so that the lungs NAV
be said to be really the true stomach,
and the other only n convenient recep-
table on which to draw after deposit.
ANY anatomy or physiology will give
the details of structure which ought to
be plain to all, and when this is thor
oughly understood it will be easy to sec
why thirty-three hogsheads of air are
used each day by every healthy pair Of
lungs, and what necessity exists Tor in
suring o pure supply. 1t rests solely
and wholly with ourselves whether this
ebbing and flowing tide shall remain
charged with poison-carrying death to
every organ of the body, or shall receive
its full supply of the vitalizing oxygen,
ana 30 co"Sc TO be weighed down and
made powerless for good.
Fifty years ago ventilation was scout
ed, but it existed in spite of windows
nailed down and cracks stuffed with
cotton, the open chimneys making q
constant draught and renewing the air
IN every room where fire was burned.
To-day we open windows more often,
but furnace and gas both vitate and
consume air enough for many lungs,
and thus comes the necessity for meth
od which shall give us the health of the
old while retaining the advantages of
the new. Whether this can be accom-
phshed we are presently to sec.-Ow
Continent.