The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1896-05-29
ODD HEALTH RESORT
A Gas House tina. is a Popular
Sanitarium.
The Fumes a Sovereign Remedy
for WhoopIng Cough.

10 tho uWoliefa ln tenement house
districts a "gaa house" ia not a wholly
undesirable neighbor. Besides afford.
ing work for tho men, it is a santa.
rum for the women and children. The
majority of persons are not accustomed
TO look upon gas works as health
resort. Fashion and wealth do not
flock there for the cure OF real or
imaginary ills. Neither do tho gas
companies advertise for patients. The
patients come, nevertheless, and in
the four places whore coal gas is man
uiaciurod in this city sometimes
dozen women a day will bring their
children for treatment
In the possession Of a handy gas
house the tenement house districts
have the advantage of tho brown
stone districts 1t is not at all i'm.
probable that children on Fifth ave-
nue., surrounded by all the comfort
and attended by all the medical skill
that wealth could procure, have died
Of whooping cough when, had they
lived in a tenement in Eleventh ave-
nue., and been taken by their mothers
to the gas house, they might have re-
covered.
Though a cure for all sorts OF bron-
chial and throat troubles is sought at
tho gas house, it is for the cure Of
whooping cough that tho tenement
house mothers most resort there with
their suffering children. It is at times
when an epidemic of whooping cough
IS running riot among the children Of
the tenements that the procession of
anxious mothers with coughing and
choking babies in their arms moves
toward the gas house sanitarium.
With shawls over their heads aud
busy tongues engaged, in the intervals
OF soothing their sick children, in re-
counting to each other all the history
OF their child's sickness, they flock to
the doors of the gas works. No mat
ter if it is nuisance to have a dozen
or SO talkative women and dozen sick
children about, the applicants are
never refused admission.
In fact, in the stations" where coal
gas is manufactured it has become
rather matter of pride with the Off
cials to have a large attendance at the
daily clinic.
The women aud children are taken
to the"box room" It is a large, long,
shadowy place, dim even at MONDAY,
with bare, bleak walls, iron roof and
sandy floor.
Up and down it, sunk in the earth,
are large, square "boxes, of brick
and iron, extending foot or SO above
the surface, aud covered with great
iron covers. Chairs are set for the
women around the "box" about to be
opened, and machinery lifts and slides
away the great covers, disclosing lay
ers Of lime laid on iron gratings, and
letting loose a mixture of pungent,
strong and penetrating smells.
The children are held up to inhale
the vOpors, and their "whooping" is
stopped as they breathe them in. All
the phlegm in their little throats
seems to be cut and loosened, and
their coughing becomes easier. 1t is
weird and grewsome sight.
The anxious, poorly-dressed moth
ers, worn by toll and care; the sick
and puny infants, held up in their
arms SO hopefully; the bare, dim lit
room, and the brawny workmen who
begin to remove the layers Of lime, all
form picture which Doro might have
drawn for an illustration of "How
the Other Half Lives.
Before the cover is removed from a
"box" the gas is all drawn out of it.
The fumes are caused by the gas that
! has passed through the lime for Duri
fication. Besides the vapors which it
has caused by mingling with the lime,
it has left behind it various other
odors, brought from the previous pro-
cesses through which it has passed.
The mixture of vapors makes
smell unlike anything else that one
ever smelled before. The only thing
at all familiar about it is suspicion
Of ammonia.