Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-11-15

power Of holding the breath is limited by
seconds
When a disease has been contracted the
need OF pure air is even more urgent, be-
cause when IN a fever breathing Is more
rapid owing to the increased waste of the
body which accompanies fever. According
ly, instead of shutting up patients in
tightly sealed houses, they are placed in
large, lofty and freely ventilated dwellings.
The windows are widely opened night as
well as day, and all draught- preventing
hangings are removed from the chamber.
The success of this method of treatment
is shown by the reduced mortality In
synotic disease. For example, the great
plague" which killed half the population
of London in the fifteenth century and
was the terror of mankind after It first
appeared in Europe, is now regarded as a
comfortable disease and possesses no ter
rors even for those who attend the sick
Forty years ago 30 per cent of the sisters
who nursed consumption in the Charity
Hospital at Berlin died of that disease.
Now 1t is the rarest possible event for an
attendant in a properly managed con-
sumptive sanitarium to become phthisical.
The number of cases of consumption IN
town varies in proportion to the filthiness
and over-crowding of the dwellings in diff
ferent portions of the city. This simply
means IN proportion to the impurity of the
air the jewellers in those houses breathe.
No nation educated in hygiene would
have tolerated the inherently faulty con-
StructOn of the American railroad carriage.
Were the Ventilators in the top of a car
always opened the atmosphere would be at
least tolerable, but the regulation of this
ma tier is in the hands of conductors who
are of necessity ill-educated men and there
fore cannot be expected to understand the
laws of ventilation without special train
ing. This is not given by the company. In
addition, the more frequently the ventila-
tors are opened the greater is the amount
of cleaning to be done to the car, their
position on the roof of the carriage is such
as to facilitate the entrance of smut from
the engine. The lower windows open from
below upward: so that to obtain air for
ones lungs it is necessary to subject one
self to the danger of a rapid and cOncen-
trated gale of wind blowing over the lower
part of the body. The warmer the temper
ature the more important is it to prevent
abdominal chill, a fact well known to resi-
dents in tropical climates, who frequently
wear cholera belts for this purpose.
Ones choice therefore lies between the
devil of abdominal chill and the deep sea
of suffocation. The former can be obviated
by an extra wrap around tn middle of the
body: the latter can be avoided only by
opening the window on the windward side
of the train and sitting nearly doubled up,
so as to have ones face below the upper
level of the entering breeze.
OF course, the remedy is to compel the
railroad companies to construct their win
dows so that they can be let down from the
top, thus protecting the body from wind
while giving the lungs air.
When artificial heat is employed the con-
ditions are different, as a little reflection
will show the reader. These will be dis
cussed in a future article.
We hear much of the open door in COM
merce, and the wealth of a nation often
hangs on the ability to secure this, but the
true riches Of a nation lie in its people; and
their health can be secured only through a
practice of the doctrine of the open win
dow"