The Saint Paul globe., 1904-01-24
A CURIOUS NEGLECT.

A CURIOUS NEGLECT.
| The complaint is made, not without
reason. that the cars of the street rail-
way company are not properly venti-
lated, and that frequent illness re-
suits therefrom. The charge is true
not only of these cars, but of practical
| ly all other conveyances employed for
public transit and of almost every
provision everywhere for housing and
sheltering human beings. That which
/ is the first and greatest need of mans
| frame has been most continually over
looked and denied. 1t is perhaps the
strangest of all the follies or oversights
or obstinacies of so-caIled human
progress.
In very few of even the most ex-
pensive and modern hotels or other
places of public comfort will you find
any provision whatever for ventila
ton, except such as kind nature forces
by apertures around doors and win
dows, which the builders Internal skill
could not entirely close, Visit the most
gorgeous and paIatial residences Of
men of great wealth, and you will dis
cover generally the same condition. No
money has been spared to make their
interiors beautiful to the eye and soft
to the touch, and to protect the in
habitants from the scourge of excessive
heat or cold. But the idea that a constant
supply of absolutely pure air should
| be assured seldom seems to have oc-
CURED to anybody. We advertise to
all the world the superiority of our
travelling facilities and the Pullman car
of today lacks but one luxury. 1t has
couches and baths and mirrors and
other conveniences innumerable, but
the atmosphere in which the traveller
is confined is that of an inferno.
This is all the more singular because
fresh air is the first, most constant and
most apparent need of the human body.
All the wealth, all the labor of the
world are concentrated on proper food
supply. All the legislatures of the world
are bent upon keeping food commodities
from contamination or adulteration.
Yet food purity is not a millionth part
as important as atmospheric purity. The
human body can exist without food for
days. Life without air is measured by
seconds. The human body accepts and
assimilates food only in certain limited
amounts and at certain stated times
during the twenty-four hours. 1t is TAX
ing IN ADJUST as much portion of it's
food as are meat and drink-almost
every second of the time. An impurity
in the air that we breathe is infinitely
more dangerous to healthy physical de-
velopment than a similar quantity or
grade of impurity in the food that we
eat.
Yet we abuse the lungs as we would
not dream of abusing the stomach or
the hair or the feet We feed them with
the very garbage and refuse of natura.
We compel them to work on the fetid
contents of closed boxes in our houses.
III our steam cars, in our street railway
ears and in our places of public resort.
The life of the average human being
is daily and hourly attempt to poison
| or to starve his own organism by con-
Eliminating or cutting off its air supply.
More could be done to improve the
| quality and lengthen the term of hu-
man life by employing every artifice
to supply absolutely pure air every
| hour and minute of the day than by
all the rest that sanitary progress and
medical science have done. Is it not
time that, with all the rest of our
boasted achievements, we begin to taka
some care for the very first condition
[ of bodily health?