The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1904-08-18

ing three hundred years ago. did not
even include air in the important
things for mans use. We who live to-
day, and think ourselves wise are just
as ignorant as those of the olden time
who built their houses without VIM
dOws.
Every year babies are killed,
smothered to death because their
mothers wrap up their heads to keep
them from the air that they actually
need.
Every year in this country alone
more than two hundred thousand hui
man beings die of consumption. These
deaths are partly due to a poor supply
of food, but due in a much greater de-
gree to a poor supply of fresh air.
We live in the air and on the air,
as fishes live in the water. The air to
us is far more important than the
water to the fish. For a fish will live
much longer without water than any
human being without air.
Starvation is a matter of days
without solids, hours without liquids,
but Of minutes without air.
"Children are killed in their homes
because foolish parents do not know
enough to keep their rooms we'll venti-
lated. Workers are murdered by foul
air in the factories and in the public
schools many child called dull IS
simply suffering from the breathing of
impure air.
Not one of us would think for a mo-
ment of drinking filthy water-water
from a sewer or dirty pond-but all
of us almost every day of our lives
take in impure air in quantities.
"Phthisis and nearly all complaints
of the lungs come from breathing bad
air.
I'VE allow ourselves to be shut up in
unfit for use through being inhaled
by other human beings.
The breath of a human being con-
tains five per cent of carbOnic acid
That breath is charged with deadly
poison and is incapable Of sustaining
life. Yet children in schools and in
factories, grown people in theatres and
meeting rooms, are constantly breath
ing an air that is poison.
Many child is killed by bad air in
the school to which he is sent that he
may be prepared for the work ahead
of him.
Lewis w. Leeds, in his Treatise on
Ventilation, says: Consumption is al
most entirely the result OF breathing
impure air. We are forced to the con-
clusion that about forty per cent of
all deaths that are constantly occur
ring are due to the influence of foul
air.
We breathe, first, that the blood
passing through the lungs may extract
from the air the vital force necessary
to our life, the oxygen and the mystic
rious electric power with which we
carry on our work.
I'VE breathe, secondarily, in order to
clean the body and the blood-the i'm
purites being carried off in the air as
we exhale it.
This air that we drive out from our
lungs contains not only carbonic acid,
but actual poisonous organic matter
The breath discharged from the lungs
is as poisonous to the one who has
breathed it as it is to another. The
human being that sleeps closely con-
fined in an ill-ventilated bedroom is
simply poisoning himself every night
Of his life.
Through the use of impure air our
lungs become weakened and we abb
sorb insufficiently even such bad air
as is provided for us.
The rule that applies to fishes living
in impure water applies to human be-
ings breathing impure air.
AT the bottom of muddy ponds live
the sluggish fish-the catfish, the wide
mouthed suckers. The fish that lives
in impure waters is sluggish, dull and
inferior. The high class fish, the trout,
the salmon, is found where the pure
water runs swiftly.
The human being that lives in i'm
pure air is necessarily sluggish and
dull.
The great problem of today, from
the point of view of health, is to sup
ply fresh air abundantly and every
where.
THE inventor who shall find a means
to keep the air pure in schools, factO-
ries, theaters and churches will be a
great benefactor to the wOrld-if the