The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-15
COLD AIR IN HOSPITALS

From American Medicine.
 It Is amazing that the medical profess sion has made so little therapeutic use of cold producing machinery, as it is many years since 1t was discovered that there was some mysterious therapeutic virtue in the breathing of cold air.
 | Consumptives, for instance, were found | to improve in winter, but not in summer, and they made extraordinary progress | toward recovery where the temperature | was far below zero F., while in hot cli- mates the rapd mortality is dreadful. Then came the startling discovery that in many respiratory diseases, particular ly the pneumonias Of children. cold air was almost a specific even when both lungs were greatly involved and death was certain if the patient was kept in doors in a warm room
 | Tn the winter we rig up rooms on the roof or veranda for the benefit of the cold but in summer we hold up our hanls hopelessly and let the sick die Instead of creating the cold air they need. We give
  they are dead instead of keeping them alive by It.
 There is no earthly reason for this help lessness, when 1t is such simple matter to cool the air of hospitals. All that Is needed is a steam coil or radiator In which cold brine circulates instead Of hot water Instead of radiating heat it is an absorber and the air forced around the pipes may be cooled to any required degree.
 Calculations show that what is described in the trade as lone kilowatt ammonia compression set'' is sufficient to reduce the temperature of all the air needed to ventilate 12 bed ward from 90 degrees to 55 degrees. This equipment can oe installed in a base 10 feet square. The pumps and fans being run by electricity there is no engine to bother with. and the ammonia which may leak out will not an- noy if the apparatus is in the basement.
 The air is damp when it leaves the coils, but it warns up en route to the room or can be warmed so as to be delivered dry. The coils, of course. drip moisture de- posted from the air as 1t Is cooled and cannot be put In the living room. The air should be delivered near the floor and the escape valves put at the ceiling for the warmed impure air.
 The details can be worked out by any engineer or architect who knows how and very short experience will show how 10 keep the room at any required degree. We can defy the death dealing hot sea- son, particularly in the case of the sick ba bies now slaughtered by every hot wave From experience of the benefit of the very slight reduction of air tempera- ture by storms in the tropics, I have. no doubt that if all tropical hospitals were so equipped the record of cures would be several times what they now are and the homegoing stream of invalids enormously reduced.
 I have been informed by physician who had much experience with sick sol diers in the summer of 1864 and 1865, that if they were stopped off at Washington or Baltimore 1t was exceedingly difficult | to keep them alive. and an effort was | made to rush the hospital trains on to the cool spots of New England. If we have another war the hospitals must te established in the cold north, and .hose
 in the south must be mere collecting ! points unless they are artifcially cooled | and nrofected from light.