ARCHITECTURE AND SANITATION".
In the Lumleian Lectures now being delivered before
the Royal College of Physicians, Dr. Gee, speaking
of the causes of bronchitis, draws attention to the
infective nature of what is generally spoken of as a
" common cold." We can hardly doubt, he says, that
chill by exposure of the body has often something to
do with it, but how ? Colds are seldom caught, as we
say, in pure air?at sea, for instance?no matter how
great the exposure. It is also to be noted that colds
are often contagious with an incubation period of
about three days. This has been shown in the interest-
ing experience of the St. Kilda cold, which also seems to
show that people who are not themselves suffering from
catarrh may yet convey the disease to others, and that
a cold past and gone confers a temporary immunity to
farther attack. It has lately been stated that upon
some of the small islands in Torres Strait the natives
were exempt from coughs and colds until they took to
wearing clothes. But it is difficult to understand how
the mere fact of clothing pure and simple can have
been the cause of these disorders, and it would seem
more probable that the inhabitants were infected, and
that the catarrhs were really due to the intruding
foreigner, who brought along with him his civilisation
and also his diseases.
The doctrine that most catarrhs are due to a specific
infection, spreading from man to man, has very im-
portant bearings upon medical practice. It leads us to
believe that the means by which we may prevent
catarrh are to be found in ventilation and cleanliness,
if, indeed, ventilation be not a kind of cleanliness.
Experience confirms this belief. When epidemic
catarrh prevails, where do we find most of our patients ?
In those houses which aTe obviously the worst venti-
lated, even though they be the spacious mansions of the
rich. And where do our patients catch their catarrh P
Either in houses of the kind just mentioned or in
buildings -where men most do congregate, especially in
offices, shops, and churches. Large shops and stores,
public museums and libraries, are ventilated as little
as possible, for fear of their contents being spoiled by
smoke and dust. Many churches, both in town and
country, are never properly aired for another reason,
namely, because their architecture does not admit of
it. Those " rich windows which exclude the light "do
worse than this, they exclude the air. The revival of
Gothic architecture, says Dr. Gee, has been, from the
sanitary point of view, a great mistake. Our despised
forefathers of the eighteenth century erected plain and
simple buildings, which could at least be well aired,
well lighted, and kept warm and comfortable; nay,
even the much ridiculed churchwarden, with his brush
and pail of whitewash, was a praiseworthy minister of
health. Modern dwellings are no better than the
churches. In the matter of domestic sanitation people
have fixed their attention too exclusively upon the
drainage and the water supply; light and air are not
reckoned. Many of the large red-brick houses which
have been built in great numbers at the West-end of
London and elsewhere during the last 25 years cannot
be properly ventilated. The well of the staircase ought
in every house to be a reservoir of fresh air, and to have
an independent supply from without. But in many
houses the staircase cannot ba ventilated, except
March 25, 1899. THE HOSPITAL. 433
through the rooms, and, in facb, it never is ventilated.
Nor are the room.3 themselves much better off; their
heavy mullioned windows are designed with small
regard to the transmission of light and air. The
subsidiary and merely ornamental arts, which do no
more than please the eye, are studied to the neglect of
that far greater arb which promotes the happiness and
welfare of the whole man?the art of preserving health.


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