THE ART OF VENTILATION

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 57, 8 March 1913, Page 12

THE ART OF VENTILATION

Tho cult of the open bedroom window has hecome something of a fad (states the London Times), and you may ccc in re-cently-built houses windows so constructed that every pane will open by some fanciful device or other. There is no harm in ifc, but the multiplication of unnecessary openings shows that, as usual, the object has been lost sight of and the open window has become an end in itself. That conclusion is confirmed by the pursuit > of stuffiness in other directions. Great ingenuity is expended on producing a warm equable atmosphere by methods of heating and of introducing air in such a way that it shall be imperceptible. We have contrivances devised to _ produce "a deadly uniformly heated air," and to exclude perceptible movement and change of temperature. They are the very conditions we find most insupportable on a close summer's day, producing lanjjour and lassitude. Life in "the reaction of the living substance to the ceaseless play of the environment." All its manifestations may be regarded a«* a response to some external stimulus. The stimuli which awaken energy are other forms of energy beating on the transformer. When they cease to beat torpor ensues, and an essential character of their activity is change. Tim principle explains the lack of energy experienced in a still, close, equable atmosphere and the contracted vigour excited by the opposite conditions, by mo\ement of the air, changes in temperature, mid other atmospheric influence*. The organism does not want to be always stimulated ; it needs rest too, and when, stimulation poes on too long or is carried too far it becomes^ exhausted. For rest the opposite conditions are required — shelter, warmth, quiet, absence of movement — the conditions that favour torpidity. The healthy life consists in a judicious blend or alternation of the two.

Woods' Great Peppermint Cure, fot coughs and cold*, n«v»r ULU, li M.~