CONSUMPTION AND FOUL AIR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIV, Issue 10703, 12 July 1895, Page 3

CONSUMPTION AND FOUL AIR.

If consumption, as an ailment, specially affects the lunge, it is manifestly impossible (writes a medical man in a London paper) that anything but bad can result from a person inclined to the disease living in an impure atmosphere. The air is practically the food of his lungs, so that it resolves 'itself into a question as to whether they shall have what they require for health, or whether his vitality is to bo stifled out of him by-bad air. By ‘‘ bad air ” I mean various things. Specially do I reel:on, as fatal for a weakchested person, the air which is found in ill-ventilated places. To re-breathe one’s own breath is bad enough; to re-breathe that of other people is ten times worse. This is a condition which is responsible for much ill-health all round. Breathing the air which has come from human lungs means that we are taking literal poisons into our blood. We do give off poisonous matters in onr breath—the worn-out, decaying particles of our blood and body 5 end ib is amid such foul matter, left unchanged in ill-ventilated places, that the germ of typhus fever breeds and grows. How far our civilisation, and our packing ourselves together in cities and in towns—close, ill-ventilated places—is responsible for consumption and its prevalonce, I know not. But that the city life is not favourable to consumptively-inclined people is pretty certain. The pure, fresh air of the country is the typical air for such persons; not the germ-laden, murky air of towns, charged with all sorts of floating matter, which* can only irritate and weaken the lung tissues. It is away up in the gormless cold, clear, dry air of the Upper Alps that many consumptives are sent to spend the winter. This air is found to have tonic properties, and all the more so because it is dry. What one says about the air, remember, one may say about the soil. Both must he dry. Dampness of air and dampness of soil are fatal to people inclined to consumption. This is no theory, but fully proved fact. The from consumption is always highest where towns are not properly drained, so as to remove the subsoil water and place the house foundations in a dry condition. What happens is that the dampness of soil finds its way into the houses, impregnates the air, causes chill and lowering of the temperature, and weakens the systems of those exposed to such influences. Dryness is, therefore, the main rule about air and soil. The person in whom consumption has even begun will be able to stand and enjoy a degree of cold of very low amounti always supposing it is a dry cold. Let him be exposed to a far less amount of cold, with dampness, and ho will feel the effect of that condition most acutely. The purity of air, then, which the consumptively-inclined require, can only be typically had in the country. The sea may give it, of course, and such resorts as Bournemouth and Yentnor will occur to everybody as suitable for chest cases, hecaus j, first, they are situated in the south, and, second, because by the sea sudden changes of temperatures are, as a rule, not common. The climate is more equable by the sea than inland. ' What the delicate person needs, however, is not a high degree of heat, but an even temperature and the avoidance of sudden chills and draughts. The bedroom should be large and airy. There is to be no closing of the damper of the grate, and I need not surely add that the practice of making one and the same room do duty as a living and as a sleeping apartment is to he sternly condemned. A temperature of about 60deg is that which should be maintained at far as possible for consumptively inclined people. The variations from this standard, most authorities agree, should not be more than from lOdeg to 15deg on either side. Let me more especially caution my readers against the effects of dusts, which surround the workers in many trades. Such dusts are very fatal to those suffering from chest ailments.