Light and Health.

Otago Witness, 5 December 1900, Page 62

Light and Health.

M. Trelat, a -well-known aiithority on hygiene, recently gave it as his opinion that the best light for the house is the slanting light as opposed to the vertical and the horizontal lights. According to this view, the Lancet points out, houses should be constructed to receive the rays of light at ss. —.--^ of 30deg — that is to say, from a place corresponding with the mid-heavens — and, in order to obtain this light, houses should not be 'higher than two-thirds of the width of the street. If a street, for example, were 30ft wide, the houses on each side should not be higher than 20ft. The suggestion is, of course, not to cut down our houses, but to widen our streets.

The question of the presence of microbes at different yr levels must not, however, be ignored. Bacteriological experiments .have shown that the air near the ground is loaded with micro-organisms, the number diminishing as we ascend. The difference is most marked even, in the case of a five-storey building, the air in the top storey being comparatively free from microbes, while that on the ground floor swarms with -them. This state of things would be altered if the sunlight were admitted properly on all floors, for sunlight is a powerful ■bactericide.