A DOMESTIC MYTH.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8844, 21 June 1907, Page 4

A DOMESTIC MYTH.

Asked to write an article on domestic myths, Dr. Salceby came to the conclusion that the night-air superstition demanded an article to itself, so a column and a half of the Pall Mall Gazette is devoted to tiro sirbject. The night air superstition lie traces to the fact that in certain countries exposure at night is apt to produce malaria. It is only recently that the blame for the disease has been fastened on the mosquito. The theory that bedroom air is not the same as night-air sprang from the observation that if you slept indoors, you escaped malaria. The night air gave you malaria; therefore, the night air must be different to the air inside. How, asks ‘ Dr. “Saleeby, does night air differ from day air in England? Night air may contain less carbonic acid, and fewer organic g ises, and it is certainly less dusty—three points in its favour. It is colder and open windows sometimes mean an extra blanket, but “the ad’vautage of breathing pure, instead of foul air during one-third of your existence is perhaps not too dearly bought thus. ” It is impossible to keep the night air out of the room altogether, and the most foolish of us is thereby partly saved from the consequencees of his folly. There is said to be not one bedroom in the country | with enough air for a sleeper during one whole night without replenishment. Space is utterly misleading; it is the means of replenishing the air that count. Factory legislation merely demands cubic space, and the recent Royal Commission found the air abominably foul in many places where the legal requirement was complied with. Dr. Saleeby reminds us that famous cricketers 'have died from consumption, in spite of their work in the open air by day, and that Grace Darling died of the disease at the ago of twenty-seven, because she slept in a chamber little bigger than herself, and badly ventilated. The glorious fresh air of the islands ‘did not avail against the accumulation of carbonic acid at night. |Thc [most obvious and striking consequence of opening your windows at: night, is a larger appetite for breakfast next morning. Against this has to be set the possibility of interference witii sleep. The very purity of the air may keep you from going to sleep when you are wakened in the night by the” cool air on your face ; foul air is an anaesthetic. But this is temporary, and not to bo considered for a moment against the deadliness of foul air. Curious, is it not, remarks Dr. Saleeby, that a man j should bo paid for writing this in j the twentieth century?