AIR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13750, 12 September 1908, Page 3

AIR.

Pure air is the first essential for health and vigour. Those who have not grasped the fact that the body of every living thing, be it plant o/ani2«al, is built almost entirely out oi' air and water — not out of the solid earth, l whence plants at least seem to come — 1 would do well to clear their minds at! once, especially if they have any interest in the welfare of- babies. Hants and annuals alike, we all come from the air, and wo must all return to ii. Without food we can live three weeks. Without water we can live three days. Without air we can live only three minutes.

Air in any quantity is free to all; nothing can take its place, nothing is so invigorating, there is no other universal panacea for all forms of sick-i ness, nothing ensures firm flesh and ruddy cheeks like pure fresh air day and night ; and yet air is the one thing the average mother stints, and which she allows her baby to take in a fouled, used-up s^ate. In regard to food, on the other hand, over-feeding rather than under-feeding is the prevailing error; while the mere idea of allowing food to become vile and poisonous by mixture with exoreta would be repugnant and disgusting to anyone. Yet people scarcely shrink from filthy air, between the used-up cast-off materials though there is no essential difference excreted from the lungs and those got rid of from the bladder and bowels. It is true that what we breathe out is invisible, and not quite so offensive to the sense of smell, but it is equally I deadly, and the actual weight of poisonous matter given off from the lungs in the course of the day is much greater than the quantity given off from . all other sources put together. IF FOUL AIR WERE ONLY BLACK !

One almost regrets that stagnating! exhalations from the -lungs do not turn black and visible, so that a growing murkiness indoors would enforce the mother's attention, and compel her to ensure a constant outlet for the escape of what should be regarded as used up and done with, as well as an inlet for fresh, pure, outside air to supply its place. In the absence of a visible danger signal, is there any practical means by which we can satisfy ourselves that the air of a room has^become unfit to breathe — that it is poisonous and devitalising? Fortunately, there is a very simple and reliable test universally applicable. If, on returning to a room after being in the open air for half an hour, or so, the inside strikes us as in any way '.'stuffy" and unpleasant, it is certain that there is insufficient ventilation. No bedroom should be unpleasant to return to after one has been in the open air. There sh ould be no appreciable difference between the bedroom air at the end of the night and the outside air, except that indoors it would feel a trifle milder.

POPULAR FALLACIES. THAT COUNTRY AIR IS PURE AND TOWN AIR IS FOUL.

City air is unduly abused. Serious contamination is nearly always mainly an indoor condition. The air of bedrooms in the country is often ten times as foul as the open air of the donsestj city; indeed there are very few bedrooms in which the pollution every night does not greatly exceed that of any ordinary outside air. There is no excuse for this. Air can be kept pure and healthy in the smallest town cottage by providing a sufficient inlet and outlet, and thus ensuring a free current all night. For comfort, the inmates need only keep out of the main line of draught. A square^ foot of clear inlet and outlet, free from any obstruction in the way of gratings, curtains, or blinds, suffices for three or four inmates. This would be provided by an ordinary open fireplace and a sash window open at least from four to six inches — not a, mere chink. When the bedroom itself has no fireplace, the door leading out of the bedroom and into the kitchen can be left open. Then, if the kitchen window be shut, the air to supply the chimney must enter through the open window of the bedroom. If windows are kept open on both sides of a cottage, and all the doors are kept ajar, fairly good cross ventilation can be established without the aid of a chimney. In the absence of any means of establishing a regular cross current, a window kept wide opeji top and hotttun is the best substitute. THAT WOODEN, HOUSES NEED No!

VENTILATION. This is often, said, but it is absurd. Wooden houses need as much ventilation as any others, and by rights every passage or hall should have a veiitilating shaft at least a foot across, taken right up through the roof and not merely opening into the space under the galvanised iron. THAT NIGHT AIR IS DANGEROUS.

The reverse is the case. Night air tends to be purer than day air. A humorist has aptly said: "Night air is only dangerous if you keep it bottled up in a room all night!" However, the| popular fear of night air is almost universal, and has arisen from the fact that in certain countries it is apt to give rise to ague. This is not really on account of impurity of the air itself, but, as has recently been proved, because it is infested by mosquitoes, which convey the disease. THAT COLD AIR IS THE ESSEN-

TIAL CAUSE OF COLDS.

This has been disproved in many ways. (1) Arctic explorers don't catch cold until they return to stuffy, germ-infest-ed houses.

(2) Consumptives who have become debilitated by repeated colds find they no longer "catch cold" after a few weeks in a sanatorium, where no fires are allowed, and where the entire window of the bedroom is replaced by a large sheet of closely-perforated zinc. These sanitoria are often established in high mountain regions where the cold is intense.

(3) Tender, delicate babies cesise tc take cold if kept out in the open,, air as much as possible, and il, when indoors, constant . ventilation is maintained by means of an open window and chimney. This is the condition a1 the Baby Hospital in Dunedin, even in midwinter, though the air in tbo bedrooms sometimes falls as low as 40deg Fahr. Of course, every care is exercised .to keep the babies out of direct draught and to ensure that they art adequately covered. . Further, sudden changes are never mad©. It may lake a week or more to accustom to pur<\ co6 r nir a delicate baby, or, one M'lio ha^ been previously coddled, •<• ' ■ i

Colds are really catarrhal fevers due to rapid growth of germs. Cold is not the essential cause of these fevers, though chilling of the surface predisposes to an attack under certain circumstances. Thus persons who habitually coddle themselves and live in wanu stuffy rooms, and who fail to tako enough exercise, become readily devitalised by being chilled in any way and in this depressed state their tissues may be unable to repel invasion by hostile germs. THAT AIRING A BEDROOM OVER-

NIGHT SUFFICES.

This fallacy is almost universal. People .imagine that if they start with pure air it will not become injuriously; xouied in the course $£ the night. r lhi& can be disproved at once by entering such a bedroom direct from the fresh air an hour or so after the occupant has gone to bed, or, a fortiori, when lie is about to get up. The room will be found offensively stuffy, and chemical analysis of the air would show it bo be loaded with carbonic acid gas and other poisonous matters. A tew ascertained facts and figures should satisfy anyone. For the last half century it has been recognised that for health each human being should be supplied with 3000 cubic feet of pure fresh outside, air per hour, or 24,000 | cubic feet in the course of an eight hours' night. The ordinary ten-foot oedrpom has, of course, a capacity of about 1000 cubic feet, and if no fresh air be admitted during the \night W allowance for one occupant will be only 1000 cubic feet for eight hours instead of 24,000 feet, his proper allowance. • Indeed, the capacity of the room makes little difference, the vital question being Avhether there is a free now of pure air through it or not. One can secure a sxifficiency of fresh air in a ventilated coffin, and one would die under the dome of St. Paul's if it were sealod! Remember that a child should have as large a supply of fresh air as an adiilt. If habituated to living in pure air, even a baby will become intolerant of filth in this direction, as iit guided by instinct, just as it can be trained to abhor impurity and filth in other directions. At three years of age such a baby, left to itself, will open a window rather than continue in foul air, in the same way as a cat will bury its excrement. Infancy is the natural time for establishing healthy quasi-in-stinctive life habits.