XIII.PURE AIR AND THOROUGH VENTILATION.
ATall seasons of the year it is important that the house should be kept dry and well ventilated; but extra precautions are necessary in warm weather. The nights are often close and sultry; windows are left open with the hope—often a vain one—that an occasional breeze may deign to sweep through the rooms, and assist us in the labor of breathing. And here is danger. The night air, what there may be of it, and the heavy morning fogs, fill the house with dampness. The bedclothes are moist and disagreeable. The garments laid off on retiring at night, if left near an open window, are heavy with dew. Fever and ague, rheumatism, cholera, and dysentery lurk always in such an atmosphere. One of the best preventives is a quick blaze, in an open fireplace or stove, immediately after rising; no matter how warm the weather may be. A handful of brush or light wood, just to make a blaze, expel the bad air, anddrythe rooms, notheatthem, is all that is needed.
Those who can be in the country during the summer will have no difficulty in finding plenty of brush,—dead branches, or sprouts, or bushes, cut off in clearing up the fields or hedges. On a rainy day, when outdoor work or play cannot be advantageously attended to, a child could easily cut them up into foot or foot and a half lengths, tie them in fagots, and pile them neatly in the wood-house, ready for use. Keep one of these fagots always in the fireplace or stove, ready for lighting every morning. It will dry and purify the air wonderfully, and save doctors’ bills and much sickness.
Aside from the ill effects of dampness, the air is full ofimpurities arising from the body, and more injurious through the night than in the day. Professor Youmans says:—
“The escape of offensive matter from the body becomes most obvious when, from out of the pure air in the morning, one enters an unventilated bedroom where one or two have slept the night before. Every one must have experienced the sickening and disgusting odor upon going into such a room, though its occupants themselves do not recognize it. The nose, although an organ of excessive sensibility, and capable of perceiving the presence of offensive matters where the most delicate chemical tests fail, is nevertheless easily blunted, and what at the first impression is pre-eminently disgusting, quickly becomes less offensive to the smell; but the impure air has not departed. Two persons, occupying a bed for eight hours, impart to the sheets by insensible perspiration, and to the air by breathing, a pound of watery vapor charged with latent animal poison. When the air in other inhabited rooms is not often changed, the water of exhalation, thus loaded with impurities, condenses upon the furniture, windows, and walls, dampening their surfaces, and running down in unwholesome streams.
“Yet we are not to regard the human body as necessarily impure, or a focus of repulsive emanations. It is not by the natural and necessary working of the vital machinery that the air is poisoned, but by its artificial confinement, and the accumulation of deleterious substances.”
In speaking of the prevalent inattention to a perfect ventilation in our homes, and the need of great care in this respect, if we would secure health, Youmans also refers to the “gaseous exhalations, of every sort, that escape from our kitchens, filling the house with unpleasant odors; the imperfect combustion of oil and tallow in lighting our homes; the defective burning of gas-jets”; and the injurious effects upon health,—causing severe headaches, if nothing worse; to thedestruction to health from the poisonous influences of green paper-hangings upon the air, from which the fine particles, loosened by dusting or moving about the room, are set afloat in the atmosphere, and are often very deadly.
Then from the decayed vegetables—carelessly allowed to remain sometimes for days in our cellars—and the damp and stagnant air of cellars and basements come exhalations most destructive to health. Even dry closets and rooms in upper stories become moldy and musty if not often and thoroughly aired. “To be pure and healthy, air requires continual circulation; but cellars are rarely either ventilated or made dry by water-proof walls or floors, and are usually damp, cold, unclean, and moldy.
“The air from these basements and cellars ascends to the upper rooms in such small quantities that it does not produce immediate disease; yet it so gradually undermines the health as not to be perceptible. Many an invalid, who fancies himself benefited by the change of air in going to another residence, is really only improved by escaping the moldy atmosphere that arises from beneath his own ground-floor.”
By quoting thus largely from Professor Youmans, we bring good authority for the particular and earnest advice we have offered to our “young housekeepers” with regard to the drying and ventilating every part of their houses. We doubt not many a one, who has begun with sound health, has gradually sunk into a confirmed invalid, when the principal cause could be traced back to carelessness in this seemingly unimportant duty. And those who are thus slowly poisoned by the impure air which comes through this neglect of duty are the most ready recipients of all infectious and epidemic diseases.
It is always well to have either a bath full of water near where one sleeps, or, if no bath, a pail or tub full set into the room, as water is one of the best disinfectants, cleansingthe air by taking up all the impurities from it as fast as they arise. But this water should be let off in the morning, and fresh water used for bathing or washing; and if you need drinking water in your bedroom,—and it is well always to have it near,—do not let it remain open in your room, as it absorbs impurities, and would be unfit for drinking; but either have a lid to your pitcher or cover it over with a thin cloth, to keep dust and insects out, and set it on the ledgeoutsideyour window, in the pure, fresh air.