Lewis W. Leeds

“ Now, having learned the necessity for pure, fresh air, and studied the general laws governing its circulation, let us apply these principles to every-day life. To every-day life ? I should say every-hour life—nay, every moment of our lives; for twenty times every minute of our entire life, from the cradle to the grave, do we breathe what ought to be pure air. ”

“ I have no new patent idea to present to you, which shall secure to you at all times perfectly pure air, without any further trouble on your part. There are no two constitutions precisely alike, any more than there are two human faces, or two handwritings, and there are no two hours in our entire life in which all the physical conditions of our body are precisely the same. ”

“ And how unmistakably do all these investigations prove what we ought to have known and accepted without a moment's hesitation, that the Creator, who has made such vast and such minute provisions for supplying every living creature with a constant and copious supply of fresh air, and has made it so important for their existence that they cannot live a moment without it, has made the air at night just as pure and wholesome as in the day-time. ”

“ The smaller one had the window open, so to speak; we will imagine the candle in the large chamber to be a consumptive patient who thought the room so large he did not need the windows open. Remember, therefore, that no matter how small your room is, if there is a constant circulation of fresh air through it, the lamp of your life will burn brightly; but if ever so large and air-tight, your life will soon be extinguished. ”

“ I now look upon fresh air as a friend: I even sleep with an open window. I am persuaded that no common air from without is so unwholesome as the air within a close room that has been often breathed and not changed. ”

“ I have been in hospitals where I have seen much of both. They may slay their thousands, but foul air its tens of thousands. And it is only when I get to my room, where I shall probably sleep to-night with two windows well open, allowing the unobstructed breezes of half a mile of open country to sweep through my chamber, that I shall feel entirely secure from the contaminating influences of foul air, and enjoy to its full extent the greatest of God's temporal blessings to man—pure air. ”

“ As steam has become such a common article in all large buildings, both for power and as a convenient means of distributing heat, most large buildings are thus heated; and as a perfectly air-tight building can be very easily heated thus, and as most persons are too ignorant or too careless to provide a separate and distinct supply of fresh air simply for ventilation alone, the consequence is, that this system, thus so shamefully abused, is probably drying up more talent and killing more business men in our cities than any other system in existence. ”

“ Motion, motion is the great desideratum in summer. You have all noticed, no doubt, how pleasant it is to go into a cool room, like a parlor, that has been kept shut up on a hot summer's day; but in a short time it begins to feel oppressive, and it is more comfortable to [36] have the windows open, and a circulation of air, even if it should be a little hotter than the stagnant cool air.
Never sleep with closed windows in summer. It is in winter, however, that the greatest care is required in providing a constant supply of pure air. ”

“ The reason why cities are so much more unhealthy than the country, is not because the air in the street is so much more impure, but because the houses are so built together that this vast ocean of air cannot get at and through them to purify them as it does in the houses in the country, and the reason why Philadelphia is so much more healthy than its neighbor, New York, is because the houses here are built more like those of the country, so that the air can sweep all around them, and sometimes through them. ”

“ I have not the statistics before me, but I should not be surprised to learn that that singular race of beings that live in the sewers of Paris were as healthy, if not even more so, than the operatives of some of those exquisitely beautiful, clean, air-tight factories of New England. ”

“ We must accustom our minds, therefore, to consider air a real substance, and that it is as totally unable to move itself, or to be moved, without power, as water or coal. It requires just as much power to move a ton of air from the cellar to the second story, as it does a ton of coal.
Heat is the great moving power of air. Those whose attention has not been especially directed to the subject of the amount of power exerted by the sun's rays upon the earth, have little conception of its magnitude. ”

“ Air does become heated, but in a different manner; it is heated by each individual particle or atom coming in immediate contact with some hotter substance. See what a wonderful provision for creating a constant circulation of the air. The sun's rays pass through it without heating it, but they heat the surface of the earth at the very bottom of the ocean of air; this, in its turn, heats the air by each individual atom coming in immediate contact with these hotter substances, expanding them so that they must rise, thus enabling the colder and heavier particles to rush in and take their places. ”

“ Instead of averting the cholera by avoiding fresh air at night, the experience of the last summer seems to have taught us just the contrary; for whilst most physicians admit that they are still unable to explain satisfactorily, the cause or remedy for this most mysterious disease, that has within a lifetime carried its fifty millions of victims from time to eternity, they almost universally believe it is a foul air poison, and they have as yet found no surer prevention than pure air. ”

“ The rays of heat fall upon our bodies, heating them, while it leaves the air cool, concentrated and invigorating for breathing. The bright glow of an open fire has a very cheering and animating effect. It produces a very agreeable and healthy excitement.
It is not improbable that future careful investigations may prove that there is an important change takes place in the electric or ozonic condition of air as it passes over, or in contact with, hot iron, which does not occur to the air of a room heated by the open fire. ”

“ Thus, while recognizing the great value and importance of ventilation in a general way, they give the most definite instructions for thoroughly and most effectually preventing it, because it is at night, especially when we are asleep and cannot move from the air, that the air ought to be moved from us.
The frequent recommendations to avoid "night air" are simply recommendations to smother ourselves to death, because the foul, poisonous exhalations from our lungs cannot be removed from our chambers without being replaced by night air; there is no other fresh air at night but night air. ”

“ If we breathe one single breath, in the entire day, of impure air, it will weaken us, deduct from our capacity to attend to our daily duties, and shorten our lives, in exact mathematical proportion to the amount of impurity in that one single breath. Now, we breathe twenty times every minute, twelve hundred times every hour, twenty-eight thousand times every day, and nothing but absolute and perfectly pure air answers the exact requirements of perfect health. ”

“ In summer, as I have said, the air moves horizontally, and then windows and doors are the great means of ventilation; but as cold weather approaches, we must keep the windows shut, excepting when in bed. In winter, therefore, we must resort to flues for the means of creating a circulation, and for conveying the air from one part to another. A flue is simply a passage—a communication—for air of different temperatures. A flue has no power to create a draught. If the air within is colder, it will have the power to fall ; if warmer, it will be driven up. ”

“ I therefore believe, that a family living in the filthiest street in our city, if they were careful to have a constant current of air from that street, filthy as it was, passing through the house at all times, night and day, would be more healthy, other things being equal, than a family spending their winters in the finest house, if kept air-tight, in the healthiest location in the city, and their summer in the country, especially if they were always careful to exclude the night air from their bed-rooms. ”

“ The present system of each man keeping up separate fires all over his house is as crude, and extravagant, and unnecessary as it would be for every man to make his own gas or have his own well for water.
Where a steam furnace is used, two-thirds of the heating surface should be put below the floor and fresh air brought into it, and from there conducted to the rooms through large pipes. This warmed air should be let into the room at the floor, and an opening into an exhaust flue, two-thirds the size of the inlet, should be provided at the floor for the escape of the foul air. ”

“ Man has great endurance—struggles long and hard; but if closely confined, will be poisoned to death in one night, as in the case of those confined in the celebrated Black Hole of Calcutta, and on board of vessels where they have been confined below decks in time of a storm. Others will struggle on longer, as in the case of the two thousand and twenty-six who died of consumption last year, in Philadelphia.
And now let us see in which part of the room this deadly poison of our breath is mostly found. ”

“ You know the lower part of the house is closed up tight to keep out the robbers, and if great care is not taken to give an abundant supply of fresh air to your chambers otherwise, it will be drawn up through the hall out of your kitchen and cellar, and as the cook has left the range lid off and shut the dampers, you will have a suffocating smell of gas all over the house. But the worst danger of all is the air that may be drawn in from an untrapped sewer or cesspool. ”

“ It is not in the external atmosphere that we must look for the greatest impurities, but it is in our own houses that the blighting, withering curse of foul air is to be found. We are thus led to the conclusion that our own breath is our greatest enemy. ”

“ Your blood is thoroughly poisoned before your breakfast is digested; for your breakfast will no more digest without pure air than the coal in your stove will burn without it. You are subjected to headache, dyspepsia, and a half dozen other aches and pains, and are tired out long before night. And thus you are killed long before you would die if you breathed pure air only. ”

“ The first want of every living being is fresh air, and unless the human lungs are supplied with such air constantly at the rate of from ten to thirty cubic feet every minute, by night as well as by day, perfect health and vigor cannot be preserved. Then, too, there are exhaled from the surface of the body and from the lungs, such quantities of waste organic matter, which tend to immediate putridity, that it, together with the carbonic acid, would keep the human body immersed in a deadly vapor of these exhalations, were not fresh air supplied. ”

“ Ventilation is no less a purifier than water.
"It cleanses by oxidizing and drying. Keep your houses open and your windows hoisted during the day in good weather, and from ten o'clock until four in the afternoon, that they may have the full benefit of sunlight and free circulation of pure air. During the remaining hours of the day, and through the night, keep the windows closed. When the weather is cool or rainy, be sure to keep a fire in the house, in order to prevent dampness, or in sparsely settled neighborhoods, or in the suburbs of the city, have a fire in the house the entire season." ”

“ A hot water furnace disturbs the natural conditions of the air the least, and, on that account, is a very healthy means of artificially heating air. But they are necessarily expensive, and so few persons really appreciate the value of pure air, that but few will go to the expense of introducing them. It is a mistake to suppose that they do not dry the air, so to speak. You cannot elevate the temperature without increasing the capacity for moisture. A hot water furnace, therefore, requires the artificial evaporation of water to give the warmed air its true hygrometric condition. ”

“ What a smell comes from the car as the door is opened! and unless I wish to incur the displeasure, or provoke the indignation, of almost every passenger, by opening a window, I am obliged to sit in that foul, offensive atmosphere, and breathe the poisonous exhalations from my own lungs, and that from dozens of others, some of them, it may be, badly diseased, (most persons' lungs are diseased in this country, from breathing foul air, and many other diseases besides consumption are produced thereby.) ”

“ And now you see the lights shine, and the cheeks glow as brightly as would those of our young ladies could they be persuaded to go skating, or take a five mile walk every day, rain or shine, and sleep with the windows open, and never ride in any of our cars, or go to parties or any other public gatherings unless the buildings where they are held are well ventilated. ”

“ In conclusion, allow me to urge upon you to examine your furnace this evening or to-morrow morning, and if there is no fresh air box communicating with the external atmosphere, go to the nearest carpenter's shop before going to your business, and get him to come at the earliest possible moment and put in a good large one, and if he asks you where you want the damper in the cold air box, tell him you don't want any.
Dampers in cold air boxes are handy things to have in the house, when used properly, but, like fire-arms, are very dangerous if you do not understand them. ”

“ People will not bear them. Let us see if we can accommodate them. Put on the roof, and here comes this dreadful current again down the ventilating flue. Well, ventilating flues have the name of being great humbugs. Let us shut them up. There are your poor consumptive patients—there they go, you see. One-half dead already, and the rest will soon follow if we cannot rescue them. Let us open the flue again. See how they brighten up as the fresh air comes in. There is no use of disputing about it, you must have a current of fresh air coming into the house or you will surely die. ”

“ In the single State of Massachusetts, an estimate exhibits an annual loss of over sixty millions of dollars by the premature death of persons over fifteen years of age.
It is estimated that a few only of the principal items of expense incurred by preventable sickness in the city of New York amount to over five millions of dollars annually.
And if it is thought that Philadelphia is exempt from such enormous unnecessary expense, just glance at the report of the Board of Health for last year, and see how the deaths from disease of the lungs largely exceed those from any other disease. ”