Every room in the building had one such flue, with an opening into it
at the floor and at the ceiling. It is needless to say that the whole
concern was entirely useless. Had these flues been of proper
proportions, and properly divided, the desired ventilation would have
been secured."
And this piece of ignorant folly was perpetrated in the midst of learned
professors, teaching the laws of fluids and the laws of health.
A learned physician also thus wrote to the author of this chapter:
"The subject of the ventilation of our dwelling-houses is one of the
most important questions of our times. How many thousands are victims
to a slow suicide and murder, the chief instrument of which is want
of ventilation! How few are aware of the fact that every person, every
day, vitiates thirty-three hogsheads of the air, and that each
inspiration takes one fifth of the oxygen, and returns as much carbonic
acid, from every pair of lungs in a room! How few understand that after
air has received ten per cent of this fatal gas, if drawn into the
lungs, it can no longer take carbonic acid from the capillaries! No
wonder there is so much impaired nervous and muscular energy, so much
scrofula, tubercles, catarrhs, dyspepsia, and typhoid diseases.
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