The Guardian Volume 12-13 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 Excerpt: ...sacrificing, how many hundreds of thousands are now suffering from fevers and other maladies which have their origin in the inhaling of noxious air, the excitement and alarm on this subject would be unprecedented. They are poisoning themselves by wholesale, and two-thirds of them have no suspicion of the fact. Our dwellings are often charnel houses. The very first necessity of every living beiug--pure air to breathe--is rarely regarded in their construction. The air actually inhaled steals in at crevices and crannies, felon-like because it cannot be shut out. Only the defects of our Architecture prevent our dying of a vitiated, poisoned, mephitic atmosphere, from which the vital element has long been exhausted. Most men, including architects, would seem ignorant of the fact that the atmosphere is a combination of different gases, only one of which is wholesome and life-giving, and that it is consumed in the lungs upon inhalation, leaving the residue to be expelled as a poison. The Church, lecture-room, or other structure which is filled, or even half filled, with human beings, and its doors and windows closed, while no express provision has been made for its ventilation, very soon becomes a slaughterpen, in which no rational being should tarry another minute. Few churches or other public edifices are sufficiently ventilated, while a large majority of them are utterly unworthy of toleration, and ought to be closed by the public authorities until they shall have been rendered fit for their contemplated use, and no longer nurseries of disease and antechambers to the tomb. Our manufactories are nearly all disgraceful to their owners and architects in regard to ventilation. They are often divided into rooms less than ten feet high, each thickly stowed with human...