[Pure air, and its influence upon health].

Date:: [between 1800 and 1899?]

Credit: [Pure air, and its influence upon health]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

16/20 page 60

$as the company that it usually keeps—it is shunned for the sake of its bad companions. 1. Carbonic acid, when it is produced in ordinary combustion, A is not pure—it is accompanied by a still more deadly gas, carbonic J' oxide—by certain sulphur compounds, and as we know to our.q' cost in Manchester, it is often accompanied by soot and tarryi matters, which together make up that enemy of all purity, B/ac^ Smoke. I cannot stay now to reckon up all the evil that has beea-j wrought by this grievous compound, whose presence in the air o| our towns is the more to be regretted, because it has been prove<S over and over again by practical men to be quite unnecessary aiiA; easily to be prevented. Floating over our great centres o| industry like a dense cloud, it shuts off the genial light of the suiJ and deprives the inhabitants of one great stimulus to vital actiouH' It also passes with the air into their tender delicate lungs, and byT i its constant irritation, leads to the large class of diseases of the« ' respiratory organs that forms so large an item in the Registrar: i General's returns from this part of the country. It not onlyv ] descends upon our public buildings, erected at great cost, andi ■ destroys their delicate tracing and artistic decoration, and makess ' our statues of public men into ludicrous caricatures, but it like--- 1 wise penetrates into the homes of our industrial population. Itl < makes cleanliness almost an impossibility, and thus takes away}' i the inducement to that important element of social happiness andJ \ health ; and what is still more detrimental from our point of view,-, i it causes all who do make any effort at cleanliness to close their: ! doors and windows, and thus prevents fresh air of any kind fromn ! reaching the interior of the dwelling. 2. The second source of COo is still more certainly the originn i of dangerous poisonous emanations. The aqueous vapour arising^ 1 from the breath, and from the general surface of the body, contains: ( a minute proportion of animal refuse matter which has been proved,!, i by actual experiment, to be a deadly poison. I have, in a nuniberi i of instances, estimated chemically the proportion of this organic: i matter, and have shown that it contains ammoniacal compounds.% ' such as urea, resulting from the decomposition of the animal body.. : Dr. Hammond, an American, has also shown its poisonous < ( properties. He kept a small animal under a bell glass well! 1 supplied with air and free from the influence of carbonic acid gas,;, but in the space of forty minutes it died, poisoned by thee organic emanations from its own body. It is this substance;' that gives the peculiar, close, unpleasant smell which is perceived on leaving the fresh air and entering a confined space occupied$

[Pure air, and its influence upon health].

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