Army sanitation : a course of lectures delivered at the school of military engineering, Chatham / by Sir Douglas Galton.

  • Galton, Douglas (Douglas Strutt), Sir, 1822-1899.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Army sanitation : a course of lectures delivered at the school of military engineering, Chatham / by Sir Douglas Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    53/148 (page 41)
    quantity not injurious in itself. With respect to these questions, however, it must be observed that in recent experiments it appears to have been shown that a relation of organic matter to carbonic acid in outside air showed a high carbonic acid accom- panied by a high organic matter, and vice versa. This, however, is by no means invariably the case. Moreover, the organic matter in outside air has a far wider range of variations than carbonic acid ; for whereas the carbonic acid seldom passes beyond the limits of 2 to 6 vols, per 10,000, the organic matter has been found to vary in some cases from a quantity too small to estimate to as much as will require for oxidation about 16 vols, of oxygen per 1,000,000 vols, of air. Notwithstanding this, however, on the whole the test of C02 present in the air may be fairly accepted as a test of other impurities. In judging of the amount of impurity which may be allowed in an inhabited air-space, the sense of smell, when carefully educated, affords the best indication of the relative purity and impurity of the air. The accompanying table, obtained from results of experi- ments communicated by Dr. De Chaumont to the Eoyal Society, shows the conclusions at which he arrived from a very large number of observations on the air of barracks and hospitals. The method employed in judging of the quality of the air was to enter directly from the open air into the room in which the air was to be judged, after having been at least fifteen minutes in the open air. It will be seen how closely the state of the room, as detected by the sense of smell, agrees with that which would be expected from the carbonic acid as shown by analysis. Sense of Smell Fresh A little smell .... Close or disagreeable smell. Very close, or offensive and op-l pressive smell j Extremely close, when the sense] of smell can no longer differ- I entiate J Temperature In Air- space 62-85 62-85 64- 67 65- 15 65-05 Excess over Outer Air 5-38 8-00 12- 91 13- 87 13-19 Vapour T Excess Mr- over stace 0uter space Air 4-629 4-823 4- 909 5- 078 5-194 0-344 0- 687 1- 072 1-409 1-319 Carbonic AcH per 1.0U0 Volumes In Room 0-5999 0- 8004 1- 0027 1-2335 1-2818 Excess over Outer Air 0-1830 0-3894 0-6322 0-8432 0-8817 In these experiments Dr. De Chaumont takes -0002 of car- bonic acid per cubic foot as the standard of impurity, in addition to -0004 carbonic acid per cubic foot as the normal amount of C02 in the outer air. The experiments were made in barracks and in hospitals, and a result came out from the experiments confirmatory of the opinion that, in the case of sick men, more air is required to keep the air-space pure to the senses than is necessary in the