Architecture in relation to hygiene.
- International Congress of Hygiene and Demography
- Date:
- 1892
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Architecture in relation to hygiene. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![The air which is propelled into the building must be drawn from a situation untainted by obnoxious surroundings. The trunks and tines must be carefully calculated in proportion to the size of each room. Many failures in ventilation are due to ignorance or neglect of this. Separate trunks for day and night service should be arranged, with simple shutter valves for closing the one and opening the other at morning and night. The extraction tines should communicate with upcast shafts of some height, sav in towers, to carry Well away the vitiated air. The fresh warmed air should enter the rooms near the top, and the vitiated air be withdrawn near the floor; experience having taught us that this is right; for, if the positions of inlets and outlets were reversed, some deleterious gases would not readily ascend to escape at the top, while the warm air, entering at the bottom, would quickly ascend aud pass out without mixing thoroughly with the surrounding atmosphere, as it must do if driven in at the top, and be allowed to spread over the whole surface of room, gradually falling as more air is forced in above it, and vitiated air extracted below. When ventilation is required without heat, the fan may be used to drive in air at its normal temperature, the stagnant atmosphere in the rooms being of necessity displaced either through the extraction lines or the open windows. One great advantage of this system is, that heat can only be obtained in conjunction with ventilation, which is not always the case with steam or hot water pipes in the wards, where a close stuffy heat is generally the result. T cannot better illustrate the results of this system than by quoting from a recent report of the Superintendent of the Nottingham Borough Asylum, where I have lately introduced it in the new male annexe. “ So efficiently has the heating been done that a temperature of “ (50 degrees has been easily maintained throughout the wards without *• the aid of any tires, and this when the thermometer outside registered “ 10° of frost. The dormitories and single rooms are just as easily “ warmed at night. “ Those who are acquainted with the working of an asylum will “ readily imagine the immense comfort of being able to do without fires “ in the wards. There is no crowding round the fireplaces, and no “ quarrelling for the best seats, but the patients sit scattered about at the “ windows and at the tables, just as in summer. It was expected that “ there would be some grumbling at first at the absence of fires, but, “ strange to say, I don’t think I heard a single complaint. Another “ great advantage this system of heating has over most others is, the is entire absence from the rooms of all pipes and other heating surfaces. “ The ventilation is also equally successful. It is very observable •• in the dormitories and single rooms ; l lie air in these appears to be •• almost as pure in the morning when the patients get up as in the ■■ evening when they go to bed.” i ]). itail. j,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28045415_0157.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
