The unknown factors in the ill effects of bad ventilation / Yandell Henderson.

  • Henderson, Yandell, 1873-1944.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The unknown factors in the ill effects of bad ventilation / Yandell Henderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE UNKNOWN FACTORS IN THE ILL EFFECTS OF BAD VENTI- LATION. Yandell Hendebson, Ph. D., Professor of Physiology, Yale Medifal School, New Haven, Conn. It is one of the cardinal principles of modern hygiene that bad ventilation of dwellings, factories, shops, and cars is detrimental to health. Fresh air has in fact become almost a fetich. The open- air treatment of tuberculosis is assuming each year a more important part in medicine. The marked improvement in cases of pneumonia j obtained by putting them in the open air is testified to almost uni- } versally by those who have tried it. In view of these facts, the statement which I am about to make sounds almost unbelievable. I The statement is this: We have really, at the present time, no ade- Jquate scientific explanation for the health-stimulating properties of J fresh air and the health-destroying influences of bad ventilation. In such a statement it is necessary to limit the meaning to the j effects of the air itself and not to include the effects of dust, the effects of deprivation of sunlight, the effects of sedentary habits, long hours of work, and other unsanitary conditions. Even when I all of these elements are left out, however, it is clear that close- crowded, ill-ventilated rooms act upon the majority of persons and produce immediate ill effects. Those who are particularly sensitive are liable to headaches, nausea, giddiness, and even vomiting or fainting. To what are these effects due? It is my purpose to-day to consider briefly our knowledge, or rather our. ignorance, of the | subject, and to make a suggestion along a somewhat new line. In this problem scientific progress has in the main served only to eliminate possible explanations. When Lavoisier discovered that breathing consists in the absorption of oxj'gen for the vital com- bustion, and the elimination of the carbonic acid which the combus- bustion pi’oduces, the problem seemed to have been solved. The manifest answer was “ lack of oxygen.” Even at the present time it is quite common to hear the expression that “ the air of a close and | crowded room has been deprived of its oxygen.” The analogies of the kerosene lamp smoking because of an insufficiency of air supply or of a fire in a stove extinguished by closed dampers have become firmly fixed in the popular mind. Every school child is taught that a mouse sealed up in a small glass jar dies in a short time. It is un- necessary to review scientific investigation at any length, however, to prove that none of these facts have really any bearing on the R<®rlnted from the Transactions of the Fifteenth International Congress on Hygiene and Demography.