Natural hygiene, or, healthy blood : the essential condition of good health and how to attain it a treatise for physicians and their patients on the predisposition to and prevention of disease / by H. Lahmann.

  • Lahmann, H. (Heinrich), 1860-1905.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural hygiene, or, healthy blood : the essential condition of good health and how to attain it a treatise for physicians and their patients on the predisposition to and prevention of disease / by H. Lahmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    air in all weathers is a condition of life. But civilized man, and especially the German, dreads fresh air more than anything in the world. Before going out for a walk, he carefully ascertains from which quarter the wind is blowing; he sits during the greater part of the day in badly ventilated working or dwelling rooms, the air of which he still further vitiates with tobacco- smoke etc., and yet, he thinks that this does not do him the slightest harm. Whilst railway travelling, one has often to fight for fresh air and the opening of a window, even in a full compartment where the air is thoroughly vitiated in a hour. Peihaps the best way to overcome this populär prejudice would be occasionally to smash a window. Nowadays it may also be useful to say: “But, ladies and gentlemen, you don’t mean to say that you wish to breathe my tubercle bacilli?” Nobody seems to mind inhaling his neighbour’s breath, although this breath is really a gaseous excreme nt; for most of the bowel gases are absorbed by the blood-vessels of the bowels and are excreted through the lungs. And this foul stuff the people think more healthy than fresh life-giving air blowing m through an open window. During the night these people sleep with closed Windows, for night air is dangerous; and after a couple of hours, they begin to breath the air infected by the,r own excretions. An offensive, disgusting