Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy.

Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    44/972 (page 26)
    In the room at large there was no odour of the gas. We sought for escape of gas from the burners of the chandelier and from the pipes leading to it, but without result. At last, on opening a small cupboard at the lower part of the room, in the corner to the right of the fireplace, a faint odour of gas was perceptible, for the moment, after the door of the cupboard was opened. This recess was below the book-shelves, and there was no supply of gas anywhere near to the spot. A further search was therefore cai'ried out in the basement below the libraiy, and ultimately it was discovered that a small portion of gas-pipe passed over a partition wall, between the upper part of the wall and the ceiling. On cutting down to that concealed pipe—the existence of which had not been suspected—it was found to leak, and a minute jet of gas was detected issuing from it into the space above it and into my room. Entering into the room at the base of a large set of book-shelves, it diffused behind the books and gradually into the aii-, not in sufficient quantity to be detectable by the senses, but in quite sufficient quantity to be detectable by one who happened, from the result of exceptional work, to have experimented -with it, and to have leai-ned, by this ])urely exceptional experience, the action of one of its constituents on life and liealth. Had I been a man of letters or business merely, I am sure that, failing to understand the cause of the very unpleasant symptoms which I felt, I should have consulted a physician, and in all probability should have sug- •resfced a case the nature and cause of which would have remained in extremest obscurity. I dwell on this question of carbonic oxide and its action on the body at great length, for the simple reason of its immense practical importance. We cannot be too much alive to the existence of an agent so easily generated, so readily diffused, so subtle in its action, so injurious in its effects. IRRITATIONS FROM METALLIC POISONS AND DUSTS. Irritations, leading to much irregularity of health, may be induced in the household by the diffusion through the air of it of minute particles of dust, and of certain dusts which are derived from metallic coverings on surfaces of walls, or of walls and ceilings. Whenever a room is dusty, it is unhealthy. When a room is packed with furniture that is capable of holding and retaining ordinary dust it is unhealthy. Every time such dust-holding furniture is trodden upon or pressed by being sat upon, a small cloud of dust is given off The dust may not be visible; it may require actually a beam of the sun to be able to render it, or, more properly speaking, the light, visible. But the dust ne^-^r- theless is there, and if we could irradiate oiir rooms with a strong beam of suuhght, I suspect that most of us would be startled to see what an atmosphere of dust we take into the lungs each time we breathe the air of what many would call a model house. „ . , It is fortunate for us that we are provided with an apparatus of a mmute ciliary kind, which is ever at work in the bronchial tract, sweepmg it out as it wore towards the mouth by myriads of infinitely minute brushes, and preventing