The cancer problem : a statistical study / by C.E. Green.

  • Q133635875
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The cancer problem : a statistical study / by C.E. Green. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cases in which the occupants had been less than three years in the house, and also those of men who went out to business all day. For a long time I could find nothing in common between these houses, which were of all descriptions, from isolated country cottages to large suburban mansions and city flats, until it occurred to me that many of them had appliances on the chimneys, evidently designed to encourage and increase the draught. A further inquiry elicited the fact which one would have expected, viz. that in nearly all of the houses some of the rooms were smoky. This question of the relation of chimneys and of smoke to cancer has never been previously referred to, but I believe that it furnishes one of the keys to the problem. The products of combustion in a room must either go up the chimney or out into the room. If the chimnev is defective the latter result ensues. A proper chimney should carry all these products out into the atmosphere. Wherever cowls or other appliances are placed on the chimney heads it is a proof that the smoke has in that chimney a tendency to come out into the room instead of being drawn up. It must be borne in mind also that fumes may be coming out into a room although no smoke