We now pass to other evidence affecting the poison that escapes from lungs and skin. We all know that a room is offensive when many people are crowded into it; we know the unpleasantness of a bedroom before the air has freely entered it; we know how disagreeable the breath and the clothes can be; we know that animals die when submitted to air that has been breathed, even when the carbonic acid has been removed;[1] we know how necessary is the continuous flood of pure air in hospitals—we have heard it stated that this much freer admission of air is rendering unnecessary the antiseptic treatment of wounds; how by treating men in the open air and in tents recoveries have been made quicker and better than in hospital;[2] and how in the case of the Austrian army "the most severe maladies ran their course much more mildly" in the free air, while the recovery was quicker and more perfect (Ransome, Health Lectures, 1875-'78, page 151). So also Dr. Parkes says (page 181) in cases of blood-poisoning, the best treatment is complete exposure to open air; so also in typhus; and in a less degree in enteric fever, small-pox, and plague. "This complete exposure," he adds, "of patients to air is the most important mode of treatment, before even diet and medicines."[3] In
- ↑ If we remember rightly, both Parkes and D. Galton (Our Homes) refer to these experiments—a mouse dying in forty-five minutes when submitted to air treated in this manner. Dr. Richardson also refers in one of his works to experiments, which were conducted by himself, and which are more fully described in a report to the British Association. Dr. Richardson had formerly a theory of "devitalized oxygen," but we suppose he would probably consider now that it was a truer statement to say that this special poison had not been removed from the air which the creatures breathed. Experiments of the same kind have also been made on rabbits in Paris. One of our number (A. H.) adds the following remark: "Though I think probably it would be quite misleading to speak of the experiments upon the mouse, and the experiments conducted by Dr. Richardson as in any sense cruel, yet, speaking my own personal opinion, I remain opposed to all such experiments. While I admit the neat and convenient evidence often supplied by them, and also admit that difficulties of method would at first exist, were they renounced, yet I think the wealth of materials that exist on all sides of us for pushing forward knowledge is so vast, that however convenient these experiments may be, they are not really necessary, while perhaps a keener perceptive sense in tracing out the meaning of the things of common life, which are of such vital importance, would be developed, as investigators renounced this particular method. In writing this, however, I am governed by the moral side of the question, which is the one that, apart from all other considerations, determines my view."
- ↑ The case of the hospital is, of course, a complicated case, and it might be disputed how far its evidence can be used for our purpose.
- ↑ "When our health commissioners were sent out to the Crimea to examine the heavy mortality among soldiers in the hospitals, their first act was to use their sticks to break
tissues, but only diseased tissues—the disease implying alteration of the tissue. All these cases are cases, doubtless, of an extreme kind; they imply the abnormal formation of poisons to a serious extent, sufficient to constitute illness; but it may well be that there are many less serious formations of abnormal poisons, which, though not sufficient to produce illness, yet cause much discomfort, and which-are the consequence of the vitiated state of the blood, arising from the habitual breathing of impure air.
