III.
A HEALTHFUL HOME.
WHEN "the wise woman buildeth her house," the first consideration
will be the health of the inmates. The first and most indispensable
requisite for health is pure air, both by day and night.
If the parents of a family should daily withhold from their children
a large portion of food needful to growth and health, and every night
should administer to each a small dose of poison, it would be called
murder of the most hideous character. But it is probable that more than
one half of this nation are doing that very thing. The murderous
operation is perpetrated daily and nightly, in our parlors, our
bed-rooms, our kitchens, our school-rooms; and even our churches are no
asylum from the barbarity. Nor can we escape by our railroads, for even
there the same dreadful work is going on.
The only palliating circumstance is the ignorance of those who
commit these wholesale murders. As saith the Scripture, "The people do
perish for lack of knowledge." And it is this lack of knowledge which it
is woman's special business to supply, in first training her household
to intelligence as the indispensable road to virtue and happiness.
The above statements will be illustrated by some account of the
manner in which the body is supplied with healthful nutriment. There are
two modes of nourishing the body, one is by food and the other by air.
In the
stomach the food is dissolved, and the nutritious portion is absorbed by
the blood, and then is carried by blood-vessels to the lungs, where it
receives oxygen from the air we breathe. This oxygen is as necessary to
the nourishment of the body as the food for the stomach. In a full-grown
man weighing one hundred and fifty-four pounds, one hundred and eleven
pounds consists of oxygen, obtained chiefly from the air we breathe.
Thus the lungs feed the body with oxygen, as really as the stomach
supplies the other food required.
The lungs occupy the upper portion of the body from the collar-bone
to the lower ribs, and between their two lobes is placed the heart.
 
Fig. 22 shows the position of the lungs, though not the exact shape.
On the right hand is the exterior of one of the lobes, and on the left
hand are seen the branching tubes of the interior, through which the air
we breathe passes to the exceedingly minute air-cells of which the lungs
chiefly consist. Fig. 23 shows the outside of a cluster of these
air-cells, and Fig. 24 is the inside view. The lining membrane of each
air-cell is covered by a network of minute blood-vessels called
capillaries, which, magnified
several hundred times, appear in the microscope as at Fig. 25. Every
air-cell has a blood-vessel that brings blood from the heart, which
meanders through its capillaries till it reaches another blood-vessel
that carries it back to the heart, as seen in Fig. 26. In this passage
of the blood through these capillaries, the air in the air-cell imparts
its oxygen to the blood, and receives in exchange carbonic acid and
watery vapor. These latter are expired at every breath into the
atmosphere.
  
By calculating the number of air cells in a small portion of the
lungs, under a microscope, it is ascertained that there are no less than
eighteen million of these wonderful little purifiers and feeders of the
body. By their ceaseless ministries, every grown person receives, each
day, thirty-three hogsheads of air into the lungs to nourish and
vitalize every part of the body, and also to carry off its impurities.
 But the heart has a most important agency in this operation. Fig. 27
is a diagram of the heart, which is placed between the two lobes of the
lungs. The right side of the heart receives the dark and impure blood,
which is loaded with carbonic acid. It is brought from every point of
the body by branching veins that unite in the upper and the lower
vena cava, which discharge into
the right side of the heart. This impure blood passes to the capillaries
of the air-cells in the lungs, where it gives off carbonic acid, and,
taking oxygen from the air, then
returns to the left side of the heart, from whence it is sent out
through the aorta and its myriad
branching arteries to every part of the body.
[Illustration: A diagram of the human heart, with the functions of
the various chambers described by labels. The right side of the heart is
shaded gray, while the left side remains white.]
When the upper portion of the heart contracts, it forces both the
pure blood from the lungs, and the impure blood from the body, through
the valves marked V, V, into the lower part. When the lower portion
contracts, it closes the valves and forces the impure blood into the
lungs on one side, and also on the other side forces the purified blood
through the aorta and arteries to all parts of the body.
As before stated, the lungs consist chiefly of air-cells, the walls
of which are lined with minute blood-vessels; and we know that in every
man these air-cells number eighteen
millions.
Now every beat of the heart sends two ounces of blood into the
minute, hair-like blood-vessels, called capillaries, that line these
air-cells, where the air in the air-cells gives its oxygen to the blood,
and in its place receives carbonic acid. This gas is then expired by the
lungs into the surrounding atmosphere.
Thus, by this powerful little organ, the heart, no less than
twenty-eight pounds of blood, in a common-sized man, is sent three times
every hour through the lungs,
giving out carbonic acid and watery vapor, and receiving the
life-inspiring oxygen.
Whether all this blood shall convey the nourishing and invigorating
oxygen to every part of the body, or return unrelieved of carbonic acid,
depends entirely on the pureness of the atmosphere that is breathed.
Every time we think or feel, this mental action dissolves some
particles of the brain and nerves, which pass into the blood to be
thrown out of the body through the lungs and skin. In like manner,
whenever we move any muscle, some of its particles decay and pass away.
It is in the capillaries, which are all over the body, that this change
takes place. The blood-vessels that convey the pure blood from the
heart, divide into myriads of little branches that terminate in
capillary vessels like those lining the air-cells of the lungs. The
blood meanders through these minute capillaries, depositing the oxygen
taken from the lungs and the food of the stomach, and receiving in
return the decayed matter, which is chiefly carbonic acid.
This carbonic acid is formed by the union of oxygen with
carbon or
charcoal, which forms a large
portion of the body. Watery vapor is also formed in the capillaries by
the union of oxygen with the hydrogen contained in the food and drink
that nourish the body.
During this process in the capillaries, the bright red blood of the
arteries changes to the purple blood of the veins, which is carried back
to the heart, to be sent to the lungs as before described. A portion of
the oxygen received in the lungs unites with the dissolved food sent
from the stomach into the blood, and no food can nourish the body till
it has received a proper supply of oxygen in the lungs. At every breath
a half-pint of blood receives its needed oxygen in the lungs, and at the
same time gives out an equal amount of carbonic acid and water.
Now, this carbonic acid, if received into the lungs, undiluted by
sufficient air, is a fatal poison, causing
certain death. When it is mixed with only a small portion of air, it is
a slow poison, which imperceptibly undermines the constitution.
We now can understand how it is that all who live in houses where
the breathing of inmates has deprived the air of oxygen, and loaded it
with carbonic acid, may truly be said to be poisoned and starved;
poisoned with carbonic acid, and starved for want of oxygen.
Whenever oxygen unites with carbon to form carbonic acid, or with
hydrogen to form water, heat is generated. Thus it is that a kind of
combustion is constantly going on in the capillaries all over the body.
It is this burning of the decaying portions of the body that causes
animal heat. It is a process similar to that which takes place when
lamps and candles are burning. The oil and tallow, which are chiefly
carbon and hydrogen, unite with the oxygen of the air and form carbonic
acid and watery vapor, producing heat during the process. So in the
capillaries all over the body, the carbon and hydrogen supplied to the
blood by the stomach, unite with the oxygen gained in the lungs, and
cause the heat which is diffused all over the body.
The skin also performs an office, similar to that of the lungs. In
the skin of every adult there are no less than seven million minute
perspirating tubes, each one fourth of an inch long. If all these were
united in one length, they would extend twenty-eight miles. These minute
tubes are lined with capillary blood-vessels, which are constantly
sending out not only carbonic acid, but other gases and particles of
decayed matter. The skin and lungs together, in one day and night, throw
out three quarters of a pound of charcoal as carbonic acid, beside other
gases and water.
While the bodies of men and animals are filling the air with the
poisonous carbonic acid, and using up the life-giving oxygen, the trees
and plants are performing an
exactly contrary process; for they are absorbing carbonic acid and
giving out oxygen. Thus, by a wonderful arrangement of the beneficent
Creator, a constant equilibrium is preserved. What animals use is
provided by vegetables, and what vegetables require is furnished by
animals; and all goes on, day and night, without care or thought of man.
The human race in its infancy was placed in a mild and genial clime,
where each separate family dwelt in tents, and breathed, both day and
night, the pure air of heaven. And when they became scattered abroad to
colder climes, the open fire-place secured a full supply of pure air.
But civilization has increased economies and conveniences far ahead of
the knowledge needed by the common people for their healthful use. Tight
sleeping-rooms, and close, air-tight stoves, are now starving and
poisoning more than one half of this nation. It seems impossible to make
people know their danger. And the remedy for this is the light of
knowledge and intelligence which it is woman's special mission to
bestow, as she controls and regulates the ministries of a home.
The poisoning process is thus exhibited in Mrs. Stowe's "House and
Home Papers," and can not be recalled too often:
"No other gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with
such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as
this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if we had a preacher who
understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most
orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister
gets up in a crowded lecture-room, where the mephitic air almost makes
the candles burn blue, and bewails the deadness of the church--the
church the while, drugged by the poisoned air, growing sleepier and
sleepier, though they feel dreadfully wicked for being so.
"Little Jim, who, fresh from his afternoon's ramble in
the fields, last evening said his prayers dutifully, and lay down to
sleep in a most Christian frame, this morning sits up in bed with his
hair bristling with crossness, strikes at his nurse, and declares he
won't say his prayers--that he don't want to be good. The simple
difference is, that the child, having slept in a close box of a room,
his brain all night fed by poison, is in a mild state of moral insanity.
Delicate women remark that it takes them till eleven or twelve o'clock
to get up their strength in the morning. Query, Do they sleep with
closed windows and doors, and with heavy bed-curtains?
"The houses built by our ancestors were better ventilated in certain
respects than modern ones, with all their improvements. The great
central chimney, with its open fire-places in the different rooms,
created a constant current which carried off foul and vitiated air. In
these days, how common is it to provide rooms with only a flue for a
stove! This flue is kept shut in summer, and in winter opened only to
admit a close stove, which burns away the vital portion of the air quite
as fast as the occupants breathe it away. The scaling up of fire-places
and introduction of air-tight stoves may, doubtless, be a saving of
fuel; it saves, too, more than that; in thousands and thousands of cases
it has saved people from all further human wants, and put an end forever
to any needs short of the six feet of narrow earth which are man's only
inalienable property. In other words, since the invention of air-tight
stoves, thousands have died of slow poison.
"It is a terrible thing to reflect upon, that our northern winters
last from November to May, six long months, in which many families
confine themselves to one room, of which every window-crack has been
carefully calked to make it air-tight, where an air-tight stove keeps
the atmosphere at a temperature between eighty and ninety; and the
inmates, sitting there with all their winter clothes on, become
enervated both by the heat and by the poisoned
air, for which there is no escape but the occasional opening of a door.
"It is no wonder that the first result of all this is such a
delicacy of skin and lungs that about half the inmates are obliged to
give up going into the open air during the six cold months, because they
invariably catch cold if they do so. It is no wonder that the cold
caught about the first of December has by the first of March become a
fixed consumption, and that the opening of the spring, which ought to
bring life and health, in so many cases brings death.
"We hear of the lean condition in which the poor bears emerge from
their six months' wintering, during which they subsist on the fat which
they have acquired the previous summer. Even so, in our long winters,
multitudes of delicate people subsist on the daily waning strength which
they acquired in the season when windows and doors were open, and fresh
air was a constant luxury. No wonder we hear of spring fever and spring
biliousness, and have thousands of nostrums for clearing the blood in
the spring. All these things are the pantings and palpitations of a
system run down under slow poison, unable to get a step further.
"Better, far better, the old houses of the olden time, with their
great roaring fires, and their bed-rooms where the snow came in and the
wintry winds whistled. Then, to be sure, you froze your back while you
burned your face, your water froze nightly in your pitcher, your breath
congealed in ice-wreaths on the blankets, and you could write your name
on the pretty snow-wreath that had sifted in through the window-cracks.
But you woke full of life and vigor, you looked out into the whirling
snow-storms without a shiver, and thought nothing of plunging through
drifts as high as your head on your daily way to school. You jingled in
sleighs, you snow-balled, you lived in snow like a snow-bird, and your
blood coursed and tingled, in full tide of good, merry, real life,
through your veins--
none of the slow-creeping, black blood which clogs the brain and lies
like a weight on the vital wheels!"
To illustrate the effects of this poison, the horrors of "the Black
Hole of Calcutta" are often referred to, where one hundred and forty-six
men were crowded into a room only eighteen feet square with but two
small windows, and in a hot climate. After a night of such horrible
torments as chill the blood to read, the morning showed a pile of one
hundred and twenty-three dead men and twenty-three half dead that were
finally recovered only to a life of weakness and suffering.
In another case, a captain of the steamer Londonderry, in 1848, from
sheer ignorance of the consequences, in a storm, shut up his passengers
in a tight room without windows. The agonies, groans, curses, and
shrieks that followed were horrible. The struggling mass finally burst
the door, and the captain found seventy-two of the two hundred already
dead; while others, with blood starting from their eyes and ears, and
their bodies in convulsions, were restored, many only to a life of
sickness and debility.
It is ascertained by experiments that breathing bad air tends so to
reduce all the processes of the body, that less oxygen is demanded and
less carbonic acid sent out. This, of course, lessens the vitality and
weakens the constitution; and it accounts for the fact that a person of
full health, accustomed to pure air, suffers from bad air far more than
those who are accustomed to it. The body of strong and healthy persons
demands more oxygen, and throws off more carbonic acid, and is
distressed when the supply fails. But the one reduced by bad air feels
little inconvenience, because all the functions of life are so slow that
less oxygen is needed, and less carbonic acid thrown out. And the
sensibilities being deadened, the evil is not felt. This provision of
nature prolongs many lives, though it turns vigorous constitutions into
feeble ones. Were it
not for this change in the constitution, thousands in badly ventilated
rooms and houses would come to a speedy death.
One of the results of unventilated rooms is
scrofula. A distinguished French
phsyician, M. Baudeloque, states that:
"The repeated respiration of the same atmosphere is
the cause of scrofula. If there
be entirely pure air, there may be bad food, bad clothing, and want of
personal cleanliness, but scrofulous disease can not exist. This disease
never attacks persons who pass
their lives in the open air, and always
manifests itself when they abide in air which is unrenewed.
Invariably it will be found that
a truly scrofulous disease is caused by vitiated air; and it is not
necessary that there should be a prolonged stay in such an atmosphere.
Often, several hours each day is sufficient. Thus persons may live in
the most healthy country, pass most of the day in the open air, and yet
become scrofulous by sleeping in a close room where the air is not
renewed. This is the case with many shepherds who pass their nights in
small huts with no opening but a door closed tight at night."
The same writer illustrates this by the history of a French village
where the inhabitants all slept in close, unventilated houses. Nearly
all were seized with scrofula, and many families became wholly extinct,
their last members dying "rotten with scrofula." A fire destroyed a
large part of this village. Houses were then built to secure pure air,
and scrofula disappeared from the part thus rebuilt.
We are informed by medical writers that defective ventilation is one
great cause of diseased joints, as well as of diseases of the eyes,
ears, and skin.
Foul air is the leading cause of tubercular and scrofulous
consumption, so very common in our country. Dr. Guy, in his examination
before public health commissioners in Great Britain, says: "Deficient
ventilation I believe to be more fatal than
all other causes put together."
He
states that consumption is twice as common among tradesmen as among the
gentry, owing to the bad ventilation of their stores and dwellings.
Dr. Griscom, in his work on Uses and Abuses of Air, says:
"Food carried from the stomach to the blood can not become
nutritive till it is properly
oxygenated in the lungs; so that a small quantity of food, even if less
wholesome, may be made nutritive by pure air as it passes through the
lungs. But the best of food can not be changed into nutritive blood till
it is vitalized by pure air in the lungs."
And again:
"To those who have the care and instruction of the rising
generation--the future fathers and mothers of men--this subject of
ventilation commends itself with an interest surpassing every other.
Nothing can more convincingly establish the belief in the existence of
something vitally wrong in the habits and circumstances of civilized
life than the appalling fact that one
fourth of all who are born die before reaching the fifth year,
and one half the deaths of
mankind occur under the twentieth year. Let those who have these things
in charge answer to their own consciences how they discharge their duty
in supplying to the young a pure
atmosphere, which is the first
requisite for healthy bodies and
sound minds."
On the subject of infant mortality the experience of savages should
teach the more civilized. Professor Brewer, who traveled extensively
among the Indians of our western territories, states: "I have rarely
seen a sick boy among the Indians." Catlin, the painter, who resided and
traveled so much among these people, states that infant mortality is
very small among them, the
reason, of course, being abundant exercise and pure air.
Dr. Dio Lewis, whose labors in the cause of health are well known,
in his very useful work, Weak Lungs,
and How to Make them Strong, says:
"As a medical man I have visited thousands of sick-rooms, and have
not found in one in a hundred of
them a pure atmosphere. I have often returned from church doubting
whether I had not committed a sin in exposing myself so long to its
poisonous air. There are in our great cities churches costing $50,000,
in the construction of which not fifty cents were expended in providing
means for ventilation. Ten thousand dollars for ornament, but not ten
cents for pure air!
"Unventilated parlors, with gas-burners, (each consuming as much
oxygen as several men,) made as tight as possible, and a party of ladies
and gentlemen spending half the night in them! In 1861, I visited a
legislative hall, the legislature being in session. I remained half an
hour in the most impure air I ever breathed. Our school-houses are, some
of them, so vile in this respect, that I would prefer to have my son
remain in utter ignorance of books rather than to breathe, six hours
every day, such a poisonous atmosphere. Theatres and concert-rooms are
so foul that only reckless people continue to visit them. Twelve hours
in a railway-car exhausts one, not by the journeying, but because of the
devitalized air. While crossing the ocean in a Cunard steamer, I was
amazed that men who knew enough to construct such ships did not know
enough to furnish air to the passengers. The distress of sea-sickness is
greatly intensified by the sickening air of the ship. Were carbonic acid
only black, what a contrast
there would be between our hotels in their elaborate ornament!
"Some time since I visited an establishment where one hundred and
fifty girls, in a single room, were engaged in needle-work. Pale-faced,
and with low vitality and feeble circulation, they were unconscious that
they were breathing air that at once produced in me dizziness and a
sense of suffocation. If I had remained a week with them, I should, by
reduced vitality, have become unconscious of the vileness of the air!"
There is a prevailing prejudice against
night air as unhealthful to be
admitted into sleeping-rooms, which is owing wholly to sheer ignorance.
In the night every body necessarily breathes night air and no other.
When admitted from without into a sleeping-room it is colder, and
therefore heavier, than the air within, so it sinks to the bottom of the
room and forces out an equal quantity of the impure air, warmed and
vitiated by passing through the lungs of inmates. Thus the question is,
Shall we shut up a chamber and breathe night air vitiated with carbonic
acid or night air that is pure? The only real difficulty about night air
is, that usually it is damper, and therefore colder and more likely to
chill. This is easily prevented by sufficient bed-clothing.
One other very prevalent mistake is found even in books written by
learned men. It is often thought that carbonic acid, being heavier than
common air, sinks to the floor of sleeping-rooms, so that the low
trundle-beds for children should not be used. This is all a mistake;
for, as a fact, in close sleeping-rooms the purest air is below and the
most impure above. It is true that carbonic acid is heavier than common
air, when pure; but this it rarely is except in chemical experiments. It
is the property of all gases, as well as of the two (oxygen and
nitrogen) composing the atmosphere, that when brought together they
always are entirely mixed, each being equally diffused exactly as it
would be if alone. Thus the carbonic acid from the skin and lungs, being
warmed in the body, rises as does the common air, with which it mixes,
toward the top of a room; so that usually there is more carbonic acid at
the top than at the bottom of a room.*
Both common air and carbonic acid expand and become lighter in the same
proportions; that is, for every
degree of added heat they expand at the rate of 1/480 of their bulk.
*Prof. Brewer, of the Yale Scientific School, says: "As a fact,
often demonstrated by analysis, there is generally more carbonic acid
near the ceiling than near the floor."
Here, let it be remembered, that in ill-ventilated rooms the
carbonic acid is not the only cause of disease. Experiments seem to
prove that other matter thrown out of the body, through the lungs and
skin, is as truly excrement and in a state of decay as that ejected from
the bowels, and as poisonous to the animal system. Carbonic acid has no
odor; but we are warned by the disagreeable effluvia of close
sleeping-rooms of the other poison thus thrown into the air from the
skin and lungs. There is one provision of nature that is little
understood, which saves the lives of thousands living in unventilated
houses; and that is, the passage of pure air inward and impure air
outward through the pores of bricks, wood, stone, and mortar. Were such
dwellings changed to tin, which is not thus porous, in less than a week
thousands and tens of thousands would be in danger of perishing by
suffocation.
These statements give some idea of the evils to be remedied. But the
most difficult point is how to
secure the remedy. For often the attempt to secure pure air by one class
of persons brings chills, colds, and disease on another class, from mere
ignorance or mismanagement.
To illustrate this, it must be borne in mind that those who live in
warm, close, and unventilated rooms are much more liable to take cold
from exposure to draughts and cold air than those of vigorous vitality
accustomed to breathe pure air.
Thus the strong and healthy husband, feeling the want of pure air in
the night, and knowing its importance, keeps windows open and makes such
draughts that the wife, who lives all day in a close room and thus is
low in vitality, can not bear the change, has colds, and sometimes
perishes a victim to wrong modes of ventilation.
So, even in health-establishments, the patients will pass most of
their days and nights in badly-ventilated rooms.
But at times the physician, or some earnest patient, insists on a mode
of ventilation that brings more evil than good to the delicate inmates.
The grand art of ventilating houses is by some method that will
empty rooms of the vitiated air and bring in a supply of pure air
by small and imperceptible currents.
But this important duty of a Christian woman is one that demands
more science, care, and attention than almost any other; and yet, to
prepare her for this duty has never been any part of female education.
Young women are taught to draw mathematical diagrams and to solve
astronomical problems; but few, if any, of them are taught to solve the
problem of a house constructed to secure pure and moist air by day and
night for all its inmates.
The heating and management of the air we breathe is one of the most
complicated problems of domestic economy, as will be farther illustrated
in the succeeding chapter; and yet it is one of which most American
women are profoundly ignorant.
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