Part 6 (1/2)

I do not believe that Philadelphians have gone quite thus far in satisfying the public demand for ventilation in the public schools. They may not have _done any more_, but I believe they have not _pretended_ to do quite as much.

Excuse me a few minutes; I must ill.u.s.trate another very great deficiency.

The simple ill.u.s.tration I will give you represents almost the universal condition of our hot-air furnaces.

Much complaint was made of the uncomfortable feeling in one of the large public schools, where they had some 1200 or 1500 scholars. I was called to examine it. I asked, as is my usual habit, if they evaporated plenty of water. ”Oh, yes; they had given the janitor full directions about keeping the evaporating pans always full.” I found the evaporating pans full, sure enough, rather to my surprise, but what do you think they were filled with? Several old brooms, half charred, and some old water buckets all fallen to pieces, and other rubbish thrown in there _out of the way_.

And now those of you who have been trusting to your servants to keep water in your furnaces, if you will take a candle when you go home and go down and examine your own furnaces, you will most likely find them dry, and if you go to the public schools in the morning you will see that they too are not an exception.

I wish I had time to explain the dreadful effect of this want of moisture in all our artificially heated rooms. The air in winter is very dry, the moisture is squeezed out as the water is squeezed out of this sponge. But as you heat it you enlarge its volume again, and it sucks up the moisture just as this sponge does, and if you do not supply this moisture in other ways it will suck the natural moisture from your skin and your lungs, creating that dry, parched, feverish condition so noticeable in our furnace and other stove-heated rooms. Few persons realize the great amount of water necessary to be evaporated to produce the natural condition of moisture corresponding with the increased temperature given the air in many of our rooms in winter.

I have copied a table expressing in grains troy the moisture contained in one cubic foot of air when saturated:

Degrees Grains of vapor Fahrenheit. in cubic foot.

10 0.8 20 1.3 30 2.0 40 2.9 50 4.0 60 6.0 70 8.0 80 10.0 90 15.0 100 19.0

Thus you see, taking the air at 10 and heating up to 70, the ordinary temperature of our rooms, requires about nine times the moisture contained in the original external atmosphere, and if heated to 100, as most of our hot-air furnaces heat the air, it would require about twenty-three times the amount in the external atmosphere.

This is a very interesting and important subject, but I am sorry I have not time for further explanation.

I see some kind friend has been around and opened the doors of our meeting-house and awakened the sleepers. And now you see the lights s.h.i.+ne, and the cheeks glow as brightly as would those of our young ladies could they be persuaded to go skating, or take a five mile walk every day, rain or s.h.i.+ne, and sleep with the windows open, and never ride in any of our cars, or go to parties or any other public gatherings unless the buildings where they are held are well ventilated.

But those dreadful drafts! People will not bear them. Let us see if we can accommodate them. Put on the roof, and here comes this dreadful current again down the ventilating flue. Well, ventilating flues have the name of being great humbugs. Let us shut them up. There are your poor consumptive patients--there they go, you see. One-half dead already, and the rest will soon follow if we cannot rescue them. Let us open the flue again. See how they brighten up as the fresh air comes in. There is no use of disputing about it, you must have _a current of fresh air coming into the house_ or you will surely die.

Now let us change the programme. Let us build a fire in this fire-place in the lower story--that burns up brightly. Where does it get fresh air from now? There can be no current down the chimney. Let us search it out with this smoking taper. Ah, here it is coming down through the ventilator from the very top of the house. We will soon stop that by this cap. But see, it still burns as brightly as ever. Let us try again. Ah, do you see the smoke rus.h.i.+ng down the second story chimney and across to the stairway, and down the stairs, and across the room again to this fire?

_There is a valuable hint._ Have you not noticed frequently gas in the room from the fire-place or stove, and especially at night? And do you see how easily it would be to account for it if the house were shut up tight at night, with a large fire in the kitchen or furnace in the cellar, and but a small fire in the second story? Don't you see how the whole products of combustion, all the poisonous gases, may be drawn out into the room? You often notice accounts of whole families being smothered to death in one night, but many seem to think if they are not smothered to death the first night, that it is not so very dangerous after all, and not knowing how to remedy it easily go on from day to day and sometimes escape the whole winter with a little of their lives left.

Now, let us put out the fire in the first story and make one in the second.

You must remember that this is not a fas.h.i.+onable double ceiled and plastered air-tight house. It is much more open, in proportion to its size, than any ordinary house. And now, as this lower flue has been so highly heated, it may take some time for the fire in the second story fire-place to become heated sufficiently in excess to cause the air to draw down the longest flue to the bottom of the house and up the stairs to the second story fire-place, but it will soon do it.

I wish you to notice one thing here particularly, and each one apply it to your own particular case. You know the lower part of the house is closed up tight to keep out the robbers, and if great care is not taken to give an abundant supply of fresh air to your chambers otherwise, it will be drawn up through the hall out of your kitchen and cellar, and as the cook has left the range lid off and shut the dampers, you will have a suffocating smell of gas all over the house. But the worst danger of all is the air that may be drawn in from an untrapped sewer or cesspool. This is a very common but great source of ill-health.

Sanitarians have given much attention to this subject lately, and have been astonished at the magnitude of the evil. I have long maintained that a family might go to the highest and most healthy location in the world, and by a little carelessness might acc.u.mulate sufficient filth around them, and by closing up the house at night and allowing the foul gases from untrapped sewers and cesspools to enter through the halls to their sleeping rooms, to thus make what would otherwise be a healthy place a very unhealthy one.

As a case in point, I would refer to a very interesting report of Doctors Palmer, Ford, and Earle, giving an account of their investigations of the causes of a severe epidemic that occurred in the summer of 1864 in a young ladies' seminary in Ma.s.sachusetts. ”The Maplewood Inst.i.tute” is situated in Pittsfield, one of the most beautiful of those charming New England villages, which, to external appearances, are the very emblem of all that is pure and healthy. Yet even in this lovely place, from an ignorant or careless arrangement of the drains and cess-pools, much of the foul gas generated there found its way into the building,[2] making sixty-six out of seventy-four young ladies sick, fifty-seven of whom had the typhoid fever and thirteen died. Many similar cases are frequently occurring, some few of which, like this, are carefully investigated, and the causes removed. Many more, however, go unnoticed, and are accepted as special dispensations of Providence, when it is all due to our own negligence.

I want to show you an arrangement that ought to be in every house. We have seen the power of a fire to create a draft, and if you will think a little you will notice that the kitchen fire is the most considerable and most permanent power in ordinary dwellings, and this ought to be made use of to ventilate the kitchen, water-closet and bath-room in every house. But you must not make an opening directly into the kitchen flue; if you do you will interfere with the draft of the kitchen fire, and if you interfere with the kitchen fire you will soon wish yourself at anything but keeping house.

But we can easily get over that trouble. We will use this square gla.s.s box again to represent a flue. I don't mean this to represent the size--it ought to be twice that size. In the centre we will put a cold pipe, to show you that a pipe without any heat in it would only cause the foul air to tumble down into the room. Thus you see the smoke descending. We will subst.i.tute a pipe with a gas light to heat it. Now you see what a rapid current there is out of this large flue. See what a splendid arrangement this is for ventilating, and it may be extended so as to ventilate the whole house. It is not necessary that the room to be ventilated should be adjoining, but a pipe can be carried between the floors 50 or 100 feet.

I had an opportunity, during the late war, of thoroughly testing this system of ventilation in the government hospitals.

Let me say here that a very common mistake in making ventilating flues is, that they are entirely too small to be of any value. One of these little Philadelphia flues, four by nine inches, made with rough bricks, and nearly or entirely choked up with mortar, as many of them are frequently found, is of no account. They are simply a deception, and a perfect provocation to a sensible man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15.]

I commenced by making some in Was.h.i.+ngton, for single wards, thirty inches square, but in St. Louis, and Louisville, and Nashville, where buildings four or five stories high were used for hospitals, I made them much larger, some three feet square and some four feet by six feet. Some buildings, where the ventilation was so bad and the water-closets were so offensive that the government had to abandon them, I had ventilated by these immense shafts, heated by the kitchen and laundry fires, which proved thoroughly efficient and entirely satisfactory.