In the country the balance ordained in nature has its compensating power.
The poisonous carbonic acid thrown off by lungs and body is absorbed by
vegetation whose food it is, and which in every waving leaf or blade of
grass returns to us the oxygen we demand. Shut in a close room all day, or
even in a tolerably ventilated one, there may be no sense of closeness;
but go to the open air for a moment, and, if the nose has not been
hopelessly ruined by want of education, it will tell unerringly the degree
of oxygen wanting and required.
It is ordinarily supposed that carbonic-acid gas, being heavier, sinks to
the bottom of the room, and that thus trundle-beds, for instance, are
especially unwholesome. This would be so, were the gas pure. As a matter
of fact, however, being warmed in the body, and thus made lighter, it
rises into the common air, so that usually more will be found at the top
than at the bottom of a room. This gas is, however, not the sole cause of
disease. From both lungs and skin, matter is constantly thrown off, and
floats in the form of germs in all impure air. To a person who by long
confinement to close rooms has become so sensitive that any sudden current
of air gives a cold, ventilation seems an impossibility and a cruelty; and
the problem becomes: How to admit pure air throughout the house, and yet
avoid currents and draughts.
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