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10
Whatever has a bad smell is, more or less, injurious to
health, and, therefore, we should get rid of had smells
at any expense. The principal causes of bad smells are
too many people breathing the atmosphere of a badly
ventilated room, stagnant, or ill-trapped drainage under
a house. Many people may remain in the same room
for hours and the air becomes so foul as to make a new
comer start back, finding it impossible to enter, while
the inmates, from the gradual destruction of the air, do
not perceive the change, but it may be looked upon as
an imperative law, that when several persons are breathing
the air of a room, that the air soon becomes loaded
with poisonous gases, and that unless such persons will
occasionally open door and window, they will lose their
health. Many schemes for ventilation have been tried,
and failed, but doors and windows are in all rooms, and
the horror of draughts should not prevent us from
using them, for, for one person who suffers from open windows,
there are thousands who suffer from stifling
rooms; it is easy to get out of a draught, but it is impossible
to escape the poisonous effects of impure air,
which operates, by so deteriorating our blood, and filling
it with impurities, that the first exciting cause of disease,
an ordinary cold, or the visitation of an epidemic,
finds our constitution in an unfit state to resist fever, or
the inflammation of some important organ, which if not
fatal, leaves some chronic disease, or consumption, or
paralysis, as our companion for what remains of life.
All our care in regard to ventilation and drainage will,
however, be null and void, unless we are equally careful
in eating and drinking; similar debasement of the blood,
and similar susceptibility to disease, is caused by overfeeding,
or over-drinking, and, in fact, excess or intemperance
of any kin;1
The relations between health and the public welfare
is a subject by no means sufficiently understood and