CORRESPONDENCE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1024, 17 January 1882, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

FOUL A I B. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —A paragraph appeared in a late issue of your contemporary referring to the want of ventilation in McFarlane’s Hall. The contaminating effects of foul air emanating from the lungs and skin of some four hundred human beings closely packed in a room without sufficient means of ventilation, is something fearful. The owner of that building would confer a benefit on the public if he would make large openings in the ceiling so as to let the heated air get away. An eminent sanatarian, Mr Michael, says the air of rooms in which human beings live, unless it

is constantly renewed at the enormous rate of some 10,000 gallons per head, per hour, contains a minute, but poisonons dose of putrefying organic matter, if breathed again into our lungs is apt to cause such poisoning of the sytem as ends in gradual destruction of the lungs, and that wasting desire known as decline—by far the vast majority of consumptive are simply poisoned by noxious breath.” The same writer also says :—“ It is this fact that accounts for the excessiveprevalence of consumption in large towns, aud the comparative immunity o country places, especially of places like the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland Islands, where the strong breezes from the Atlantic play freely through the rude dwellings of the poor.” Let anyone who is in the habit of rising early, take a walk round this town, nine houses out of ten he will find all the windows closely shut, not a breath of fresh air allowed to enter the sleeping apartments. If people only knew what the benefits derived from providing means by which their houses may be supplied with fresh air all through the night, they would not adopt the almost universal plan of shutting out that which is so essential to health, viz., pure air. Pure air, pure water, and pure soil, are the tripod of healthy social life—have we either in this town ? Of the former we may have, but most folks won’t have it, —I am &c.. Pro Bono Publico.