THE OPEN WINDOW.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9152, 22 May 1908, Page 6

THE OPEN WINDOW.

DO DOCTORS PRACTICE WHAS THEY PREACH. Do doctors practice what they preach in the matter of fresh airland the open window —asks a correspondent of the Daily Mail. In Harley street, London, 119 residences bear the name-plates of physicians. The number of their windows which face the street reach a total of 1300. On Saturday, March 21st, although it was bright and fine, with a soft welcome breeze, only 267 of them stood open. The proportion of open windows did not reach more|than one in five. In the case of twenty-one of these imposing houses not one of the fourteen or fifteen windows fronting the thoroughfare was open. Cavendish Square revealed an even worse state of affairs. Here, out of 161,dootors’ windows, only 22 were open —a of one in seven. In Wimpole street, where close upon a hundred house a'are inhabited by medical men, a census revealed 1149 windows. But of theselonly 233 were open to the spring breeze. There was no dust on and no biting wind—no external reason, indeed, why so many of the windows*should have been closed. The census of open windows, it may be added, as not taken in the -early morning. THE REASON WHY. A physician who has resided for several years in Harley street has explained tola Daily Mail reporter why so large a percentage of the windows in that thoroughfare are kept closed. “In examining patients,” said the doctor, “it is frequently necessary that they should remove their clothing. In view of this the general practise, in order to obviate any possibility of a chill to a person perhaps in a delicate state of , is to maintain a Harley street house at, a warm and perfectly equable tern-, perature. Hence the closed windows. “Medical men do not make so*great a point of the open window during the daytime. No one clad in ordinary garments could on a cold cheerless day move about a house hr which the windows were open with' any degree of comfort or safety.. But on the bleakest, coldest night, imaginable a person can get into a bed with plenty of blankets upon it, have the window thrown wide open, breathe the keen, fresh air, and yet be perfectly warm and comfortable. It is during the night time that the. open window is so necessary.”