THE NIGHT AIR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 132, 2 January 1942, Page 10

THE NIGHT AIR

(Written for "The Listener" by DR.

H. B.

TURBOTT

. Director of

the Division of School Hygiene, Health Dept. )

74 HUT the window to keep out the night air." This instruction of grandmother’s still lives. If you doubt it, walk round your sleeping streets. The number of closed bedroom windows will startle you. Some young mothers, in spite of modern teaching, still automatically shut the bedroom window after tucking the child down at night, or leave it open at most but a few inches. Does fresh air ever harm anyone? The dangers of cold air and draughts have been grossly exaggerated in the past. In English day nurseries young children of two to five will take their morning nap in the open air throughout the whole of winter, under a shelter open to the four winds. In Switzerland, children regularly sleep out on verandas when there is snow on the ground. In sanatoria the night air at any season of the year does no harm to the inmate. The mother admits this readily when challenged, yet goes on shutting the bedroom window. Why? Fear of the night air comes Ydown to us from the past. It is compounded of a misunderstanding and of a universal fear. The misunderstanding is a relic from the days when certain diseases were credited to mists or miasmas. There was no drainage and sanitation as we know it. Mists rose from

marshy lands and people living in undrained areas suffered from agues. Therefore the mists brought the agues, or it was only where there were night mists that malarial troubles arose. But there was also water and mosquitoes, and many centuries had to pass before science showed the connection between the latter and malaria. The Mist Was Blamed So people closed their windows to keep out the mist and malaria. The mosquitoes found other ways in, but the evening mist got the blame. And fear of mists persists in the human race. An ingrained misunderstanding-reasoned away in the dying years of the 19th century when mosquitoes were demonstrated to be the link between mists and malarias, yet still alive-shows itself in 1941 as " shut the window to keep out the night air." The universal fear of all races is of the dark. We can’t see, and don’t feel safe, Evil spirits are still about for native peoples. Our Maori people still, most of them, close themselves in at dark, shut the windows and doors, and put their heads under the blankets. Our pakeha women-I wonder just how many of them — feel safer at night with doors bolted and windows sealed. It is a fear handed down, not recognised as such, yet definitely operative still.

There is a night air to beware of-the foul air you yourself create in your own room, the poison breathed out of the lungs. What is the use of keeping the bedroom window open during the day when there’s no one there to spoil the air, and shutting it up at night to keep the bad air in? Night is the time to open windows. If the air is cold, add more bedclothes, but let that cold air in. And don’t be calling free movement of air through the room a draught and think it dangerous! What you want is changing air with as much movement as can be comfortably borne. Large amounts of air blowing through wide open windows do no harm. See that the child is warm and snug when he is put to bed, and let him breathe fresh air all night. Stuffy rooms incline to anaemia, poorly nourished bodies, frequent colds, and enlarged tonsils and adenoids. Danger comes from stale air, not through open windows. So let the night air in-away with age-long inhibitions-and be fresh and fit next morning. Now’s the time to begin-in summer and warm weather-if you’ve been keeping the stale air in. Babies and children will be used to night breezes by next winter, and windows can stay wide open through the bitter weather. Grandmother’s objections can honestly be laughed aside, for the night air is not only harmless, but a real friend.