Section XIII
Warming and Ventilation
There is no subject directly connected with domestic life on which there is
so large an amount of popular ignorance as ventilation. When a man is
hungry, nature compels him to cry out for food and drink; and as necessity
makes such the most immediate and pressing of all wants, he undertakes to
supply them before all others. Yet, men have been known to live without
food for five weeks, though any person wholly deprived of air will die in
three minutes.
The want of attention to ventilation arises from the fact that the poison
of breathing bad air is a slow one, and though its effects are as certain
as those which follow from taking doses of cyanide, yet they are only
observed remotely, and little by little. Nature does not immediately
protest against slightly impure air as against want of food and water, and,
therefore, we go on from day to day, suffering the accumulated evils
resulting from our ignorance, and only wondering at our want of physical
health and spirits.
We will repeat, in conclusion, that, fond as our people are of improvement,
the greatest possible improvement in a dwelling house-ventilation-is as yet
a thing almost unknown in this country; though we predict, that in a few
years, the man who warms his room by a close stove, with no ventilator,
will be looked on as little better than he who should more openly undertake
to poison his family and friends with a brazier of charcoal.
The Architecture of Country Houses
D. Appleton & Co., 1850
Mike
O'Brien & Associates
Environmental Building Consultants
Portland General Electric Earth Smart program
obrien@hevanet.com
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