No less than thirty colonies of organisms were counted in a cubic foot of air taken from the Golden Gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, and 140 from the air of the churchyard. An ordinary man would breathe there thirty-six micro-organisms every minute.
Electricity has a powerful effect in destroying these organisms. Ozone is generated in the air by lightning, and it is detrimental to them. In fine ozoned Highland air scarcely a disease-germ can be detected. Open sea air contains about one germ in two cubic feet. It has been found that in Paris the average in summer is about 140 per cubic foot of air, but in bedrooms the number is double. During the twenty-four hours of the day the number of germs is highest about 6 A.M., and lowest about mid-day.
Raindrops carry the germs to the ground. Hence the advantage of a thunder plout in a sanitary way. A cubic foot of rain has been found to contain 5500 organic dust-germs, besides 7,000,000,000 of inorganic dust-particles. In a dirty town the rain will bring down in a year, upon a square foot of surface, no less than 3,000,000 of bacteria, many of them being disease-bearing and death-bearing. No wonder, then, that scientific men are using every endeavour to protect the human frame, as well as the frame of the lower animals, from the baneful inroads of these floating nuclei of disease and death.
CHAPTER XVI
A CHANGE OF AIR
For weakness of body and fatigue of mind a very common and essentially serviceable recommendation is “a change of air.” Of course, the change of scene from coast to country, or from town to hillside, may help much the depressed in body or mind; and this is very commendable. But, strange to say, there is a healing virtue in breathing different air.
At first one is apt to think that air is the same all over, as he thinks water is—especially outside smoky towns; but both have varied qualities in different parts. You have only to be assured that in a cubic inch of bedroom air in the denser parts of a large town there are about 20,000,000 of dust-particles, and in the open air of a heathery mountain-side there are only some hundreds, to see that there is something after all on the face of it in the “old wives’ saw.”
Not that the dust-particles are all injurious; for most of them are inorganic, and many of the organic particles are quite wholesome; yet there is a change wrought, often very marked, in going from one place to another for different air.
Even in the country, especially in summer-time, one distinctly notices the great difference in the air of lowland and highland localities. The ten miles change from Strathmore to Glenisla shows a marked difference in the air. Below, it is close, weakening, enervating; above, it is exhilarating, invigorating, and strong.