“Town dairy cows which are packed in close ill-ventilated buildings and never allowed to go out are very subject to consumption, while horses kept in no better conditions, but spending nearly half their time in the open air, rarely have phthisis. (With lung plague it will be remembered that the out-door exercise and mingling of herds leads to an increase of the mortality.) Horses newly stabled suffer severely from diseases of the lungs. The same holds true of human beings. A long list of careful observers have noticed the essential connection of lack of ventilation and pulmonary consumption. Baudelacque, Carmichael, Arnott, Lepelletier, Allison, Sir James Clark, Toyubee, Guy, Greenhow, Sir Alexander Armstrong, Parkes, and Aitken have especially insisted upon consumption being a sequence of lack of ventilation. Dr. Cormac indeed insists with great force that consumption is originated by rebreathed air.”
“The notorious prevalence of consumption in sailors has been directly traced to the impure air in which they sleep, and an extensive outbreak of lung disease (not tubercular), leading to destruction of lung tissue, in the English Mediteranean squadron in 1860 was clearly traced by Dr. Bryson to the contamination of the air. In a nursery hospital at Dublin with entire neglect of ventilation, 2,944 children died in four years, whereas after the ventilation had been improved only 279 died in the same length of time.”
“Parkes (Practical Hygiene) says:
“‘But not only phthisis may be reasonably considered to have one of its modes of origin in the breathing of an atmosphere contaminated by respiration, but other lung diseases, bronchitis and pneumonia, appear also to be more common in such circumstances. Both among seamen and civilians working in confined, close rooms, who are otherwise so differently circumstanced, we find an excess of the acute lung affections.’
“In this connection, the statement of the air breathed by an ox per hour and that supplied him on board a ship with insufficient ventilation or none may be instructive. The ox takes in with each breath about 5 liters of air. This is at the rate of 50 liters per minute, or 3,000 per hour = 105.9 cubic feet. This amount of air is therefore rendered all but irrespirable by each animal in the course of an hour. And this, be it noted, is by breathing alone, and makes no account of the contamination by perspiration in the overheated hold, and by the emanations from the accumulating excrement.”
“On board the steamers we have found the space allotted to each bullock to vary from 150 to 240 cubic feet. On the steamship “Holland,” loaded at New York, August 21, 1881, we found the stalls amidships allowed the full space of 240 cubic feet per head. In the bow where there was less height between the decks the space was considerably less. On the lower deck, where 129 cattle were accommodated, the space allowed each was 217.4 cubic feet. The port-holes in the upper deck were nine inches in diameter and there was one for each pair of stalls—central and lateral—or for eight oxen. These being well above the water line would be available for ventilation in ordinary weather. The port-holes in the lower deck, similarly arranged, were about two feet above the water line, and consequently not available for ventilation, save in exceptionally calm weather. The temperature on the main deck of this ship (between the outer and main deck), when only half the cattle had been loaded, was in the neighborhood of 90° although she was lying in the center of the North River with port-holes and hatches open, and a fresh breeze blowing from the north.”
“On the ‘Assyrian Monarch’ the space per head was only 192 cubic feet, but this ship was supplied with a ventilating fan or blower capable of delivering over 50,000 cubic feet of fresh air per hour, so that her ventilation was abundantly provided for. In some smaller ships we found the space per head to exceed little, if at all, 150 cubic feet. In these, accordingly, a single hour without any change of air would threaten the life of every animal on board, and two hours would endanger those for which even the larger space is provided. It is true that such absolute seclusion is rarely required, and that a certain amount of ærial diffusion is always going on through imperfectly closed hatches, companion ways, and ventilators, yet that these are often insufficient has been amply shown by such losses as are reported above, as well as by the bronchitis and tuberculosis which Drs. Whitney, Lyman, and Williams have found in the lungs of American animals arriving in England.”
“ORGANIC MATTER IN EXPIRED AIR.”
“The decomposing organic matter given off by the lungs and skin is probably the most injurious of the animal excreta, when allowed to act on the system for a length of time. This exhaled organic matter is easily recognized in the air by chemical tests, or by the putrid odor evolved when cotton wool, that has been breathed through, is left to soak in otherwise pure water at a temperature of 70° to 80° Fahrenheit. The experiments of Gavarret and Hammond, in which expired air had its carbonic acid and water vapor removed, leaving only the organic matter, showed that the latter was highly deleterious. Hammond found that a mouse died in forty-five minutes in such an atmosphere. It has also been again and again demonstrated that air containing a given amount of carbonic acid as the result of respiration is far more poisonous than air which contains the same amount of carbonic acid as a product of combustion.”