I trust that I shall be permitted to digress, for a short time, from bees to men, and that the remarks which I shall offer on the subject of ventilation in human dwellings, may make a deeper impression, in connection with the wise arrangements of the bee, than they would, if presented in the shape of a mere scientific discussion; and that some who have been in the habit of considering all air, except in the particular of temperature, as about alike, may be thoroughly convinced of their mistake.
Recent statistics prove that consumption and its kindred diseases are most fearfully on the increase, in the Northern, and more especially in the New England States; and that the general mortality of Massachusetts exceeds that of almost every other state in the Union. In these States, the tendency of increasing attention to manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, is to compel a larger and larger proportion of the population to lead an in-door life, and to breathe an atmosphere more or less vitiated, and thus unfit for the full development of vigorous health. The importance of pure air can hardly be over-estimated; indeed, the quality of the air we breath, seems to exert an influence much more powerful, and hardly less direct, than the mere quality of our food. Those who, by active exercise in the open air, keep their lungs saturated as it were, with the pure element, can eat almost anything with impunity; while those who breath the sorry apology for air which is to be found in so many habitations, although they may live upon the most nutritious diet, and avoid the least excess, are incessantly troubled with head-ache, dyspepsia, and various mental as well as physical sufferings. Well may such persons, as they witness the healthy forms and happy faces of so many of the hardy sons of toil, exclaim with the old Latin poet,
"Oh dura messorum illia!"
It is with the human family very much as it is with the vegetable kingdom. Take a plant or tree, and shut it out from the pure air, and the invigorating light, and though you may supply it with an abundance of water and the very soil, which by the strictest chemical analysis, is found to contain all the elements that are essential to its vigorous growth, it will still be a puny thing, ready to droop, if exposed to a summer's sun, or to be prostrated by the first visitation of a winter's blast. Compare now, this wretched abortion, with an oak or maple which has grown upon the comparatively sterile mountain pasture, and whose branches, in Summer are the pleasant resort of the happy songsters, while, under its mighty shade, the panting herds drink in a refreshing coolness. In Winter it laughs at the mighty storms, which wildly toss its giant branches in the air, and which serve only to exercise the limbs of the sturdy tree, whose roots deep intertwined among its native rocks, enable it to bid defiance to anything short of a whirlwind or tornado.
To a population, who, for more than two-thirds of the year, are compelled to breathe an atmosphere heated by artificial means, the question how can this air be made, at a moderate expense, to resemble, as far as possible, the purest ether of the skies is, (or as I should rather say ought to be,) a question of the utmost interest. When open fires were used, there was no lack of pure air, whatever else might have been deficient. A capacious chimney carried up through its insatiable throat, immense volumes of air, to be replaced by the pure element, whistling in glee, through every crack, crevice and keyhole. Now the house-builder and stove-maker with but few exceptions[15] seem to have joined hands in waging a most effectual warfare against the unwelcome intruder. By labor-saving machinery, they contrive to make the one, the joints of his wood-work, and the other, those of his iron-work, tighter and tighter, and if it were possible for them to accomplish fully their manifest design, they would be able to furnish rooms almost as fatal to life as "the black hole of Calcutta." But in spite of all that they can do, the materials will shrink, and no fuel has yet been found, which will burn without any air, so that sufficient ventilation is kept up, to prevent such deadly occurrences. Still they are tolerably successful in keeping out the unfriendly element; and by the use of huge cooking-stoves with towering ovens, and other salamander contrivances, the little air that can find its way in, is almost as thoroughly cooked, as are the various delicacies destined for the table.
On reading an account of a run-away slave, who was for a considerable time, closely boxed up, a gentleman remarked that if the poor fellow had only known that a renewal of the air was necessary to the support of life, he could not have lived there an hour without suffocation: I have frequently thought that if the occupants of the rooms I have been describing, could only know as much, they would be in almost similar danger.
Bad air, one would think, is bad enough: but when it is heated and dried to an excessive degree, all its original vileness is stimulated to greater activity, and thus made doubly injurious by this new element of evil. Not only our private houses, but our churches and school-rooms, our railroad cars, and all our places of public assemblage, are, to a most lamentable degree, either unprovided with any means of ventilation, or, to a great extent, supplied with those which are so wretchedly deficient that they
"Keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope."
That ultimate degeneracy must surely follow such entire disregard of the laws of health, cannot be doubted; and those who imagine that the physical stamina of a people can be undermined, and yet that their intellectual, moral and religious health will suffer no eclipse or decay, know very little of the intimate connection between body and mind, which the Creator has seen fit to establish.
The men may, to a certain extent, resist the injurious influences of foul air; as their employments usually compel them to live much more out of doors: but alas, alas! for the poor women! In the very land where women are treated with more universal deference and respect than in any other, and where they so well deserve it, there often, no provision is made to furnish them with that great element of health, cheerfulness and beauty, heaven's pure, fresh air.