As the flame of a candle is such a beautiful emblem of human life, we will remove the roof and part of the floor of the second story, and place four candles in our house. They are all of different heights, you see. We will call them a father, mother and two children.
As carbonic acid is that much dreaded poison in our breath, and the heavy portion of it which causes it to fall to the floor, we will make a little by placing a few scraps of common marble in this glass vessel, and pouring over it some sulphuric acid.
It is now forming, and will fall and flow across the floor the same as carbonic acid does when it pours into a basement from the gutters on the street or filthy yards where it is formed, and before it is absorbed or diluted by the current of pure air sweeping over them. It first kills the smallest child, because it is nearest the floor. You remember the excessive infantile mortality in this city in 1865. This is partially owing to their breathing more of this foul air near the floor, and partially owing to the great fear of their mothers and nurses, of letting the little innocents get a breath of fresh air for fear it will give them colic, and consequently they smother them to death.
The other child dies next, and then the mother, and lastly the father.
Thousands are thus poisoned to death by their own breath every year. But did you ever see a physician's certificate that gave you any such idea? Why do not the doctors tell the living, in such language as they can understand, what killed their friends, so they may avoid it in their own case, instead of giving it in some Latin terms which I fear many interpret to mean some special dispensation of Divine Providence instead of the true cause—their utter disregard of the laws their Creator made for the preservation of their health?
Had this family known enough about ventilation to have kept the fire-place open, with a little fire in it now and then, they would not have been thus killed.
Let us see—we will take out the fire-board which has been put in to make the room look a little neater, and with a very small light there to create a draft in the chimney.
We will again light the candles, and pour in the poisonous breath. Ah! there goes the little one—he is hardly high enough to keep out of that deadly current flowing across the floor.