Office of the Metropolitan Board of Health,
No. 301 Mott Street,
New York, August 26th, 1867.
Friend Leeds.
Your Lectures on Ventilation have given me much pleasure, and have renewed my confidence in the utility of popular instruction upon the subject. I heartily thank you for the thoughtful care with which you have set forth all the essential principles of ventilation, in language so free from technical words, and so full of plain and homely illustration, that even an uneducated reader can fully understand all you have written. The good Dr. D. Boswell Reid, Dr. Wyman and myself had each attempted to use such a style of explanation and instruction; but you have far excelled us all.
The first want of every living being is fresh air, and unless the human lungs are supplied with such air constantly at the rate of from ten to thirty cubic feet every minute, by night as well as by day, perfect health and vigor cannot be preserved. Then, too, there are exhaled from the surface of the body and from the lungs, such quantities of waste organic matter, which tend to immediate putridity, that it, together with the carbonic acid, would keep the human body immersed in a deadly vapor of these exhalations, were not fresh air supplied. The illustrations by which you have made these truths easily understood, are admirably given in your lectures, and the method, by which you would best insure success in removing the foul and supplying the pure fresh air in every place where persons live or sleep, are, as I believe, from my own careful studies of this subject, most correct and trustworthy. Indeed, I am able to say that, in my examinations of the vast number of hospitals and buildings which you ventilated during the late war, under authority from the intelligent and humane Quartermaster-General of the army, the proof of entire success in your work was everywhere witnessed. Simplicity, invariable certainty and a liberal sufficiency characterizes these admirable methods of yours.
I wish every family in the land had a copy of these lectures.
Sincerely yours,
ELISHA HARRIS, M. D.,
Corresponding Secretary Metropolitan Board of Health.
To Lewis W. Leeds, Esq.