Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

by Upton Sinclair; Michael Williams

Fresh Air in Bermuda

We have noted the fact that of the myriads upon myriads of swarming cells which the blood contains, a large proportion are the oxygen-conveyers. When you take air into your lungs, these cells absorb the precious element, and rush with it to all parts of the body. After distributing the oxygen wherever it is needed, they pick up for the return journey to the lungs all manner of débris and gases—the poisons which are produced by the organs of the body as they carry on their work. As Metchnikoff has shown us, it is the accumulation of poisons produced by the activity of our various organs which, unless properly disposed of, or kept below excessive quantities, bring about premature old age, the majority of all diseases, and early death. The amount of poisons which the average person throws off from the body with a single breath, as has been shown by delicate laboratory experiments, is enough to contaminate and render unfit for breathing three cubic feet or three-quarters of a barrel of air. Assuming an average of twenty breaths per minute, which is the normal rate for breathing for adults, the amount of air each person contaminates per minute will be sixty cubic feet, or one cubic foot a second.

If you hold your breath for a minute, you will be conscious of an extremely unpleasant feeling, which is the way in which the body manifests its urgent need for oxygen. The need of ventilation is not merely the need of oxygen, however. There may be plenty of oxygen in the air of a room which has been closed for some time, and which has been breathed in and out of the lungs of the people in the room; the trouble is that this oxygen is unfit for breathing, being full of impurities thrown off by the bodies of these people.

HOW TO CALCULATE ROOM VENTILATION

Dr. Kellogg has supplied some exceedingly useful calculations of the degree of ventilation needed in rooms of various sizes. “Every one,” he says, “should become intelligent in relation to the matter of ventilation, and should appreciate its importance. Vast and sometimes irreparable injury frequently results from the confinement of several scores or hundreds of people in a school room, church or lecture room, without adequate means of removing the impurities thrown off from their lungs and bodies. The same air being breathed over and over becomes intensely charged with poisons which render the blood impure, lessen resistance and induce susceptibility to taking cold and to infection with germs of pneumonia, consumption and other infectious diseases which are always present in a very crowded audience room.

“Suppose, for example, a thousand persons are seated in a room forty feet in width, sixty in length, and fifteen in height; how long a time would elapse before the air of such a room would become unfit for further respiration? Remembering that each person spoils one foot of air every second, it is clear that one thousand cubic feet of air will be contaminated for every second that the room is occupied. To ascertain the number of seconds which would elapse before the entire air contained in the room will be contaminated, so that it is unfit for further breathing, we have only to divide the cubic contents of the room by one thousand. Multiplying, we have 60 × 40 × 15 equals 36,000, the number of cubic feet. This, divided by one thousand, gives thirty-six as the number of seconds. Thus it appears that with closed doors and windows breath poisoning of the audience would begin at the end of thirty-six seconds, or less than one minute. The condition of the air in such a room at the end of an hour cannot be adequately pictured in words, and yet hundreds of audiences are daily subjected to just such inhumane treatment through the ignorance or stupidity of architects, or the carelessness of janitors, or the criminal negligence of both.”

TUBERCULOSIS POINTS THE MORAL

No circumstance has been more successful in impressing the great importance of fresh air and adequate ventilation upon the public mind than the success which has attended the open air cure for consumption. This is a mode of treatment of comparatively recent adoption in America, but it is by this time generally recognized as really the only possible cure for tuberculosis. The mortality from this disease is greater than any except pneumonia; another disease that proper breathing habits will do much to avert. In America one person in every nine dies of tuberculosis; and of the deaths which occur between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, one-third are due to the great white plague. We give these figures on the authority of Professor Irving Fisher of Yale, who is Secretary of the New Haven AntiTuberculosis Association. His interest in this disease is that of one who has had it, and who has cured it by the open air treatment. Of the authors of this book, one has had an experience similar to Professor Fisher. There is nothing academic about this insistence on the need of fresh air and proper breathing habits; literally, and in the fullest degree, it is a question of life and death whether you shall breathe properly, and have good air to breathe, or whether you shall not.

HOW BREATHING AIDS THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD

To return for a moment to the processes of breathing, we find that the act of inflating the lungs is a blood-pumping process as well. This blood-pumping process has a great effect upon the struggle of the white soldiers of the blood to maintain the body against the inroads of disease. Each time that the wall of the chest is elevated after the lungs have been emptied, a suction force is exerted upon the large veins which enter the chest, especially those which come in through the abdominal cavity. “At the same moment,” to quote Dr. Kellogg again, “the downward pressure of the diaphragm by which the liver, stomach, and other abdominal organs are compressed against the muscular walls of the abdomen, serves to force the blood from below upward, emptying the venous blood of the abdominal cavity into the chest, thus helping it toward the heart. The more tense and well developed the muscles of the abdominal wall and the stronger the muscles of respiration, the stronger will be this upward movement of the blood. When the abdominal muscles are weakened by improper dress, by corsets, tight lacing, or by wearing of belts or bands or by sedentary habits, especially sitting in a stooped position, the weakened muscles yield to the downward pressure of the diaphragm, thus neutralizing to a large degree the beneficial influence of this action. This condition is unquestionably a cause of chronic disease of the liver and stomach, inactive bowels, and possibly lays the foundation of cirrhosis of the liver, spleen, and other grave disorders of the abdominal region.”