Health, or, How to Live

BEDROOMS IN SPRING

IF two persons are to occupy a bedroom at night, let them step upon weighing scales as they retire, and then again in the morning, and they will find their actual weight is at least a pound less in the morning. Frequently there will be a loss of two or more pounds, and the average loss throughout the year will be more than one pound. That is, during the night there is a loss of a pound of matter, which has gone off from their bodies, partly from their lungs, and partly through the pores of the skin. The escaped material is carbonic acid and decayed animal matter, or poisonous exhalations. This is diffused through the air, in part absorbed by the bed-clothes. If a single ounce of wool or cotton be burned in the room, it will so completely saturate the air with smoke that one can hardly breathe, though there can only be an ounce of foreign matter in the air. If an ounce of cotton be burned in every half-hour during the night, the air will be kept continually saturated with smoke, unless there can be an open door or window for it to escape. HHTL 311.1

Now the sixteen ounces of smoke thus formed is far less poisonous than the sixteen ounces of exhalation from the lungs and bodies of the two persons who have lost a pound in weight during the night hours of sleeping, for while the dry smoke is mainly taken into the lungs, the damp odors from the body are absorbed both into the lungs and into the pores of the whole body. Need more be said to show the importance of having bedrooms well ventilated, and of thoroughly airing the sheets, coverlids and mattresses, in the morning, before packing them up in the forms of a neatly made bed? — Agriculturist. HHTL 311.2

VENTILATION OF BEDROOMS. — Two persons occupying a bedroom will weigh at least a pound less in the morning than at night. This owing to the escape of matter that has passed off in the meantime through the skin and lungs. The exhalation is carbonic-acid gas, which is poisonous. This is diffused in the air or absorbed by the bed-clothes. The fact suggests the necessity for ventilating sleeping-rooms, and airing bed-clothes in the morning before making the bed. — Ex. HHTL 311.3