Hence the immense importance of pure air. A
deficiency of food may be considerably less injurious than a deficiency
of pure air. Every person above fourteen years of age requires about six
hundred cubic feet of shut-up space to breathe in during the twenty-four
hours.[1] If he sleeps in a room of smaller dimensions, he will suffer
more or less, and gradually approach the condition of being smothered.
[Footnote 1: Where six hundred cubic feet of space is allowed, the air
requires to be changed, by ventilation, five times in the hour, in order
to keep it pure. The best amount of space to be allowed for a healthy
adult is about eight hundred cubic feet. The air which is breathed
becomes so rapidly impure, that a constant supply of fresh air must be
kept up to make the air of the shut-up space fit for breathing. The
following are some amounts of space per head which are met with in
practice:--
Artizan rooms 200 cubic feet.
Metropolitan Lodging
Houses 240 "
Poor Law Board Dormitories 300 "
Barrack Regulation 60 "
The best Hospitals 1,500 to 2,000
cubic feet.]
Shut up a mouse in a glass receiver, and it will gradually die by
rebreathing its own breath. Shut up a man in a confined space, and he
will die in the same way.
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