Thermal ventilation, and other sanitary improvements, applicable to public buildings, and recently adopted at the New York Hospital : a discourse, delivered at the hospital, February 8th, 1851 / by John Watson.

  • Watson, John, 1807-1863.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thermal ventilation, and other sanitary improvements, applicable to public buildings, and recently adopted at the New York Hospital : a discourse, delivered at the hospital, February 8th, 1851 / by John Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    about 16 feet of carbonic acid gas, and from 16 to 20 ounces of aqueous vapor, highly charged with animal matter, are eliminated every twenty-four hours. For the vast amount of combined exhalations from the lungs and skin, and for some of the evils resulting from them when allowed to accumulate, and to be reabsorbed into the circulation, I may refer to the able report of my friend and colleague, Dr. Joseph M. Smith, presented to the American Medical Association, at their last annu- al meeting, and published in the volume of their Trans- actions for the present year. Estimating the pulmonary and cutaneous exhalations thrown off in the form of vapor, at 40 ounces daily for every healthy individual, and the monthly accumulations of a family of ten persons, in one of our close and ill- ventilated city houses, where the inmates are confined not more than half the time, at about five hundred pounds, no inconsiderable portion of which consists of animal matter, which cannot remain long suspended in the air, and which must, in consequence, be precipitat- ed and allowed to decompose in the apartment, and we have sufficient materials, he conceives, to account for the frequent spontaneous generation of typhus fever. This, however, is an estimate for the badly ventilated abode of healthy individuals. Apply the same reason- ing to the wards of an hospital, the inmates of which are confined to their apartments both night and day, with their exhalations at the time of evolution already approaching a state of putrefaction, and the quantity of animal matter contained in these out of all proportion greater than that in the exhalations of the healthy; re- membering, also, that the lungs are organs of absorp- tion as well as of exhalation, that the whole mass of the blood passes through them about once in every three