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properties of the atmosphere is due to that modern chemistry which Dr. Reid assumes as the basis of his new science; but strange and lamentable it is to find Dr. Reid obliged to confess that men are so besotted as to be insensible to these astonishing discoveries, and to go on breathing the present combination of gases with as much indifference as our ancestors did the oldfashioned atmosphere. Man, he says,

is comparatively indifferent as to the nature and quality of the air that he consumes....The standard of taste for fresh and pure atmospheric air even among those classes of society who have every luxury at command, must be considered at present as very much below what is required for health; and even where the want of it is felt and acknowledged, the amount of value placed upon it is so small and trifling, that the expense and trouble of providing proper channels for its supply are considered serious objections to its introduction.'— pp. 5, 6.

No improvement of this vicious taste could, Dr. Reid repeats, have been expected

'till the discoveries of modern science revealed the nature and composition of atmospheric air' (§ 15). Then indeed a new era dawned on the question by unfolding the constitution of atmospheric air.'-§ 16. But alas it has dawned in vain. Dr. Reid has still to lament, which he does very pathetically, the rough treatment to which that interesting organ of life vulgarly called the lungs is subjected by the obstinacy of mankind in breathing the common atmosphere crude and raw, just as if Priestley, Scheele, Lavoisier, Black, and, above all, Dr. Reid, had not warned them that it consists of several component parts, and that it may be as comfortably mixed and brewed, and cooled or heated, and sweetened or taken plain, as a glass of gin-and-water.

And what is still more lamentable, the remedy of the evil seems so distant as to be almost hopeless:

Until the great elementary truths of physical science shall be introduced as essential branches of education in schools and academies, among the humblest as well as in the highest walks of life, it cannot be expected that there will be that desirable appreciation of the value of a pure and wholesome atmosphere which must ever be one of the principal objects of all who desire to advance the cause of public health. The cloud must be removed that veils at present the true state of the case from the great mass of the community.'—§ 18.

This and some other hints in the course of the work lead us to hope that if the Government should be so far alive to the best interests not only of this country, but of humanity itself, as to add a Ventilating College to the Institution in Gower Street (where common fame says it is peculiarly needed), Dr. Reid, when he

shall

shall have terminated his arduous labours in the Houses of Parliament, might be prevailed upon to accept the Presidency, in addition to the Commissionership which has been judiciously conferred on him in the interval between the publication of his two works. We should in this case venture to suggest, as a matter both of taste and economy, that the President's lodging ought to be on the classical model of the Temple of the Winds, and that his salary might, if it suited his personal convenience, be made payable in his native district—at the Bank of Ayr.

But whatever details may be adopted, the necessity for some grand remedial system is urgent. Dr. Reid enumerates three principal sources of the mortality of the human race-two, at least, of which have not been, by less profound inquirers, considered as so immediately or extensively fatal as his indefatigable. industry and scientific acumen have discovered them to be.

Mental anxiety may, perhaps, be considered the most powerful enemy to the duration of human life, and, next to it, defective nutriment, whether in quantity or quality. But after these, no other cause, at least in modern times, appears to have inflicted so great an amount of evil upon the human race as defective ventilation.'-p. x.

If we were not overborne by this decisive authority, we should hardly have surmised that 'mental anxiety' had been more extensively fatal than defective nourishment; nor so powerful an enemy to human life as war, shipwreck, small-pox, dropsy, gout, and, above all, that natural, as it was supposed, and pretty general disease vulgarly called old age; but we bow to Dr. Reid's superior judgment; and the proposition thus forced on our conviction, that defective ventilation is more fatal than all the maladies-except anxiety and hunger-that flesh is heir to,' fills us with equal wonder and alarm-wonder, how it is that mankind has not been exterminated during the interval between the Deluge and Dr. Black-alarm, at finding that this terrible,' and the more terrible because invisible scourge,' is now desolating every private habitation, and almost every public institution, in the empirewith, indeed, the exception of the very two places about which the public at large feels perhaps the least anxiety-Dr. Reid's own class-room, and the Houses of Parliament.

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Impressed, as we profess ourselves to be, with a due reverence for Dr. Reid's opinions, developed, as our readers see, with so much clearness, sobriety, and good sense, we are still willing to hope-not venturing to advance any personal experience of our own against the data of Dr. Reid, but from the great fact of the duration of mankind during the many ages in which no one thought of ventilation à la Reid-that his philanthropy may exaggerate a little our present danger; and as this consideration naturally car

VOL. LXXVII. NO. CLIV.

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ries us back to the earlier ages, we should venture to suggest for Dr. Reid's ingenious pen in any intervals of leisure that the ventilation of the Houses of Parliament may allow him, an inquiry into the ventilation of Noah's Ark, and some explanation of the mode in which animal life was maintained at that extraordinary crisis. This would be a valuable supplement to Bishop Wilkin's calculations of the stowage and provisioning of that celebrated vessel; and if he finds, as he reasonably may, that it is a question too weighty for any individual, we submit that an inquiry into the ventilation of Noah's Ark, with reference to the New House of Commons, could not be thought undeserving the attention of the same Committee-Benjamin Hawes, Esquire, Chairmanwho have already sat (as Dr. Reid frequently informs us, pp. 60, 65, 488, &c.) upon Smoke,' so much to their own creditthe advantage of the country-and, above all, to the honour of their distinguished chairman ;-who has ever since been nominated (even, we believe, by Governments professing opposite politics) on all those various Commissions of Taste and the Fine Arts that adorn our enlightened era-and are, we conclude from this and several other circumstances, destined to end in the subject of the Honourable Member's former labours.

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But if the public danger from a neglect of Reid-Ventilation be very awful, the prospects opened by the future introduction of the science are proportionably bright. To say that 'man dies of a stoppage of the breath' has been hitherto considered as a mere vulgarism: but Dr. Reid seems to think that it is a great medical fact, and that breath may be mechanically supplied by the new science to a degree that will set all the ordinary modes of death at defiance. The Psalmistspeaking, of course, of human nature as it existed before Black and Priestley-tells us that the days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.' Dr. Reid, however, is of a more liberal opinion, and informs us that

'If we look to the facts pointed out by modern chemistry and physiology in reference to the human frame, and contrast the provisions which the Creator has made for giving it power and endurance, with the extent to which these are too often counteracted by ignorance, or inattention to the laws of life, or by the reckless and careless indifference with which health and life are exposed, it is not affirming too much to say, that a great addition to its length and to comfort might be reasonably anticipated in all classes of society, were the laws that regulate it generally understood, and applied to the circumstances of daily life.'-§ 46.

'An HONOURED age of eighty, ninety, or a hundred years might then

be

be expected to become the average standard of human life, instead of the exception, as it is at present.'-§ 47.

Here we must observe en passant that Dr. Reid not only bestows longevity, but, like the Equitable Insurance Company, throws in a bonus on ventilated lives-which are to be not only long, but honoured.' As to the main point, however, of difference between King David and Doctor David-the duration of human lifewe hope that we shall not be censured for old-fashioned prejudice in preferring the authority of the Psalmist to that of the physician-inspiration to ventilation; but whether we be in this point right or wrong, Dr. Reid's opinions are entitled to so much respectful attention that we venture to propose that the large reward which he evidently expects, and still more evidently deserves, in addition to whatever amount of 1 + s + d, he have already absorbed, should be granted in the shape of a pension worthy the gratitude of a great and wealthy country, to commence on the day that he shall attain his 100th year, and to be increased by a liberal addition for every subsequent anniversary beyond that honoured average.' Such a pension will be the highest and most rational honour of which human nature is susceptible, being at once the proof, the monument, and the reward of the specific service.

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We reluctantly leave this delightful prospect for the more painful topic of the condition of mankind under our present deplorable neglect of scientific ventilation. It is no part of our duty on this occasion to recapitulate the more obvious effects of bad air on human health and comfort, which, as we have before hinted, many former writers have touched upon, and which are, we fear, too familiar to the experience of every man and woman who visits-even without any very distinct notions of oxygen or nitrogen -the sad abodes of sickness and poverty. They would be out of place here; our present object being only Reid - Ventilationthose views which are, we may say, exclusively the Doctor's.

The Doctor, under the head External Ventilation, contemplates the possibility of being called upon to ventilate vast spaces of what is commonly called open air :

'External Ventilation is,' he says, 'the supply of air to streets, squares, courts, and alleys, or to any special situation or area not included in buildings.'—p. 11.

He then proceeds statistically to show the consumption of air in London:

The inhabitants of London, amounting in number to two millions, respire, every minute, 370,370 cubic feet, or 12 tons of air, and consequently require, for respiration alone, 6,653,000 tons per annum. Allowing, however, 10 cubic feet per minute to each individual for the

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supply of his various wants, the consumption amounts to 359,000,000 of tons annually, or nearly 1,000,000 of tons daily.'—pp. 14, 15. These observations are so explanatory of the practical advantages of ventilation, that our readers will be glad to have one or two more specimens of the axiomatic facts on which Dr. Reid founds his system:

'One man during a life of 50 years makes 525,600,000 respirations, inspires 166 3 tons of air, consumes 18.57 tons of oxygen, discharges 19 8 tons of carbonic acid from his lungs, containing 5 475 tons of carbon, or about 80 times the weight of his own body (150 lb.). Were he allowed 10 cubic feet of air per minute, he would, during 50 years, have used nearly 900 tons.'-p. 15.

This seems to imply that an individual ought not to be 'allowed' quite so much when the supply is limited; and he tells us elsewhere and more than once-that a defective supply is the most prevailing evil' (§ 402); but however individuals may be occasionally stinted, or particular localities imperfectly supplied, it is consolatory that Dr. Reid has enabled himself, by some elaborate calculations, to assure us that mankind at large areeven on the fullest allowance and with air à discrétion-in no great danger of a scarcity:

'The inhabitants of the earth, taken at 1,000,000,000, respire annually 3,327,000,000 of tons of air, and evolve 109 millions of tons of carbon. The total weight of the atmosphere is about 5,261,000,000,000,000 of tons, so that it would require 1,580,000 years to elapse before the whole atmosphere could be respired by the human inhabitants of earth.

'Of the atmosphere, 78 per cent., or 4,103,600,000,000,000 tons are nitrogen, and 22 per cent., or 1,157,400,000,000,000 tons are oxygen. Of this quantity, there are annually consumed, by the human inhabitants of the globe, 371,250,000 tons of oxygen, so that it would require nearly 3,120,000 years for this supply to be exhausted, supposing respiration to be carried on till the last portions are consumed.'-pp. 15, 16.

The good sense and practical utility of these calculations will be appreciated by every reader, and will excite, we think, a lively desire in the public mind for the establishment of that system of education, frequently recommended by Dr. Reid, which is to teach the humblest as well as the highest walks of life,' that it would take a thousand millions of men and three millions of years to exhaust the oxygen, being about one-fourth, of the atmosphere-while it would take that same number only half the time to respire the whole atmosphere, oxygen and all! The past, present, and prospective consumption of oxygen, &c., by the nonhuman inhabitants of the globe,' appears to be omitted either accidentally or as too minute for consideration.

Former writers have, we have said, laid most stress on ventilating the habitations of the poor. Dr. Reid is by no means indifferent

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