as the standard of permissible impurity has been placed by high sanitary authority (Dr. Parkes and others) at 6 parts of carbonic acid in 10,000 of air, it is evident that the best practical talent should be engaged in designing and perfecting means for securing to our public schools adequate and thorough ventilation.

The Sanitarian for August, 1873, contains the report of Mr. Lewis W. Leeds concerning the ventilating and warming arrangements of some of the school-houses in the city of New York. An examination of two of the best gave the following results:

In No. 35 the windows in all the class-rooms were found pulled down from the top, for the purpose of relieving the rooms of a condition which the teachers termed "blaziness." The ventilators for the exhaustion of the foul air are all near the floor and many of them communicating with flues in the outside walls. On testing these flues there was little or no motion of air in them, and as commonly into as out of the room. A considerable number of wrought-iron radiators had recently been placed in various rooms to assist in warming and for the purpose of establishing an air-current. This combination of direct radiation and currents of partially-warmed air is an excellent one when properly carried out. But in this case there seemed to be a total want of knowledge of the subject in the executive head of the work. The arrangement as a whole is imperfect and inefficient.

No. 47 had been passed by the sanitary inspector without criticism, and a better condition was anticipated. It is warmed by seven hot-air-furnaces. All the warmed air is brought into the class-rooms through registers on the interior or warmest side of the room, directly against the teachers' backs and the ventilator for the escape of the foul air is placed directly above the registers, thus submitting the teacher, who sits on the warm side of the room, to a perfect blast of hot air, which, after roasting him or her, rises immediately to the ceiling and escapes. But the children sitting on the opposite and cold side of the room, with their backs to the windows, have to suffer for the teachers' roasting by the open windows, exposing them to cold draughts upon their backs and shoulders and contributing in no small degree to their frightful mortality.

One only of the seven furnaces had a good supply of fresh air. Five of the others were wholly devoid of fresh-air-entry from the external atmosphere, while they counterfeited the appearance by the show of large registers from the cellar. These contained an accumulation of dirt, flavored with the odor of the hen-coop, into which the fresh-air-supply-box of the seventh furnace had been converted, the mouth being shut off by a damper-not odor-tight—veritable foul air where fresh was most to be expected. The ventilating-flues, instead of being carried out separately as chimneys, and each communicating with an open ventilator, (as had been represented,) were found gathered together on each side of the house into large cupolas. One of these cupolas was found boarded over so as completely to obstruct the air. This had been done for the purpose of using it as a pigeon-house.

Thus there are in one of the first-class schools in the city of New York about 1,200 children "tortured by the most unscientific and villainous appliances for warming and ventilation that the human mind can conceive of. If the very converse of warming and ventilation were desired, this system could scarcely be excelled for producing alternate blasts of hot, foul air around the head for breathing, and cold, chilly draughts against the back and feet for killing."

Two new school-houses, "supposed to embody the most perfect system of ventilation and warning," were also examined. In the words of the report:

There is not one single foot of fresh-air-supply in either of these buildings. The only dependence for fresh air is the pernicious system of opening the windows; and the radiators are commonly placed opposite the windows, so that the cold air has to be blown across the room before it comes in contact with them. There is some little show in some of the rooms of an attempt to carry off the foul air, but in reality it is wholly ineffective. There are small, rough flues in the brick wall, into which registers are placed, with the worthless object of conducting the foul air into a large exposed space under the roof and allowing it to escape under well-displayed cowls. Some of the overheated air possibly ascends at times up the hottest of these flues, but it is so quickly cooled by contact with the cold roof that it falls back again into other rooms where the flues are less heated. And thus, at best, a current of foul air only is established, without any means of escape.

In the Sanitarian for November, 1873, Mr. Leeds gives the results of an examination of ten additional school-houses, some of them recently erected in the city of New York. Of two of these it is said, "There is not a sign of a register for fresh-air-supply or escape of foul air in the whole building;" and of four others, "No attempt whatever to provide a regular supply of fresh air." Only one has "ample fresh-air-boxes in good condition;" and in this, and in every other building examined, the provision for the

exhaustion of foul air is defective and insufficient. "A few small registers near the floor open into small rough flues in the cold outside walls," in one case only "about four inches square-2 perfect farce. These flucs empty into the large space under the roof, where the air, becoming chilled, is quite as likely to fall down into the rooms as to flow out; consequently such registers are almost always closed to avoid the cold on the feet of those who sit near them."

In one building "the handsome show of ventilators on the roof and the ventilatingregisters in the rooms are mere shams and deceptions, for they do not communicate;" in another, "the ventilating-caps on the roof are not connected in any way with the ventilating-flues in the outside walls." In a third, "attempts have been made to connect the flues from the rooms with the ventilating-caps on the ridge by wooden boxes under the roof, but a space of two or three feet in length is left open near the center, breaking the connection."

Of one building it is said: "The aggregate capacity of the foul-air-openings, provided they prove efficient, is about one-tenth that provided in first-class buildings in other cities;" of the ventilating-flues in another, "they are of no earthly use except, perhaps, it might be a slight relief to the consciences of those whose business it should be to provide these children and teachers with pure air." Not one building was found where a sufficient supply of fresh air could be secured without opening the windows. Many teachers "have frequent complaints from parents that their children take cold by sitting in the draughts from open windows; but they cannot get along at all without having the windows open. In cold and stormy weather, when the windows cannot be kept open, the air soon becomes filthy. It is perfectly horrid to keep children confined in such an atmosphere; indeed it would be shameful cruelty to animals."

In this examination was included the new building of the Normal College of New York, of which it is said:

Here we have a splendid new building, where the greatest attention has been given to secure the latest and most perfect ideas that the board could command for the instruction of the teachers themselves in all that belongs to the most perfect development of the body and mind of the young citizens of New York. The heating-apparatus alone must have cost from $30,000 to $40,000. Radiators scattered around in great profusion in proper and improper places, but there is not one single foot of regular fresh-airsupply provided for in the entire building. Innumerable handsome ventilating-registers ornament the walls at the top, in the middle, and at the bottom of the rooms, but the current is as likely to be into as from the room. All the flues terminate in the vacant space under the roof, so that the warmed air that may, at times, go up the flues on one side of the building, will be cooled by contact with the cold roof and fall down the flues on the other side. There are a few little ventilating-cowls on the roof, with a crack of two or three inches around the top, which is probably about one-fortieth part of the open space that makes such a splendid show in all the rooms.

Thus, by a careful examination of all classes of buildings belonging to the board, we find that much expense has been incurred in the name of ventilation, and a goodly show of ventilating-cowls ornament the exterior of many of these buildings; and yet we do not find one single building properly ventilated. There appears to be an entire absence of any comprehensive or practical system of warming in connection with the ventilation, which is so essential in producing the most satisfactory results.

The construction of school-houses so as to furnish a "grand collecting-room," Mr. Leeds utterly condemns. In the Sanitarian for December, 1873, he asks:

Is this exhibition-room worth what we pay for it? Is it worth sacrificing the comfort and health of both teachers and pupils by cutting off the fresh-air-supply from the class-rooms, where the real labor of the school is performed? In short, is this exhibition worth four or five hours of the most shameful and disgraceful poisoning, by keeping the delicate lungs and bodies of teachers and children charged with the foul and fetid atmosphere of a close and crowded room, aggravated, too, by alternate blasts of dry air from red-hot furnaces and cold, damp air from open windows? Or, again, is this condition improved upon by the substitution of a large steam-radiator in one corner of the room, in immediate proximity to which-owing to the very crowded condition of these class-rooms-some of the children must sit?

Mention is made, as an example, of a Brooklyn school-house

A new and costly building, which probably fairly represents the best modern schoolhouses. Here we have twelve class-rooms on each of two floors. Eight of these on

each floor can all be overlooked at one time. But close the glass partitions, and we find 50 or 60 children, with their teachers, crowded into comparatively small classrooms, and for the most part without sunshine and pure air. Two only out of the twelve rooms have sunshine and pure air on two sides. And this is not the worst: six of the class-rooms are surrounded by other foul class-rooms on three sides. After half an hour's study the air is disgusting in the extreme, especially on the leeward side of the building. On the windward side the air is better, but it is too often from open windows, blowing directly on the backs of the children, now doubly susceptible to such an influence for evil.

Still worse than this is the plan of a number of splendid brown-stone buildings that have been recently erected in Philadelphia. Here, added to the great sin of massing all the collecting-rooms together, is the still worse blunder of cutting off so large a portion of the light and air by the stairs, committee-rooms, and water-closets. These are splendid new buildings, for which millions of dollars of the people's money have been spent and in which their children will undoubtedly be tortured for many long years, before they will have the courage to do what they ought to do at once, tear them down. Thus we find in so many cases the collecting-room-system so materially interfering with the sanitary conditions of the class-rooms that it should be greatly modified or entirely abandoned. And the adoption of the arrangement suggested by the Vienna premium-plan, would, in the author's judgment, fully justify the omission.

Here we have that great desideratum, a free exposure to the external atmosphere and sunshine on every side of each class-room; and, still better, no two class-rooms join, so that the foul air from one cannot be blown into another with any direction of the wind. The object is to imitate, as nearly as possible, the natural effect of a bright, sunshiny day. It will be observed that the sun rapidly heats all solid objects upon which it shines. These solid substances, thus pleasantly warmed by the sun's rays, form heaters in addition to the direct heat from the sun, thus warming the ground under us and surrounding our bodies with hot substances, but leaving the air around our heads cold and invigorating. We should, therefore, have the floors and sides of our classrooms warmed to just what they would be if the sun was shining upon them-say 85° F. or 90° F. for the floors and 110° F. for the sides of the rooms. It is a near approach to an even distribution of the heat to place the steam-radiators immediately under the windows, the excess of heat from the radiators being nearly balanced by the excess of cold from the windows. The cold air should not be allowed to get near the floor, but should be deflected upward as it enters, which is done by a curved sill, and the warmed air rising from the radiator mingles with the inflowing cold air, which is thus thrown to the ceiling and falls in imperceptible currents. It is very desirable, however, in small, crowded class-rooms to have a still more evenly diffused heat. This can be effectually secured by moderately warming the whole wainscoting on the colder sides of the room. This may be accomplished by making the wainscoting of iron, slate, or of plaster upon iron lath, with the steam-pipes behind it. The warming of the floors can be secured by cross-furring on top of the beams and allowing the hottest air (and that is generally the foulest air when warming by direct radiation) from the rooms below to pass underneath the floor to the ventilating-flues. Additional heat may be secured by running one or more steam-pipes through this air-channel. The means for exhausting the foul air consist of two large air-shafts centrally located, into which the various foul-air-ducts lead. The temperature of this shaft must be constantly above that of the external atmosphere, which may be secured by the smoke-pipe of the heating-apparatus or by coils of steam-pipes or a stove.

Nature's great means of purifying the air and supplying it fresh to all living things is agitation. The gentle agitation of the air in the school-room is of the first importance. This is very naturally and beautifully accomplished by having the floors warmed to 80° F. or 90° F. and the air above only 50° F. or 60° F. This would set the whole air of the room in motion, like water in a pot over the fire. With this constant agitation of the air and the diffused warmth, partially from radiation and partially from moderately-warmed air-currents, it is quite possible to maintain a uniform temperature of the whole room and to preserve a pure, vigorous atmosphere in a room constantly crowded with human beings, and that, too, without producing the cold, unpleasant draught, so bitterly complained of in crude and imperfect attempts at ventilation.

The annual report of the State-board of health of Massachusetts contains a paper on "School-hygiene," by Frederick Winsor, M. D., in which the following testimony is presented concerning the ventilation of schools in Massachusetts:

Defective ventilation is very generally and very emphatically complained of, and such expressions as follow are common: "We have no tolerable system of ventilation." "School-ventilation is thus far a failure." "The air in our school-houses is simply execrable." "The stench of a primary school has become proverbial." One of the school-houses presented in the report of the State-board of education for 1873 as a model, large and expensive, on the warming and ventilating of which "much thought and

care have been bestowed," was visited in December, 1873, and this is the report: "I visited several of the rooms and found the air offensive in all to the smell, the odor being such as one would imagine old boots, dirty clothes, and perspiration would make if boiled down together. The master says he knows of no school-house where good ventilation is secured. Our superintendent of schools says the same. In the new model school house the hot air enters at two registers in the floor on one side, and makes (or is supposed to make) its exit by a ventilator at the floor on the other side of the room. The master said the air was supposed to have some degree of intelligence and to know that the ventilator was its proper exit."

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The difficulties to be overcome in ventilating school-rooms are very great, but not too great to be conquered by intelligence and money, both of which are at our disposal, but neither of which is willingly applied to the problem of ventilation by buildingcommittees, with whom, rather than with architects, the responsibility seems to lie. The trouble is that every tolerable system of ventilation is expensive and those having the matter in charge cannot bring themselves to lay out much money on that which will make no show whatever. Nevertheless it is the fact that in our climate for seven months in every year fresh air cannot be had within doors without paying money for it. Not only does it presuppose a somewhat expensive arrangement of ducts and flues, but it requires for the efficient working of these more fuel than we like to pay for. Three things must be done: first, supply fresh air; secondly, warm it before bringing it into the room; thirdly, get rid of it after it has been breathed once. In rooms heated by stoves or by steam-pipes in the room, the first and second demands cannot be met except by transforming them into portable furnaces. To meet the third requires both larger, more numerous, and differently-placed openings and ducts than are to be found in one school-house in a hundred, and in addition to these a shaft or flue of ample size and well heated. And these all cost money. But then pure air is a necessity to health. No State or town can afford to allow its school-children to be slowly poisoned by breathing foul air. If we are wise we shall be less lavish of expenditure on showy exteriors and lofty halls and more ready to spend on thorough ventilation. In every school-house which cost $20,000 enough might have been saved, by making the ceilings two feet lower, to pay the cost of supplying the building with pure air, while at the same time the labor of going up stairs would be sensibly less. As to the practice of ventilating in winter by opening windows, we say, in the words of Dr. Angus Smith, "though foul air is a slow poison, we must not forget that a blast of cold air may slay like a sword."

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In the thirty-sixth report of the State-board of education is a report by a special agent of the board, who investigated the condition of schools and school-buildings in the four western counties. He visited 368 schools in 73 towns, and reports that "the larger number of the schools are kept in houses either badly located, incommodious, poorly furnished, inadequately lighted, or without proper means of ventilation. School-houses are often made too large, (i. e., made to include too many scholars.) They are often made too high: two stories are better than three; one story better than two. The rooms are often too high in the walls, a fault which makes them hard to heat and necessitates long flights of stairs, to ascend and descend which many times a day is not only laborious but mischievous to all the older girls and to every feeble child, while the height is not required for ventilation. Every city should have a sanitary inspector and instructor of schools, who should be a physician. Every town-board of health should have among its number a physician, whose duty it should be to pay a monthly visit to every scholar in town and make a monthly sanitary report to his board and a yearly report to his board and to the State-board of health. Thus, upon the local boards of health and upon the towns, something definite and permanently open to reference in relation to school-hygiene would be brought to bear. Public attention would be drawn to whatever mistakes and evils of this order might be shown to exist, and, when this great point can be gained, the evils will certainly be abated."

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The report of the State-board of health of Michigan contains the following remarks concerning the "hygiene of school-buildings:"

In these days, when the very foundations of our republican Government are claimed to rest upon our school-system, which includes much of the mental training of those who are soon to be "the people" of the State, and when it is considered how much time the young spend in school-buildings; that during the school-ages the physical system is also being formed for life, and that upon this physical structure the intellect is dependent for its force and endurance, one may then, to some extent, realize the very great importance of any and all questions which relate to the conditions which prevail in our schools and which thus control the immediate future of the race.

From the report of R. C. Kedzie, M. D., chairman of the committee on buildings, the following extracts are taken :

By securing the best possible conditions for the health of the young, we most effect

ually secure the well-being of the State; and any cause which saps the vigor of childhood is a blow at the common weal. The public school is almost the only place where the law may directly interpose to secure for the people the conditions of health. By law we have made attendance on school compulsory; by the potent law of an enlightened public opinion we should also make compulsory the conditions necessary for vigorous health during their attendance at school. By placing them, during the most formative period of their existence, in school-buildings which combine all the best conditions of physical existence, as well as intellectual development, we do much to mold the character and modify the home-life of coming generations. Every consideration, therefore, demands that we give most earnest heed to the conditions which influence the health of the children, the men and women of the immediate future of our State.

In examining the school-houses of our State, the first prominent fault in construction observed was that the rooms are too small for the number of scholars. The lowest estimate would require 300 cubic feet of space and 25 feet of floor-space for each scholar. Thus a room, 30 by 30 feet and 12 feet high, might contain thirty-five scholars and the teacher; but this is a minimum space, even for small scholars, and can be safely used only in connection with good ventilation. Some persons seem to think that small scholars require but small breathing-space, but this is a grave mistake. Mr. Simon says, "Even healthy children, in proportion to their respective bodily weights, are twice as powerful as adults in deteriorating the air which they breathe. I think it best that children and adults should be deemed to require equal allowances of air and ventilation." The rapidity of the processes of waste and repair in childhood forbid the use of less space. Yet, when we measure the size of school-rooms and count the number of scholars, we see that the space for each scholar is much below this estimate. The economy which hazards the health and life of the pupil to save the expense of additional buildings is an economy which borders on recklessness or crime. The evil of this system is especially manifest in the stinting of floor-space. The seats are placed as close as the scholars can conveniently sit and the space for the alleys is as small as will allow the scholars to pass single file. For the health of the scholar, the floor-space is almost as important as the cubic space in the room.

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School-houses three and four stories in height are utterly condemned, on account of the amount of stair-climbing which they necessitate and the influence of such stairelimbing on the health of female pupils, both during their school-days and in after life. Shall a city aim to have a few large schools or many small ones? It seems to me that too little thought has been given to the influence of large schools on the health of scholars; that the sanitary condition of a child in a school of 1,000 or 1,500 scholars is very different from that of a child in a school of 100 or 200. Adequate ventilation and satisfactory heating can be more easily secured in buildings of moderate size than in very large buildings. The same can be said in regard to the sewerage and insolation, or the needed exposure to sunlight. A large number of medium-sized schools would be considered far preferable to a small number of colossal schools. Could not the sanitary conditions be better observed in these smaller schools? I am aware how pleasing is the sight of a vast crowd of scholars and how beautiful is the sight of a sea of eager, upturned little faces; but is there not danger of sacrificing their well-being to our love of spectacular show?

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The proper warming of a school-building is a matter of great importance. The mass of the scholars are young, and it is well known that the young of all animals, especially when not taking active exercise, require a higher temperature than adults. Much of the difficulty in warming school-rooms arises from defective ventilation, as it is almost impossible to properly warm the air of a room which is not ventilated. In every room heated by artificial means, a lake of cold air tends to form on the floor; and, if this is left undisturbed by ventilating currents, the result in a hygienic point of view is very undesirable. In examining the school-rooms in this State I found, as a general rule, that where the rooms were not ventilated at the floor-level, and when this lake of cold air was not drained off, the difference between the temperature at the floor and the desk-that is, the difference in temperature at the feet and the chest of the scholar-was seldom less than 6 to 8 degrees, and often much in excess of these figures; in one instance 19 degrees and in another 21 degrees. The warming of a room is so intimately associated with its ventilation that it is impossible to properly warm a room in cold weather without also ventilating it. The plan of warming the floor and walls (Mr. Leeds's plan) strikes me as excellent in theory, and I should be very glad to see it practically tested. If Mr. Leeds's plan shall effectually replace the present faulty system, and especially the no system now in world will have taken an important step in a very desirable direction. Radiation from steam-coils placed in the room is probably the worst method of heating, because it does not provide for any renewal of air, and hence ventilation is

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use, the