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Necessity of Pure Air in Sleeping Apartments

About This Item

  • Title: Necessity of Pure Air in Sleeping Apartments
  • Date: 1 August 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00744
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 1 August 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Katherine Jackson Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Necessity of Pure Air in Sleeping Apartments." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00744.xml (TEI)
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NECESSITY OF PURE AIR IN SLEEPING APARTMENTS.—

The recent investigations of circumstances affecting the health of the masses, have caused the importance of pure air and light to be more generally understood now than formerly. The simple fact set forth by Dr. Arnott long ago, that a canary-bird suspended near the top of a curtained bedstead in which people are sleeding will generally be found dead in the morning, should have been sufficient to show the danger of breathing a vitiated medium, and the necessity of providing a constant and ample supply of fresh air in our dwellings. A man, in a minute, vitiates about 1630 cubic inches, (to say nothing of the effect produced by the exhalations from the skin,) and this will serve to give some notion of the large quantity required for healthful occupation of a building by a number of persons, and especially of sleeping rooms.

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