Note 13 — III.—CIRCUMSTANCES CHIEFLY IN THE INTERNAL ECONOMY AND BAD VENTILATION OF PLACES OF WORK; WORKMEN’S LODGING-HOUSES, DWELLINGS, AND THE DOMESTIC HABITS AFFECTING THE HEALTH OF THE LABOURING CLASSES.

The spread of the knowledge of the fact that animals are subject to typhus consumption, and the chief of the train of disorders supposed to be peculiarly human, will, it may be expected, more powerfully direct attention to the common means of prevention. The following extract from a report on the labours of the Board of Health at Paris will show the effect of bad ventilation on cattle:—“The epizootie are in many respects less serious than the epidemics; nevertheless, as they often affect the animals which serve for the nutriment of man, and that apart from this consideration they may have grave consequences for the public health, they have constantly engaged the care of the council. In 1834, an epizootie was reported to the administration which prevailed among the cows of the communes round Paris, and which caused a great mortality. The researches of the council established that this epizootie was only a chronic disease, a true pulmonary phthisis, to which has been given the name of pommelière, and by which the greater part of the cows had been attacked which fill the stables of the milkmen of Paris and its environs. According to the council, the principal cause of the evil was to be attributed to the vicious regimen to which this species of animal is subjected. It is known that they pass a part of the year in stables perfectly closed, in which the space is not proportioned to the number of inmates, in which the vitiated air renews itself with extreme difficulty, and in which the heat is sometimes suffocating. It is known, also, that they pass suddenly from the food of the stable to pasture, and that in this change they go from the hot and humid atmosphere of the stable to a sudden exposure to the continual variations of the external air. This alternation of food and of heat and cold operates as a powerful cause of disease. But as the evil does not announce itself in a violent manner, as its progress is not very rapid, as there is even a period in the disease in which the animal is disposed to get flesh, the cow-feeder, who knows to what point to keep her, sells her when she is ready to calve. It is in a radius of 30 leagues from the capital that cows of this kind are purchased by the jobbers, who supply the milkmen of Paris. With these last they still hold out a certain number of years, if they are properly cared for, but in general they are kept in stables which are neither sufficiently large nor sufficiently airy, where they are exposed to the same causes which gave birth to the malady. The phthisis arrives insensibly at its last stage, and carries off every year from Paris and its neighbourhood a great number of these cows.” A similar discovery was only lately made as to the effect of defective ventilation on the cavalry horses in some of the government barracks in England; and it is stated, that a saving of several thousand pounds per annum was effected by an easy improvement of the ventilation of the barracks near the metropolis. An agriculturalist had a large number of sheep housed to feed them on mangel wurzel, but a great number of them sickened and died, and he declared that it was the food which had killed them. A veterinary surgeon, however, who happened to be aware of the consequences of defective ventilation, pointed out the remedy,—a better ventilation for the sheep, which were overcrowded. The defect was remedied; the sheep ate well, and throve upon the mangel wurzel.