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ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY
       FOUNDED 1836

WASHINGTON, D.C 
 
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A. S. LYMAN'S PATENT
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For Ventilating
BEDS, DESKS, AND ROOMS
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Fig. 2
  The above is a section of the  Air Purifier as it  stands for the head-board- of the
Bedstead, it is six and a half feet high and lengthens the bed only thirteen inches.
  Operation.—The  air enters  the  valve door E  and passes in the direction of the
arrows under and over the wire gauze shelves, L L, covered with lime.  This lime
condensing moisture and carbonic acid warms the air, and causes it to rise up through
the charcoal filter D,  up  the flue F,  under the sheet metal roof G, through which it
gives off its extra heat, over through the ice in chamber A, which cools and accelerates
the current down through the grate  and cool air-flue C, into the chamber B, and out
through the opening back of the  pillow.
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    The object of this apparatus is to filter and purify the impure air for res-
piration, to dry it when too  damp, and, in summer, to cool it—somewhat as
we would filter, purify, and cool foul water if obliged to use it for quenching
thirst.
    Practically it is found that when the charcoal, lime, and ice or water are
properly provided, and the valve fully open, an apparatus occupying a space
of only 15 by 23 inches  on the floor, and 6 feet 6 inches high, supplies from
30 to 80 cubic feet per minute, in one constant current of perfectly pure air,
dried and cooled  to any desirable extent.   It does this in any position in
which it may be needed, without the necessity of specially receiving air from
outside the apartment to form the current, and without any machinery of any
kind to become disordered.
    The materials  used for purifying and cooling the air cause, at the same
time, the  circulation  ; and, when properly provided with these, it must con-
tinue to blow as long as the law of gravity continues to act.   With it we can
always sleep in pure  air ; and  persons can even remain in the warmest and
most filthy hospitals in the  South, and, at the same time, be  enveloped in
and breathe, an atmosphere as pure and as exhilarating as was ever breathed
upon the hights of Oregon.
   The expense of materials—that is, ice, lime, and charcoal—for providing
a steady current of  50  cubic feet per minute, perfectly  purified,  and, in  the
hottest weather, cooled 20° and properly dried, has been less than two cents
per hour in this city.   Much of the season it is not necessary to cool it over
4° or 5°, merely enough to keep up the circulation through the disinfecting
material.
  The bed in the form here shown, when the valve-door  E  is fully open and
unslaked  lime and ice are abundantly  provided, will  blow 120 cubic feet
per minute in a warm room.   This is much more than is needed in any case,
and it will  then be  advisable to partially  close  this  valve-door to econo-
mize material.  Thirty pounds of ice  will blow 60  cubic  feet per  minute,
during 8 or 10 hours in  a warm night, even after the lime has been slaked for
weeks, and, consequently, aids  the  circulation but very little, as it  is but
slightly warmed by  condensing the small amounts of carbonic acid and
other gases. 
2
LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
              What Causes the Air to Circulate?
   In the lower part of the apparatus, upon the wire-gauze bottoms of the
drawers, L L, (Fig. 2,) are placed lumps of unslaked lime.  The air in con-
tact with the lime gives  off its moisture and its carbonic acid.   This warms,
rarefies, and causes it to  rise.   The air to supply its place enters through the
valve door, E, and  flows  in the direction of the arrows.   D is a deep drawer,
with wire-gauze bottom,  filled with charcoal.  The air next flows up through
this charcoal filter  and the ascending flue, F, and comes in contact with the
metallic roof, G, through which it gives off a part of its extra heat.  It next
passes over and through the fragments of ice in the  chamber, A, where it
is still further cooled and condensed, and falls down through  the grate and
the descending cold-air flue, C, and is delivered through the opening  B, be-
tween the pillow and head board of  the bed, as shown in Fig. 1.  In hot
weather the ice alone, without the  aid of lime, causes  quite a brisk circula-
tion.  In  any weather the lime alone  will produce quite a steady current.
Half a bushel  of  unslaked  lime has blown night and day for  ten days,
apparently without a moment's intermission.  Both materials acting together
produce quite a brisk current under all circumstances.
   The spout, H, leads off the water, resulting from the melting of the ice,
into a pan, from which it is drawn at  will  by the stop cock, I.


     How  is  the Air  Purified  by  Passing through  this
                            Apparatus?
   It is  well known that there are immense  amounts of minute particles of
decomposing animal and vegetable matter floating in the air of cities, and
more or less in all inhabited districts.  There are also  the deleterious gases,
the products of  the  decomposition of  animal  and vegetable matter.   These
gases are carbonic acid and the compounds of ammonia and of hydrogen.
   The air first passes through the lime.  One hundred pounds of lime will
absorb twenty-four pounds of carbonic acid gas, even when slaked or saturated
with moisture.   It  also absorbs and decomposes sulphureted hydrogen, sul-
phuret of ammonia, and  any other animal  exhalations.
   After leaving the lime, the air next passes in  a zig-zag direction through
the charcoal filter.
   Experiments have repeatedly shown that each cubic inch of charcoal will
absorb about 90 inches of ammoniacal gas, about 80  of sulphureted hydrogen,
and considerable quantities of other gases.
   But this cubic inch of fresh-burned charcoal is not a  mere sponge for hold-
ing impurities.   Each of its many thousand  little cells is really a beautiful
chemical laboratory, perfectly fitted up for decomposing impurities and storing 
LYMAN'S  PATENT  AIR PURIFIER.
3
 away their products where they can do no harm.  The most filthy exhalations,
 consisting of the minute particles of decomposing animal and vegetable matr
 ter, are collected by this charcoal, apparently as  a fiter of magnets  would
 collect the minute particles of iron floating through it in the air.   Here, in
 these little cells, these impurities are decomposed, and here their  elements
 are stored away.
    The most disgusting gases—the products of putrescence—are sulphureted
 hydrogen and compounds of ammonia.   The  first is always present  where
 bilious and intermittent fevers, agues, etc., arc generated, and,  hence,  is sup-
 posed  by some chemists, to be a principal cause of these diseases ; while, for
 the same reason, the sulphuret of ammonia is supposed by some chemists  to
 be the prime cause of typus and typhoid fevers, etc.  The charcoal seizes the
 ammonia, takes it into its little cells, and causes oxygen from the atmosphere
 to unite with it, and thus forms dilute nitric acid and holds it  there  simple
 sour water, a harmless substance.   In the same way each cubic  inch of char-
 coal will absorb  enough of  sulphureted hydrogen  to instantly  kill  a dozen
 men, if Dupuytren and Thenard's  experiments are reliable ; and combining
 oxygen with it forms a few  drops of dilute sulphuric acid, which may all be
 taken  with  impunity by a single child.   These dilute acids remain  in  the
 charcoal until it is reburned.
    According to Dupuytren and Thenard the l-1500th of this  gas  in air is
 instantly fatal to  a small bird ; 1-1000th killed a  middle-sized dog ;  and a
 horse died in an atmosphere which contained l-250th of its volume.  It doe^
 the mischief by decomposing the blood in their lungs when inhaled  by them.
    Finally, the air passes through the fragments of ice.   Here  it is washed
 as by a hail storm.  The water on  the surface of  this ice is also a  powerful
 absorbant of these impurities.  It  absorbs sulphureted  hydrogen,  and also
 deprives  the air of any compounds of ammonia.
    " Ammoniacal gas has a powerful affinity for water.  Owing to this  attrac-
 tion, a piece of ice, when placed in  a jar of ammonia, is instantly  liquified,
 and the gas  disappears in the course of a few seconds.   Davy in  his Ele-
 ments, stated that water at 50°, when the thermometer stands at 29*8  inches,
 absorbs 670 times its volume of ammonia.  According to Thompson, water
 at the  common temperature and pressure, takes up 780 its bulk."—Turner's
 Chemistry, article "Ammoniacal Gas."
    The air is also dried by coming in contact with  the  ice.  By being
 cooled its capacity for moisture is lessened, and the moisture is deposited on
 the cold surfaces of ice even  more abundantly than upon the pitcher of ice
 water.
    The following table shows the amount of moisture contained in one cubic
.foot of air when saturated, at different temperatures : 
4
LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
                           GRAINS.                          GRAINS.
     At Zero.     .    .      0*18     At 70°   .         .    7.94
        32°    .             2-35         80°.     .     .     10.73
        40°  .     .    .      3-06         90°   .            14-38
        50°                 4-24        100°.     .     .     19-12
        60°  .     .    .      5-82

   An inspection of the above table will show that if the air is 80° tempera-
ture and saturated, it would be possible to reduce its  moisture  from 10*73
grains to 2'35  grains per cubic foot by simply passing it through fragments
of ice broken sufficiently fine.  We  have carefully weighed  20  pounds of
ice before putting  it in this  apparatus, with the lime and charcoal left out,
and received from  it over 2H pounds of water.   The 2H pounds  of water
were rendered exceedingly disgusting to the taste by the filth that had been
collected from the  atmosphere in its passage through the ice.
   Here, then,  we have in this apparatus three of the most powerful absorb-
ents of impurity known, and when  they are properly supplied, the  air passing
alternately through each, is rendered absolutely pure.


  How is the Person always  Immersed in  Pure  Air  while
                              in Bed?
   In order that the person shall  always be immersed in pure air, the bed-
stead is  made with its sides raised near the head and  foot, as shown, and
strong curtains are hung inside on the bottoms,  S S, Fig. 1.  This forms a
sort of reservoir, or  bath.   The pure air, which even in cold weather is 3°
or 4° cooler  than the other  air of the room, is flowing  in near  its bottom,
between the pillow  and  purifier, or head-board, as shown by the arrows.
The current is generally broken up by a sort of screen  before  the pipe, and
it moves slowly over the pillow.  The cool air may be  felt flowing over the
top of the  reservoir where the side is  lowest.   If the  curtain is let down,
the cool air may  be felt pouring  out toward the floor.  While  the  bed  is
occupied, the curtain should  always be kept tightly closed.

                        Effects  of Pure  Air.
   When the air is pure we breathe more of it than  when impure.
   It is often remarked by chemists, that when an attempt is made to breathe
carbonic acid gas, undiluted with air, the lungs  refuse to receive it.  In spite
of every effort, the air passages close against it, and if enveloped  in it, the
person is strangled to death  as  suddenly as if choked with a halter.  When
there  is as much as ten per cent, of this gas in the air the person  inhaling it
breathes less and  less, grows cold, and  soon the lamp of life goes gradually 
LYMAN'S PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
5
 out.  The more impure the air, the less the person inhales, the more clothing
 is required, or the  more the  person suffers from cold.   On the contrary, the
 purer the air the more the person inhales.   This fact may also at any  time
 be  strikingly shown with this air purifier.  The moment a person who has
 been for some time confined  to air of the city or village, or been  breathing
 damp, warm air, commences breathing the air that has been properly filtered
 and purified  in this apparatus, he perceives an  involuntary heaving of the
 chest.   He  inhales almost twice  as  much air for a  few breaths  as he did
 before.  So beautifully and  wisely have our bodies  been constructed  and
 arranged, and so perfectly have the laws of nature been adapted  for our
 good,* that when even a little child while asleep begins to inhale the air  that
 has left its  impurities in this apparatus, it at once takes several deep, long-
 drawn breaths. It has been suffering more or less for the want of pure air,
 it has found  it now, and though  asleep, by instinct greedily devours it  and
 is rapidly purified,  stimulated, and strengthened, and  its lungs are expanded
 by  it.  As it breathed much less when in very impure air, so now it breathes
 much more.   The  little chest, that was formerly gradually collapsing, many
 of  the cells in its  lungs perhaps closing up, as if for the  last time, is  now
 rapidly expanding; those closed cells again opening and enlarging.  We
 have seen not only little ones very low with summer complaint and dysen-
 tery placed under its influence and restored in a single night as if  by magic,
 but we have seen  the little child with weak, narrow  chest, after sleeping
 under  it only three or four months, exhibiting  a remarkably large, full, and
 healthy chest.   Its  general effects  are the same on old  or young ; it simply
 purifies, stimulates, and strengthens the whole system  and expands the chest,
 increases  the appetite, and improves the health.  The best authorities  sub-
 stantiate the truth of the assertion, and no intelligent person who has slept
 a few nights under this air purifying apparatus, properly supplied, will doubt
 it that by simply breathing pure  air during the hours of repose, families in
 cities who are now so generally  growing weaker and rapidly running out,
 would rather grow  stronger, and not only would there be an immense saving
 of  life, as well as increase  in  numbers, but the race would be  greatly
 improved physically, mentally,  and, other  circumstances  being the same,
 even morally, with  each succeeding generation.

              Is there  no  Danger of taking  Cold?
    Immediately on  inhaling the pure, dry air from this apparatus, the person,
as we  have remarked, begins to take deep, long-drawn  inhalations.  More
oxygen is consumed, the secretions are increased, and, generally, in a very
short time the perspiration begins to become  sensible  on any  part of the
body that chances  to be heavily covered with  the bed-clothing.  This has
been the  case even where,  without this apparatus, and  consequently in 
6
LYMAN'S PATENT AIR  PURIFIER.
warmer air, the person suffered continually with cold.  Now there is nothing
strange in this any more than in the fact that the fire  in the  stove or in the
grate, in cold weather, is much hotter than in warm weather.  The draught
is stronger, and  in that  fire the amount of heat generated depends entirely
on the amount of oxygen consumed, and not on the temperature of the air
of the room, or on the amount of carbon  and hydrogen in the grate.   Just
so in the human system, the amount of heat generated depends  entirely on
the  amount of oxygen  burned or  united with  the carbon,  and, probably.
hydrogen, in the system.  Hence, though the air is 5° or 10° colder, much
more oxygen being consumed, the impurities of the blood and the  worn out
particles of matter in the muscles and  extremities, are  more rapidly  and
thoroughly burned up and thrown off in the form of carbonic acid and water
from the lungs, and exhaled from the skin.  The circulation is improved, the
lungs are expanded  and invigorated,  and the  system is  in such  a condition
that there is not only no more suffering from cold feet during the day, but
even carelessly sitting in a draught or wetting the feet, that would before
have prostrated the  person with  disease, will now  rather  stimulate  him
instead of doing him an injury.
   Dr. Griscom in his Uses and Abuses of Air, p. 64, under head of " Ra-
tionale of taking cold," remarks : " In  a healthy, vigorous constitution under
ordinary circumstances,  the internal organs, instead of being overcome by
the sudden irruption  and succumbing under the shock, will be stimulated by
it to a healthy reaction, and  the whole system feel a genial and invigor-
ating glow."
   Sometimes  when placing this apparatus over children  very low with sum-
mer-complaint and dysentery, or burning with fever, Ave have allowed the
cold, dry, pure air to discharge directly over their faces whole days and nights,
so as, at times, to make  their  hair wave, and never knew of  one  taking cold
under it.   Still, in many diseases,  and as a general rule, the current of air
should not be allowed  to strike the person until  he has been some  time
stimulated and prepared by it, and then it should always flow over the face,
so that he may breathe the pure air before it strikes any  other part.

How does simply Sleeping in Pure  Air, during the Night,
   tend  to Protect from  Diseases   Resulting  'from Expo-
   sures during  the  Day?
   It protects from  colds and their results by building up, strengthening,
and  invigorating the system, so that,  as  above quoted,  a slight exposure,
like  wetting the feet,  or  sitting in a draught, will not overcome,  but  rather
stimulate it to a healthy reaction, instead of causing a cold and prostrating

   It protects  from the development of fevers and contagious and other dis- 
LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
7
 eases, from the fact that during all that time while the body is  relaxed  in
 sleep, pure air only is breathed.  This is very important, for it is well known
 as  Florence Nightingale, in  her book on nursing,  remarks, that, " During
 sleep, even when in health,  the human body is far  more injured by the
 influence of foul air than when awake."
    Again, when during the day any  impurities  are taken into the blood
 which are not  at once burned out, it  would seem  that they  must be thor-
 oughly destroyed  during the night, while such an  abundance of perfectly
 pure air is breathed.
    Dr. Griscom in his Uses and Abuses of Air, p. 121, remarks : " But the
 process of respiration does not even stop here.  It not only removes useless
 and  pernicious  carbon, and prepares  and preserves in a state of purity a
 fluid capable  of affording to all parts of  the body the materials necessary
 to maintain their  vital endowments, but is also employed to separate any
 injurious matter accidentally received into or retained  in the system, which
 is a circumstance of more frequent occurrence  than  is commonly suspected.
 In  this way healthy and unimpeded respiration  will often purify the blood
 from miasmata, thus preventing the development of fever or other conta-
 gious or pestilential diseases. . . . Thus a copious  supply of pure air will
 very often of itself eliminate morbid  matter  through the lungs which  if
 allowed to remain, would have produced fatal results."
    Again  we quote from Dr. Youmans'  Hand-Book of Household Science,
 p. 161 :  " The Harmattan,  a dry wind from the  scorching sands of Africa,
 withers, shrivels, and warps everything in its course.   The  eyes, lips, and
 palate become dry and  painful, yet it  seems to neutralize certain conditions
 of disease.  ' Its first  breath  cures  intermittent  fevers, epidemic fevers dis-
 appear at its coming, and small-pox infection becomes incommunicable.' "
    It is by oxydizing or burning out the diseased matter which has been
 inhaled, or has  accumulated from the decomposing products of the normal
 waste or other source, that  the dry, pure wind from  the great sandy desert
 produces so favorable an effect.
    Now we do not claim for the Air Purifier that its first breath cures inter-
 mittent fever,  but we do know that when breathing this pure air during six
 or eight  hours in  every twenty-four, and taking proper food and care other-
 wise, the fluids  of the  system will be  kept so rich and pure, that neither
intermittent, nor typhus, nor typhoid, nor  scarlet, nor  any other fevers, nor
erysipelas, nor carbuncle, nor cancer, nor any other ulcer ;  nor bronchitis, nor
catarrh, nor consumption, or other form of scrofula ; nor diseased liver, nor
dyspepsia,  nor neuralgia, nor dysentery, nor cholera  infantum, nor Asiatic
cholera,  nor small-pox, nor any other contagious disease, will  find a soil
 in which to grow.   It will do  all for the patient in any disease that the Har-
 mattan  can do, and  vastly  more in some  diseases.  And if the " ounce  of 
 8                 LYMAN'S PATENT AIR PURIFIER.

 prevention is worth more than the pound of cure," it will prevent diseases
 even if it could not cure them.


 Directions for keeping the Apparatus in Order.   The  Lime.

    Where ice is easily obtained, and the apparatus used in a warm room, so
 that the lime is not needed to aid the circulation, it need not be changed as
 soon as slaked, because  it will afterwards absorb nearly one-fourth of its
 weight of carbonic acid gas from the air.   It also absorbs sulphureted hydro-
 gen, sulphuret of ammonia and other poisons, and decomposes  them.   In sucli
 cases we would change it in from two to four months.   Be  careful  and not
 allow the lime to be laid so thickly upon any part of the shelves that it shall
 in slaking expand so as to  prevent the free circulation  of the air.  There
 should be a passage for the air at least thirty inches area between the shelves
 of lime and twenty inches area between the upper lime and charcoal.
    When ice is scarce, and wet surfaces are used in its place, or the  room so
 cold that lime is needed to produce a sufficient current, it  is necessary to
 change it  once  in from three  to  six weeks.  The  best practice is to change
 half of it every two or three weeks, or as often as may be necessary.  To do
 this without  scattering any  on the floor, take, say a  newspaper doubled, lay
 it on the floor in front of and close to the  door of the air purifier, open the
 door and draw out the first half of the lower shelf and  set it on the paper ;
 take hold of the paper and each side of the shelf so as to carry the shelf with
 the  paper under it, and empty it into the ash  hole, or on  to the  garden.
 Empty also in like manner the other half of this shelf.  Move the upper shelf
 down in the place of the one just emptied ; cover the empty shelf with lumps
 of lime (not too thick) and place it in the  upper space.  Shove both of them
 back as far as they  will slide, so that the air may pass around them as repre-
 sented by the arrows in Fig. 2.   The air now comes first in contact with that
 lime which has been longest in use.


                              Charcoal.

    Re-burn, or change the  charcoal for  that which is  known to be fresh-
 burned, at least once in four months' use ;  and where the air is very impure,
 oftener.   In  some very  filthy positions it  might be  advisable to change  it
 once a month.
    The charcoal should be split or broken up somewhat, and  laid in  so as to
 cause the air to flow up  through  it in a zigzag direction. We have a very
simple  apparatus for smothering the coal  after it is burned without wetting
it •  this is furnished, if desired, with the Air Purifier. 
LYMAN'S  PATENT  AIR PURIFIER.
9
                               The Ice.
   The more the ice is broken up, the more surface there is exposed, and of
course the more it cools and dries the air, and the greater its electrical effect;
but the sooner it melts.   When fresh ice is put in, always see that the copper
pan for water under the ice chamber is emptied.  It is a good rule with the
small Air'Purifier, which has  a  pail instead of a pan under the  grate, to
always bring the ice in this pail, and after setting the pail under the  chamber,
put the ice, lump by lump, in its place.
   See that  the small  door (E. Fig. 2) is kept open while in use.  If  you
wish  to preserve the ice,  or  lime  unslaked, it should be kept shut when
not in use.
                               Caution.

   Never allow the apparatus to be used with unslaked lime and charcoal
alone without ice, or a supply of moisture for a person in bed, or where the
air from it is exclusively breathed, because if there is much lime unslaked it
will blow an air so  dry as to be injurious in  most diseases.  It makes a  per-
son very restless.   It dries  up the air passages in the head and throat,  and
would, if persisted in, perhaps cause inflammation there.
   We quote the following from Dr. Youmans' " Hand-Book of Household
Science," to show the importance of attention to this apparatus, when lime
and water are used instead of ice, in order that it may supply air in proper
condition in respect to moisture :

         "  How Moist Air affects the System.  (Art. 291.)

   " Air which is already saturated with moisture, refuses to receive the  per-
spiration which  is offered to it from the skin and lungs ;  the sewerage of the
system is dammed up.   Much  of the oppression and languor that even the
robust sometimes feel in close and sultry days, is due to the  obstruction of
the insensible  perspiration by an  atmosphere  surcharged with humidity.
Not only are waste matters generated in the system thus unduly  retained,
but malarious poisons introduced through the lungs by respiration, are  pre-
vented from escaping ; which would lead us  to anticipate a greater  preva-
lence of  epidemic diseases  in damp than in dry districts.   Such is the  fact
as we notice in cholera which follows the banks of rivers and  revels in damp
low situations.   Moisture joined with warmth is most baneful to the system.
.....Damp air,  at the same temperature  as dry air, has a more  powerful
cooling effect, producing  a peculiar penetrating chilling feeling, with pale-
ness and shivering,  painfully known to New England invalids as accompany-
ing the east winds of spring." 
10
LYMAN'S PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
                   " Effects of Dry Air.  (Art 292.)
   " Dry  air favors evaporation.   By promoting rapid  transpiration from
the pores of the skin, it braces the bodily energies and induces exhilaration
of the spirits.   Cold dry air is invigorating  and reddens  the skin, with none
of the distressing symptoms of cold moist air.   If very dry it not only accel-
erates  perspiration but  desiccates and parches the  surface and deprives the
lining  membrane of the throat and  mouth of its moisture so rapidly as to
produce an uncomfortable dryness or even inflammation.  Dry climates which
quicken evaporation, are best adapted for relaxed and languid constitutions,
with profuse secretion  as those afflicted with chronic catarrh with copious
expectoration.   The Harmattan, a  dry wind from the  scorching sands  of
Africa, withers, shrivels and warps everything in its  course.   The eyes, lips
and palate become dry and painful, yet it seems to neutralize certain condi-
tions of disease.  'Its first breath cures intermittent fevers.  Epidemic fevers
disappear at its coming, and small pox infection becomes incommunicable.' "
   Now when water is  substituted  for  ice in the Air Purifier, great care is
needed.   If too large an amount of wet surface is supplied, the air may be as
nearly saturated as that of the east winds on the coast  of New England in
spring. Again, by neglecting  to supply moist surfaces,  the same apparatus
may furnish air as dry as that of the Harmattan.  When  ice is  used, the
amount of moisture in.  the air is properly regulated by it.  If the lime has
absorbed nearly all the  moisture, the ice adds a little to  it.   If the lime, has
been slaked, so that it absorbs but little or no moisture ;  the moisture of the
air will be condensed on the surface of the ice.

                                Note.

   After purifying  the  air, we may give it the peculiarities  of any locality
that we choose.   The pine hills are noted for their healthy and stimulating
air.  The atmosphere of such regions is of course very pure compared to that
of our cities, and in addition, it is loaded with vapor from gums and resins.
It was long ago demonstrated by Schonbein  that the vapor of tar " ozonized
the air," as he expressed it, that is, produced such a change in the oxygen as
to render it doubly powerful.  Hence its stimulating and beneficial effect
upon the  system.   Hence the scores of quack medicines containing tar or
some form of balsam, or what seems to be equally as good, the ordinary white
pine turpentine of this region.  Whether it is mixed with some oil  and rub-
bed upon the chest, or otherwise dissolved and swallowed,  the oxygen inhaled
is, to a greater or less extent, ozonized by it, and that we believe to be the
cause of its beneficial effect.
   When  either of those substances is taken into the stomach, even in very 
LYMAN'S PATENT  AIR PURIFIER.
11
small quantities, it is more or less injurious to that organ, sometimes doing.
much harm.  We have often used them to perfume the air after it is purified',
by spreading t!iem  upon plates, placed under the pan  below the ice in the
small independent Air Purifier or in the chamber B, made for this purpose
in the Air Purifier Bedstead.   We have sometimes used a small bunch of the
whittlings of pitch pine, and have seen tarred rope picked to pieces and the
fibres placed so that the air filtered through them.  But too much of  these
substances  renders  the  air too stimulating for  most persons  in health.  In
one case, where fibres of tarred rope were introduced, the child  awoke near
midnight and commenced  ringing.  The  tarred rope was removed and the
child stopped singing  and slept quietly till morning.   It will  do no harm
when a consumptive or any other person desires it to let them have it as rich
as they wish it, either in tar, balsam  of  any kind, pitch pine, tamarack, or
spruce gum.  Some prefer one, some another.
   When tannin is  to be inhaled, we have used fragments of  hemlock or
oak  bark saturated with water, and piled upon plates  in the chamber B, or
spread on sheets of wire gauze, and laid upon the grate instead of the ice.


                      Effects of Impure  Air.

   Dr. Youmans, in  his Hand-Booh of Household Science, after showing that
the various fevers,'dysentery, cholera,  or other forms of pestilence,  consump-
tion and other  forms of scrofula, are  caused by impure  air,  remarks as
follows :

  Art. 323.   "Bad Air undermines  the Vital Powers.—And yet
the fatal effects  of  mephitic  air are by  no means confined to those ter-
rible  maladies,  Cholera,  Fevers,  Consumption,  and  Infantile  disease, by
which the earth is  ravaged ;  by undermining the health it paves the way
for all kinds of disorders. . . .  Individuals may often continue  for years to
breathe a most  unwholesome  atmosphere without apparent ill effects, and
when at last they yield, and are prostrated or carried off  by some sudden
disease, the result is attributed to the more obvious cause, the long course of
preparation for  it by subtle and  insidious poisoning  being  entirely over-
looked.   The mass of mankind refuse  to recognize the  action of  silent,
unseen causes.   Our youth  in the morning of  their days, and  men  in the
meridian of  their strength pass abruptly away, and  we will  be satisfied
with no solution of the problem which refers the mournful result to repre-
hensible human agency."
   Dr. Griscom, in his Uses and Abuses of Air, besides  showing  that impure
air  is the cause, not only of all the various fevers that afflict  the human
race, also of dysentery and of infantile diseases, ani of  the various forms of 
12
LYMA^S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
 pestilence, when speaking  of  consumption and other forms of scrofulous
disease, remarks as follows :
   " M. Baudelocque, a celebrated French writer,  has made the causes of
this disease a subject of the most  careful investigation, and  as  his opinions
have been pretty generally adopted by the best  physicians  in  Europe and
America, and are in accordance with our own  experience, it will, perhaps,
be necessary  to make a few quotations from his treatise : ' Invariably it will
be found that a truly scrofulous disease is caused by a vitiated air.'  ...  In
speaking of the hereditary descent of the disease; Baudelocque admits that
scrofula may be  propagated from parents to their  offspring,  but  adduces
numerous examples that tend to diminish very much the importance generally
attached to hereditary constitution as a cause of the disease, and  which prove
that it is possible to destroy the predisposition and to avoid the malady by
simply respiring  pure  air.  . .  . Finally, M. Baudelocque  affirms '  that the
repeated respiration of the same atmosphere is a primary and efficient cause
of scrofula, and that if there be  entirely pure air, there  may  be bad food,
bad clothing, and want of personal cleanliness ; but that scrofulous diseases
cannot exist,' and supports the assertion by numerous cases and  incontro-
vertible facts."
   Again, Chap, xvi., Dr.  Griscom remarks : " One of the most insidious
means by which impure air or inefficient respiration assails the happiness
and undermines the health of mankind, is through  the action of the super-
abundant carbon upon  the brain during sleep.  . .  .  The slow  and  gradual
poison of carbonic  acid covers its  approaches  and secretly and  silently saps
the constitution of  the teetotaler  as well as the  intemperate ;  of the indus-
trious laborer as well as the spendthrift;  of infancy and youth as well as old
age ;  of the rich as well as the indigent; and, in too many instances, of the
learned as of the ignorant.  In fact, people seem to be generally unaware in
regard to atmospheric  impurities, that an invisible cause is  capable of pro
ducing  a visible  effect, and because  they do  not here see  that cause, they
think they need not dread its  effects.  This  error of judgment is the more
 glaring and  inconsistent, as they are in the  habit of admitting the former
principle  and  rejecting the latter in  almost  every other  department of
philosophy."
    Besides the long catalogue of diseases caused by impure air, which really
 carry off more than seven-eighths of the human race* he shows, Chap, xm.,
 that, 1st, " Vitiated air produces  inaptitude for study, and, therefore, igno-
 rance ;"  that, 2d, " the  judgment  is perverted by it and it produces quarrel-
 someness ;  that, 3d, " vitiated air encourages intemperance in the use of

   * Dr. Barton, in his work on the " Causes and Prevention of Yellow Fever," estimates that
 " Preventible diseases are proportioned to  non-preventible, about as eight or ten to one." 
LYMAN'S PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
13
 intoxicating drinks ;" that " impure air encourages vice, the most degrading
 vices ;"  that  6th,  " vitiated air produces deformity, imbecility, and idiotcy."
    He gives facts from  M. Baudelocque and others, which, as he  remarks,
 " Show in almost as strong language as can be employed, that atmospheric
 impurities are capable of  degrading man to the lowest deep to which  he
 can,  in  his  present  state,  be precipitated."  On p. 184  he remarks : " It
 should be always  recollected that when the smell of any substance  is per-
 ceived, the particles of that substance come in actual contact with the lining
 membrane of the  nose, and  pass into the  lungs and commingle with  the
 blood."   And when  in this connection we reflect upon the fact  that  every
 day several thousand tons* of decomposing animal and vegetable impurities
 are mingled with  the air  in this city of New York ; that the whole  atmo-
 sphere on this island, and of other cities and  villages is, during half the year
 so loaded with filth, that when one has been for a few  hours  enjoying  the
 air which has left its impurities  in this apparatus, and leaves it for the other
 atmosphere around him, he is for a few seconds disgusted  with all the stinks
 he ever before perceived, and some that are  entirely new  to his senses ; can
 we wonder that the most sensitive part of the community  are almost univer-
 sally delicate and sickly ?  Can we wonder that half the children born here
 die before six years of age ?  No.  The wonder is that so many live (poor
 sickly lives, though they are in their younger and more sensitive days, during
 the summer  months,) and grow up to manhood, and  sometimes become able
 and useful men.   What, we naturally ask, would these  children  become, if
 they enjoyed the luxury of  pure air together with their other advantages,?
    To the question which  has been so often  asked, " Is there no remedy for
 this undermining of  the constitution  and destruction of life in infancy and
 youth in our cities ?" we  answer certainly, there is a very simple remedy.
 It is surely better to filter out  these  poisons with  lime  and  charcoal, and
 deposit them upon our gardens or ash-heaps, or burn them, and send their
 products  up our chimneys, rather than let our  lungs and the lungs of  our
 children, continue to be unceasingly used as filters for collecting these animal
 and vegetable impurities  and  mingling  these  poisons  with our  blood, and
 then  taxing  the  vital forces  of our systems for- their destruction.   Taxing
 them so  often beyond their  powers of endurance.   Taxing  them so often
 again so near the  verge  of their endurance as to unfit them for any other
   * The average amount of carbonic acid expired daily by a person of ordinary size, is estimated
 at from 13£ to 22 cubit feet;  13 cubic feet of this gas weighs 1^ lbs. Suppose the  1,000,000 per-
sons on this island expire 1,500,000 pounds of carbonic acid and other impurities per day, this
equals 750 tons exhaled from the lungs and skin.
   The exhalations from  sewors, gutters, and filthy streets, back-yards, privies, etc., etc., will
certainly exceed fifty times as  much more. But 750 X 50=37,500 tons (thirty-seven thousand
five hundred tons), of filthy poisonous gases or decomposing animal and vegetable matter mixing
 daily with the air on this island. 
14
LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
business.   There are many who can probably for many years endure it, but
who are anxious to spend all their forces in some more  elevated employ-
ment, in which  they, can  be of  service to their fellow men.
    Dr. Dixon, editor of The Scalpel, in the first article of the number preced-
ing the, last, (Vol.  xn., No. 3,) on the questions  of " Diseases of Defective
Nutrition tin the Young Girl.  Can Medicine  cure Scrofula  or Pulmonary
Consumption?   Has it any Influence on  Spinal Disease, or Diseases  of the
Joints?   What should be done for them?" remarks as follows :
    " The  impossibility of treating  effectively tubercular or scrofulous affec-
tions  of the bones, diseases of the  hip and knee joints, abscesses  and curva-
ture of the spine, without pure air and great increase in the quantity of food
consumed, is now thoroughly understood by all  intelligent people.
    " Medicine can never add material to the body, if it cannot heal an ulcer
in the lungs or spine ; it cannot  affect the absorption of the' tubercles which
cau^c it;  it cannot straighten a curved spine  or leg, or give blood  to the
feeble girl; nor can the most perfect m32hanism impart natural strength or
tone to  the muscles  that support the spine or move the limbs.   Medicines are
generally  inert and  too often injurious ;  they destroy appetite  and digestion,
which is the source  of strength.  Mechanical appliances are only useful adjm
vants to take off the weight from the diseased part, and to aid the effect of a
surgical operation, or what is far better to prevent its necessity.
    " There, is no  true tonic but pwe air;  there is  no material of repair but
blood.  In all diseases originating in a low condition of "the vital force, more
air must be breathed, that more food may be consumed, or the red blood that
makes and gives tone to the muscles that support the -spine will  not be sup-
plied ; the scrofulous tubercle will  not be absorbed nor will the ulcer heal.
.  .  .•;., There is a very fatal error in regard  to exercise.   It can never
benefit when carried to the fatigue point in any young person.  The laboring
man endures it, but  for the most part he dies in middle life and of congestive
complaints ; the young girl  or school boy  of healthy stock outgrows it; but
the feeble  and precocious in  brain and body die of convulsions or tubercle or
dropsy in  the head.
  ":No one can tell  precisely when latent tubercle in the lungs or joints will
ulcerate, or when the blood-vessels of the brain  will give way, and convul-
sions and death in a child will occur.  They will appear as soon as the blood
is poor enough.   Poor blood makes weak or porous blood-vessels.
   " We may judge  of the approach of tubercle in this way; the child or young
girl is exhausted after a walk; they say they are  tired and lie down perhaps
on the floor ; then they say the hip, some part of the spine, or the knee ' hurts
them.'  Flushing of the face and short breath is  evidence  of starvation of
red blood  : tubercle threatens.  A  child or young  girl or boy thus affected,
should have their entire course of life changed ; medicine can  do no possible 
LYMAN'S  PATENT'AIR PURIFIER.
15
 good.  If you do not give more rest and less study,-and place them-under
 such  circumstances that  all the vital and organic  forces can be raised, they
 will soon break down somewhere...... Air is  the first and last want of
 our bodies.  Our first cry and last gasp attest its power.  The lungs arc the
 two fire-places of  the system ;  air is the fuel ;  the fire smoulders in the air-
 tight stove till the valve is raised, when it bursts into flame.   Air, food, sleep
 and the cheerful emotions are the only restoratives of exhausted nerves and
 blood-vessels."
    In an appendix to the same  number, Dr. Dixon  says of the " terms ' Anae-
 mia ' and  'Neuralgia.'   The first means'bloodlessness,' the second, ' pain
 in  a  nerve.'   Neither is correct, for those whom  physicians tell that they
 are anaemic, have  often  as much  blood as healthy people, but it is poor and
 watery, and unfit to nourish the tissues of the body.  Such people are often
 plump, but they have always  pale  lips, cold hands and feet, and  blueness
 under the eyes.  The second  term, ' neuralgia,' is correct enough, because
 neuralgia may exist, but pain in a nerve is only a symptom of anaemia, which
 is  the disease that  causes  it.   It ought to be called  neuraemia, or nerve
 starved......More air, food and sleep are the only means of restoring
 the lost power of producing blood and continuing the full action of the nerve-
 power."


        Objections to  Present Bed-Rooms  and Beds.
    Dr. Hall, editor of The Journal of  Health, in his  book  on " Sleep," p.
 56, remarks ;  " It  is  an  almost unknown thing that any sleeper within the
 four walls of any private house or hotel, gets one single breath of real pure
 air in a whole night."   Again we quote from  the same book, pages 70 and
 71: " The insensible perspiration from a  sleeper during the night, is of itself
 enough to taint the atmosphere  of a whole room, even a large one, as almost
 every reader has noticed on entering a sleeping-chamber in the morning after
 having come directly from the  out-door air;  and it is the  breathing and
 rebreathing of an atmosphere contaminated in the variety of ways alluded to,
 which makes the night the time of  attack of the  great  majority of violent
 human ailments ; it is this which fires the train of impending disease, and
 which would  have been deferred, if not entirely warded off, with the advan-
 tages of a pure chamber.  It is from close bed-rooms come the racking pains
 of fever, its torturing  thirst, and speedy death ;  this it is which wakes up the
cholera morbus, the  cramp colic,  the bilious diarrhaea,  and the multitudes
of other  ailments which  surprise us  in the night-time, and from which it is
worthy of  repetition,  a  night of good sleep in a clean, pure, and well-ven-
tilated chamber, would have  effected a happy deliverance, as expressed  in
the familiar phrase of ■' Sleeping it off.' " 
16
LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
    Florence Nightingale, in her book on Nursing, remarks : " With private
 sick, I  think, but  certainly with  hospital sick, the nurse  should  never be
 satisfied as to the freshness of their atmosphere unless she can feel the  air
 gently moving over her face when still."  Again, Chap. vm. : " A few words
 upon bedsteads and bedding, and principally as  regards  patients who  are
 entirely, or almost entirely, confined to bed.  Feverishness is generally sup-
 posed to be a symptom of fever—in nine cases out of  ten it is a symptom of
 bedding.   The patient has had  re-introduced into the body the emanations
 from himself, which day after day, and week after week, saturate his unaired
 bedding.   How can it  be otherwise?  .  .  .  The patient must inevitably
 alternate between cold damp, after  his bed is made, and warm  damp before,
 both saturated with organic matter, and this, from the time the mattrasses
 are put under him, till the time they are picked to pieces, if this is ever done.
    " If you consider that an adult in health exhales by the lungs and skin
 in the twenty-four  hours, three pints at least of moisture, loaded with organic
 matter ready to enter into putrefaction ; that in sickness the quantity is often
 greatly increased, the quality is more noxious ; just ask yourself next where
 does all this  moisture go to ?   Chiefly into the bedding, because  it cannot
 go any where else.  And  it stays there ; because, except, perhaps, a weekly
 change of  sheets, scarcely  any other airing is attempted.   A nurse will be
 careful to fidgetiness about airing the clean sheets from clean damp, but  air-
 ing  the dirty  sheets from  noxious damp will  never even  occur to her. . .  .
 Must not such a bed be  always saturated, and be always the means of re-in-
 troducing  into the system of the unfortunate patient who lies in it, that
 excrementitious matter, to eliminate  which  from  the  body, nature  has
 expressly appointed the disease ?
   " My heart always sinks within me, when I hear the good housewife, of
 every class, say : ' I assure you the bed  has been well slept in,' and I can only
hope it is  not true.  What 1 is the bed already saturated with  somebody
else's damp before my patient comes to exhale in it his own damp ?  Has it
not  had a single  chance  to be  aired ?  No, not one, ' It has been slept in
every night.'"
   How different the condition of the person, sick or well, occupying one of
 these Air Purifying beds.   As there is a constant pressure of pure dry air
in at the head of the bed, and  it is constantly moving toward the foot, its
occupant is not allowed to re-inhale any of the contaminated air.   The  bed
is also being steadily, though slowly, dried and  purified even when no idea
of drying or purifying the bed ever  enters the mind of any person connected
with it.
   Again, when a single person  occupies one of these beds, the half of  the
bed  not occupied can even in winter be thoroughly dried and  purified in a
few minutes, without disturbing the patient or allowing him to re-inhale any 
                    LYMAN'S PATENT AIR  PURIFIER.                17

 of his exhalations.  Half of  his bed may be opened and ventilated by the
 pure dry air which is sweeping it •from head to foot while he is breathing
 perfectly pure air.
    Again, in cases of fever and other diseases, as well as in health in  hot
 weather, the covering of the bed has sometimes been left open at the head
 and foot by the occupant, so as to allow the cool dry air from the Purifier to
 flow under the sheet in contact with the body, and pass off by the feet, thus
 constantly ventilating  the body  as  well  as  drying  and  purifying  the  bed
 while  the  person is breathing  pure air.  In very hot weather, when  the
 atmosphere is loaded with moisture, nothing can be imagined more agreeable,
 stimulating, and  beneficial, either for the sick with fever or other diseases,
 or for the person in  health.
    We might go on and quote a thousand pages from able  physicians  and
 others on the importance of pure air, but will merely give the preface of the
 very interesting and instructive book of 350 pages, on " Sleep," by Dr. Hall,
 editor of The Journal of Health.  The whole Preface reads as follows :
    " Preface.—It is the aim  and end of  this book to show that as  a means
 of high health, good blood, and a strong mind, to old and young, sick or well,
 each one should have a single  bed in a large,  clean, light room, so as to pass
 all the hours of  sleep in  a pure fresh air, and that those who fail in this,
 will in the end fail  in health and strength of limb and  brain, and will die
 while yet their days  are not all told."
    Now we sometimes see four  healthy children sleeping in two  of these
 Air-Purifying beds,  in a  room but  sixteen feet square, and they  sleep in
 purer  air than can be found in any four bed-rooms, large or  small, without
 the Air Purifier, on the surface of this earth.
    To illustrate by facts which have long been familiar  to the intelligent
 community, in directions  for raising trout we often read :  "If you have  a
 good deep  spring of perfectly pure, cool  water, the trout will live and do
 well even when so thick that you can hardly see the bottom of the spring,
 provided they have an abundant  and constant supply.  But if you have no
 spring or  stream of  pure water, no matter how large and deep your pond
 may be, your trout will all die."
   Now, in this reservoir of  perfectly pure air, your children can  sleep as
independent of the filthy atmosphere of  the city or village around them, as
the trout, in the pure, cool spring, are of the filthy pond below them.
   We close by quoting the last paragraph of Uses and Abuses of Air, by
Dr. Griscom : " Let  those who have  these things in charge, answer  to their
own consciences  how they have discharged their duty in supplying to the
young, the  responsibility of whose lives and education they have assumed,
A PURE ATMOSPHERE, THE FIRST REQUISITE FOR HEALTHY
BODIES AND SOUND  MINDS." 
18
LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
                     Opinions of  PJiysicians.
    There  is no subject on which Chemists and  Physicians, and intelligent
 men generally, are more unanimously agreed than  on the question of the
 importance of pure air for the preservation of health, and  also as an aid to
 the Physician in the sick room.
    Leading Chemists and  Physicians, who have never consented to  write a
 letter recommending any new medicine, do not hesitate to write recommenda-
 tions of an apparatus that furnishes Pure Air, because it can never do harm,
 but must always do good.
    The following  letter is from  Dr. Austin  Flint, Professor of the  Princi-
 ples and Practice of Medicine in  the Bellevue Medical College, and author
 of several works on Medicine :
                                            New York, December 27, 1865.
    Me. A.  S. Lyman—Dear Sir,—Your apparatus for supplying  pure cool
 air has been  attached  to two beds, in one of the male wards of Bellevue
 Hospital, for about three months, and I have been interested in observing its
 operation.  During the period just stated,  the two" beds furnished with your
 apparatus  have been occupied successively by several patients affected with
 different diseases.   The trial has  been too brief and on a scale too limited to
 warrant conclusions as to the amount of influence exerted upon  disease ; but
 I am able to state  that the apparatus has contributed not a little to the com-
 fort and welfare of the patients under  my observation, who have had the
 benefit of it;  and I do not doubt that it will be found highly useful in the
 hygienic management of the sick, both in hospital and  private practice.  As
 conducive to the preservation of  health, and  as an article of  comfort or lux-
 ury, especially in the summer season,  it must be desirable for  persons not
 affected with disease.
                          AUSTIN FLINT, M. D.,
  Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine, Bellevue  Hospital Med. College.

   R. Ogden  Doremus, Professor of Chemistry  and  Toxicology in Bellevue
 Hospital Medical  College, and Professor of Chemistry and  Physics in the
 New York  Free Academy, has not only spoken favorably of this apparatus
 in his lectures in those institutions, but has kindly furnished us the following
 very valuable letter:
                                            New Yohk, January 22, 1866.
   Mb. Lyman—Dear Sir,—Convinced of the hygienic importance of your
simple but effective invention for purifying the air of  our rooms, I venture to
depart from my usual custom in  such  matters, and will briefly express my
opinion  of the necessity and value of such an instrument.
   The amount of disturbance in the  nice adjustment of  the gases of the 
LYMAN'S PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
19
 atmosphere, produced by pulmonary and cutaneous respiration, being a mat-
 ter of serious importance, has been  repeatedly determined by Chemists and
 Physiologists in every civilized nation.
    The  average result  of experiments, conducted in various ways, demon-
 strates that a person of ordinary size consumes from 15 to 25 cubic feet of
 oxygen gas each day—and in the same period expires from  13£ to 22 cubic
 feet of carbonic acid—together with vapor of water (from 9 to 18 oz.), am-
 monia and certain odoriferous substances, the result of organic decomposition,
 which though in small quantities are very deleterious.   The most bulky por-
 tion of the air, the  nitrogen, enters the system and escapes  from it without
 chemical change.
    These exhalations vary with the purity, temperature, pressure and degree
 of moisture of the atmosphere ; consequently, with the season  of the year, and
 at different periods of the day ; also, with the age, size and sex of the person ;
 with the nature of  the  solid and liquid nutriment and  stimulus ; whether
 before or after eating or drinking ;  whether asleep or  awake, in a state of
 muscular or mental activity, in health or in disease.
    Another source of contamination, grossly neglected by us all, is the car-
 bonic acid from the materials used in producing artificial light.
    An Argand lamp, burning sperm oil, evolves three cubic feet of carbonic
 acid gas  each hour, equivalent to the expiration of said gas from five persons
 in the same time.
    An ordinary gas jet, consuming five cubic feet  of illuminating gas per
 hour, produces a little more than five cubic feet of carbonic  acid, represent-
 ing the quantity of carbonic acid exhaled by nine persons  of varying sizes.
    We can thus approximately estimate the relative amount of contamination
 of  the air (as regards carbonic acid)  produced  by human  respiration, or
 in the  consumption of coal  gas, if  we  multiply the number of burning jets
 by nine.
   Illuminating gas  would abstract more oxygen from the air, for it produces
 a much larger amount of water by the combustion of its hydrogen than does
 the human  being.  The greater  part of the moisture  discharged  from the
 skin and lungs is derived from the food and drink :  (many Physiologists assert
 that we have no definite proof of the combustion of  hydrogen in the body :)
whereas  a pound of coal gas, when burnt, yields 2'T\ths lbs. of water—fths
of which is oxygen.
   Additional impurities are poured into the air from this source, according
as greater or less care is bestowed in fabricating the gas, such  as ammoniacal
and sulphurous compounds.
   The atmosphere of our large cities is largely contaminated with unclean
exhalations from the streets, sewers, etc., as well as from the numerous fac
 tories, which  too often are diffused in it  to a disgusting point. 
20
LYMAN'S  PATENT  AIR PURIFIER.
    Iii many of our houses the organic impurities, brought in contact with the
hot surfaces of the furnaces  so often employed in the winter season, undergo
decomposition, and thus impart another flavor to  the air, which is anything
but wholesome.
    Physiologists and Chemists assert that when the atmosphere of a room
contains rioth part of carbonic acid, its inhalation is injurious to  health—
when contaminated to the extent of TVth, it will speedily prove fatal.   The
organic matter, likewise, though in comparatively small quantities, is esteemed
by many as more poisonous than the carbonic acid.
    Your ingenious  device provides a series of layers of quick-lime, and a
thick stratum of charcoal, through which the air is made to circulate, partly
by the heat produced from the  moisture  combining with the  lime, and more
vigorously by fragments of ice placed in another part of the apparatus.
    I find that the lime absorbs moisture and carbonic acid, also compounds
of sulphur and organic matter, which it decomposes, and mechanically it fil-
ters out many other impurities.
    That the  charcoal also abstracts not only the substances  mentioned, but
destroys by oxydation the ammoniacal, sulphurous and organic  compounds :
    That, finally, the ice serves not only to provide a moderate current of cool
air, thus purified, but  acts as a corps de reserve, to absorb impurities which
perchance  may have escaped the other guards, at the same  time yielding a
small amount of moisture  to the air.
    In the sick-room I have found your invention of great value.
    Though Chemistry has not  completed its  list  of evil spirits, ghosts, or
gases, which  oftentimes produce diseases, and are in turn produced by them,
nevertheless,  we know of  means by  which they may be robbed of their viru-
lence.
    Your Purifier does not generate the " vital air," oxygen, yet it is efficient
in removing the  ill-odored gases, as  any can testify who try it, and in destroy-
ing many of those more poisonous emanations which are not to be recognized
by the senses.   It must  necessarily, therefore, be of great service for the
preservation  of  health, and an  efficient  aid to the Physician in coping with
disease.   By  modifying the materials through which the air circulates, it
could be adapted to many varying conditions of the patient.
                                R. OGDEN  DOREMUS, M.D.,
                 Prof. Chemistry and Toxicology, Bellevue Hospital Med. College,
                       and Prof. Chemistry and Physics in Free Academy. 
LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
21
     The following  article by Dr. David Prince, of Illinois, is from  the last
 number (Feb., 1866,) of the Medical  Examiner of  Chicago,  edited by Dr.
 N. S. Davis :

    " Upon the subject of ventilation, there is evidence that the world moves.
 The problem has been, how to secure the comfort of a home with the purity
 of outdoor  air.   It  has been supposed  that this  was the utmost  possible
 attainment.   More than this has been  achieved.  It has been found practi-
 cable  to make an artificial mountain air without its rarity.
    " Mr. A. S. Lyman has, through twenty years of study and experiment,
 finally perfected an  arrangement of chemical agents, so as  to deprive the
 air of all its impurities and make it equal to that found above the influence
 of emanations from the surface of the earth.
    " The expedient consists in passing air over unslaked lime, which absorbs
 carbonic  acid and some water and organic impurities, and  elevates its tem-
 perature, giving  it a  tendency to rise.   It then passes  through fresh-burned
 charcoal, losing  most of the impurities which the  lime had  not taken up.
 The purified air then ascends to the top of the apparatus, and, turning  to
 descend, it passes over ice, which cools it and accelerates the  current, which
 next passes out through orifices in which the current  is divided  up by wire
 screens, so as not to blow in one  compact  current.   This apparatus is the
 head of a bed, or the back part of a desk or bookcase, or, on  a larger scale,
 it is a part of a system of ventilation of a whole house.
   " When the apparatus is part of a bed, the sides of the bed  are made high
 enough, either by curtains or the arrangement of the wooden frame-work, so
 that the cooled and purified air flowing in,  at the head of the bed, does not
 flow immediately off  upon  the floor, but accumulates upon the  patient  or
 sleeper, covering and immersing him thus in a bath of cool pure air.
   " For  the greatest benefit of this expedient, when applied to a  desk, there
 should be a tight enclosure for the reader or writer to sit in, which becomes
 filled higher than  the top of his  head, so that, in the impure air of a city
 on a hot summer's day, he  may sit in and breathe a chemically pure atmos-
 phere,  reduced to a temperature compatible  with vigorous mental activity.
   " Other  substances may be used for the purpose of  taking impurities out
 of the air, but Mr. Lyman, from numerous  trials, has  come to prefer fresh-
 burned lime, fresh-heated charcoal, and ice.  In winter time, the ice is a less
 essential part of  the  ingredients, but in hot weather, the cooling of the air
    source of health and comfort which all can appreciate.
   u rpj,e  principle of purification applies to the air of marshy regions occa-
 sioning ague, to general  impurities of air, arising from  all the innumerable
 kinds of decomposition in cities, favoring whatever epidemic may be impend-
ing, whether erysipelas, cholera, or  dysentery, and  to the air of crowded 
22
LYMAN'S PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
rooms, and the wards of hospitals generating typhus and typhoid fevers, and
imparting to wounds erysipelas, diffuse suppuration, and gangrene, and where
the bone is involved in injury, ostitis and osteomyelitis ; generally contam-
inating the blood with the poison absorbed  with decomposing fluids, and
involving the whole system in the low fever of pyaemia.
    " The infection of air contaminated with the decomposing organic exhala-
tions from the lungs, or from  pus and blood in a state of decomposition, is
no less destructive to puerperal women who  are very much  in the condition
of persons recently wounded, and who are subject  to the  same accidents of
local and general poisoning through  the contact of decomposing fluids and
of air  loaded with  foetid  gases  and  floating cells and  scales,  ready, like
spores, to produce their like wherever they may alight.
    " The device of Mr. Lyman secures for patients a pure air to breathe, and
in which to lie, but another desideratum, not  yet fully realized, is an arrange-
ment by which the expired air and other emanations of patients with infec-
tious diseases shall be  carried  directly away without contaminating the air
of the  room in which  they lie, thus affording protection to physicians and
nurses  who must sit or  move about in the room.
   " It will be gratifying to the medical profession  and to all philanthropists
to know that Mr. Lyman proposes to  make his invention free of  any charge
for patent right to hospitals maintained for the benefit of the poor.
   " Some beds with the purifying attachment have been in operation, during
the winter, at Bellevue Hospital, to the very great satisfaction of those who
have watched the progress of the cases submitted to the influence of the
purified air.
    " It is an old story in hot weather,  in the  progress of an epidemic,' If the
weather would only change—if the wind would only blow from the north-
west, we should have an improvement in the patients.'  It will certainly be
a boon to mankind, and especially to all sick persons, to have the means of
changing the weather, and, for the space of a few feet, of producing a north-
west wind, as pure and as bracing as any that was  ever manufactured in the
laboratory of the heavens.
    " A new era in hospital construction will have dawned, when plans shall
have been adopted to give them a purer atmosphere than  exists  in the free
breezes outside.   That  this has been the desire of all who have investigated
the subject, any one can see who reads  a few pages, at random, upon what
has been written  upon  hygiene during the last twenty years.   I cannot do
better  than to quote a  paragraph from Dr. Krackowizer, from the  Bulletin
of the New York Academy of Medicine, Vol.  II., 1865, p. 438 :
    " ' If, then, physicians look with a  certain awe and resignation upon the
ravages of pyasmia, it is not because they know less of its causes and of its
nature  than of other diseases,  but because they see plainly how the cause 
LYMAN'S PATENT AIR PURIFIER.
23
 might be removed, yet, under certain circumstances, are denied the means to
 prevent the disease.
    " ' It is bad enough that the surgeon and the obstetrician find  inherent
 difficulties in the treatment  of  wounds, in the management of  abnormal
 labor, that they cannot help sometimes making mistakes in choosing  the
 times for operations and in performing them ; but it is discouraging to have
 to  take an element  into the calculation,  in performing one's  professional
 duty, that  neither  lies in the nature of the case, nor can be warded off by
 any degree of scientific acumen or professional skill.
    " ' The preventive hygienic  treatment goes before everything.   If  the
 sums spent all over the world for every sort of medicine in healing pyaemia—
 quinia  included—could be  accumulated in a fund wherewith to build a hos-
 pital in some part of the world, so perfect in its hygienic arrangements that
 pyaemia in it would be impossible, more would be done for diminishing its rav-
 ages, than by all the attempts to heal patients when they once  are its victims.'
    " Dr. Krackowizer  truly says, ' the preventive hygienic  treatment goes
 before everything.'   According to Dr. Hammond (in his Military Hygiene,
 p. 426,) the amount of carbonic  acid in the military hospitals which were
 found  in the best condition, was  considerably above that in the outdoor  air.
 While outside there were fVo- of a Part in  1000 part, there was in those in
 which there was the  least attention  paid to ventilation, 2 -^ parts by vol-
 ume in 1,000 volumes of air.
    " Leblanc found in one  of the wards of the Salpetriere, 8 parts of car-
 bonic acid  in 1,000 by weight, or 5 TV3<>  by volume, in 1,000 volumes.
    " Dr. Hammond expresses the opinion, that 10 parts of carbonic acid in
 1 000 volumes  air,  renders  it altogether unfit for respiration, and  that a
 smaller amount must be unhealthy in proportion.   But it is probable that the
 organic  material proceeding from  the  lungs and cutaneous  surface is  far
 more injurious than carbonic acid. ^ Quoting from Hammond's Hygiene, p.
 168 • ' When we enter a room in which many persons are contained, we are
 struck at once bv the oppressive character of the air.   That this is not alto-
 gether due to the presence of carbonic acid, is very apparent  from the pecu-
 f    dor evolved.   The same is  true of a chamber in which one has slept,
  nd which  has  not yet been purified by ventilation ;  or of a bed which has
 been lain in.
    « At gt. Cloud, it was noticed, a few years ago, that there  was an annual
  . .tation of typhoid fever  in connection with doubling the number of sol-
 ids in the  barracks, on  the  annual visits of  the King.   (Hammond's
 ffaiene, V 428')  Mcdical literature is full of such instances of the origin
  f disease  in overcrowding, especially in court-rooms, when constructed, as
 they formerly were,  without  any reference  to the necessity for fresh air  to
breathe. 
24
LYMAN'S  PATENT  AIR PURIFIER.
    " It may not be always practicable to have the freedom of out-door air,
but it is now practicable for all sleepers, sick or well, in hospitals or private
dwellings, to have air that is as good as out-door  air,  and sometimes a great
deal better."

            From the Scalpel, Vol. XII., No. IV., just issued, March 15, 1866.
   " Is  it  True that so Many op our Children Die from '  the mysterious
Providence of God V  Art. lxix.
   " No subject of more vital interest can  present itself to the mind of a
medical man, than that of the impure condition of the air which he usually
finds in his patient's chamber;  and the mother, when she  sees  her female
children pining away and  refusing their wholesome food, and calls to mind
the condition in which she finds the air of their sleeping-rooms on entering
them in the morning, it would seem, should  begin to suspect it as the cause
of their condition.  In the leading article of our last number, we have said :
' Air is the first and last want of man ; his first sigh and last  gasp attest its
power.'  It is  the  life-giving  element.  Our  food cannot add a  single
grain to the weight of bodies or stimulate even the heart and lungs to per-
form the  very action which vitalizes the blood and  makes it plastic  and
reparative, till it has first  passed through the lungs.   Nature has, therefore,
so carefully insured this great result, that she sends the only vessel  which
conveys the liquid food, or chyle, into the great vein that penetrates every
particle of both lungs, and conveys it to every  air-cell by myriads of its
branches.   Had she thrown  this into an artery, it would then have  gone
the rounds of the body unvitalized by the  air, and could not have added a
grain of weight to the body, or repaired any injury  that might exist from
disease or accident.
   " The lungs decarbonize the blood or throw off the carbonic acid imbibed
from the entire body by the blood that has been  used to make it grow, or
repair its waste ;  this passes through the heart at the rate of two ounces or
thereabouts each inspiration, so that all the blood of the body is decarbonized
every ten minutes at the furthest.   All this carbonic acid is  thrown out into
the sleeping-room ; it is, when concentrated, destructive to  life :  yet,  if not
removed, it must be breathed again.
   " In the first article of our last number, we have taken up the subject of
the diseases of the feeble girls and children, which are so numerous in this
country ;  these we pronounced to be chiefly produced by want of pure air
acting  on a feeble  constitution.  And  in  this number  we have declared
cholera to be developed by the atmosphere  poisoned by carbonic  acid  and
the animal exhalations of the body.
   " Florence Nightingale, that rare spirit, who combines  the vigor of a
philosopher's mind with the gentleness and  charm of  a true woman, says in 
                    LYMAN'S  PATENT AIR PURIFIER.                25

last tbh°°k °n ^T^ =  ' The Ver^ first canon of nursing-the first and  the
thP  nn+Tf ?P°* ™ch a nursc's attention must be fixed, the first essential to
the  patient without which  all the rest you can do for him is as nothing ;
with which, I had almost said, you may leave all  the rest undone-is to
KEEP THE AIR HE BREATHE a a nrTnT1
                  uttaAiMJib AS PURE AS THE EXTERNAL AIR, WITHOUT CHILL-
ING HIM.7
    " In the ordinary bed-room the expired carbonic acid is re-inhaled, together
with ammonia,^ and other impurities thrown off by the exhalations.  When
the night air is  let in, it is more or less  impure, often very foul from the
sewers, and damp.
    " Mr. A.  S. Lyman, of this city, has invented and  patented  a scientific
bedstead, for the purpose of purifying the atmosphere of sleeping-rooms, and
explained it to the satisfaction of our best  medical  men.   They are now in
use in the families of those gentlemen, and in our public hospitals.  Pro-
fessors Doremus and Flint, have pronounced them admirable in their results,
and we are convinced the views of these gentlemen are correct.   We pro-
pose to use them ourselves as soon as we can be supplied.  Having thoroughly
examined the Air Purifier, we give it our cordial approbation.  Mr. Lyman
has  given the  subject of the purification of the air  twenty years' thought,
and this invention shows it.
    " In this beautiful bed the person sleeps in a reservoir, supplied by a con-
stant current of air which has  just been purified by being passed alternately
through filters of lime, charcoal, and  ice.   These filters are in an apparatus
which in outside  appearance is  merely a large head-board to the bed.  This
apparatus, or head-board, is about six feet high, and lengthens the bed about
one foot. ' There are two forces at work, either one of which will produce
a current without any machinery.  The lime on the lower shelves condenses
moisture and carbonic acid ; this generates heat, rarefies the air, and causes
it  to rise  upward through a deep filter  of charcoal  and an  ascending
flue to the  metallic top of the  apparatus through which it  gives off, to the
outer air above,  its extra heat.  From this it flows over through ice, which
outer au       ,  ^ ^ ^^ Qr ]cgs surface lg exposed) and accelerateg the
cools it moie ^ ^^ Me and delivers  ifc tetween the pillow and head_
current clow ^ Tfae ]ime not only condenses moisture and nearly one-
b°ar<? °f it^ weight of carbonic acid gas, but decomposes sulphureted  hydro-
f°     °iphuret of ammonia,  and  filters out  and destroys  other impurities.
geD'  Mrcoal also absorbs  carbonic acid, and  destroys  by oxydation any
The    irnal exhalations or  decomposing matter which  may be floating in
otUer. ^perhaps the germ of cholera or other infectious disease.  The  w°ater
thG ^thG melting ice, also condenses sulphureted hydrogen and almost any
fr0lI10t of ammonia that  may be brought in contact with  it.  It is  indeed
a,&°n tjy philosophical." 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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