ppEIppEF^. SANITARY RELATIONS 
TO 
HEALTH PRINCIPLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 
A paper read at the Annual Meeting of the “American Public Health 
Association," 1873, 
By CARL PFEIFFER, Architect, F. A. I. A. 
Consulting Architect of the N Y. Board of Health, Architect of the Roosevelt 
and the German Hospitals, the State Homeopathic Asylum for Insane, 
the Colored Orphan Asylum, the Church of the Messiah, 
and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Francis & Loutrel, 
Printers, 
48 Maiden Lane, N. Y. A REPORT UPON “SANITARY RELATIONS TO HEALTH 
PRINCIPLES OF ARCHITECTURE.” 
CARL PFEIFFER, Architect, F. A. I. A., or New York. 
Dr. Mapother has justly remarked that, after medi- 
cine, “ as professions most concerned in the preservation 
of public health rank those of the Architect and Engi- 
neer.” This paper is designed to illustrate the relations 
of Architecture to the science of Hygiene; a very import- 
ant relation, since the architect is required to furnish the 
dwelling in which we pass much of our lives, while the 
dwelling exercises a more decided influence upon our 
health than the clothes we wear. Every adult inhales 
some 360 cubic feet of air in the course of twenty-four 
hours, and this is but a tithe of the amount which he 
requires to regulate bodily temperature; but to insure to 
each individual the full needed amount, accessible to him 
every hour of the day, his dwelling must be properly 
constructed. 
EQUABLE TEMPERATURE OF VITAL IMPORTANCE. 
The feeding and regulation of temperature of the 
human body is a matter often overlooked, and yet of equal 
importance. For, so fixed and immutable is this temper- 
ature in a healthy body, that the blood of a negro in 
equatorial Africa, or of a Hindoo in the heats of Asia, is, 
by no perceptible fraction of a degree warmer than the 
blood of a healthy Esquimaux near the north pole. The 4 
atmosphere in which these different bodies live may differ 
as they do, by more than a hundred degrees; but if the 
clothing and the house do not neutralize this enormous 
difference, if the temperature of the body is allowed to 
sink or rise to any perceptible degree, sickness and ulti- 
mately death are the result. It is a wonderful hygienic 
instinct which leads the seal-hunter to build snow-huts, 
and the European in East India to erect houses with the 
thickest of walls. Hence, the architect must keep both 
objects in view if he would not build hospitals and tombs 
for his clients instead of comfortable and healthy dwellings. 
Vast as are the technical requirements which his pro- 
fession imposes upon him, apart from all sanitary con- 
siderations, the science of hygiene further demands from 
him, that he should study first, the climatological and 
meteorological phenomena of the place where he is to 
build; second, the geological condition of the ground 
upon which the building is to be erected; third, the 
material of which he is to construct the building ; and on 
the basis of these studies, he must arrange the proposed 
house in such a manner that it may both feed the human 
body with air and preserve its normal temperature. How 
these studies have been neglected, the majority of our 
public halls, court-rooms, prisons, hospitals, asylums, 
churches, school-rooms, etc., are melancholy evidences, 
not to mention private dwellings, tenement houses, and 
hotels. 
And here let me ask you, who have this matter more 
especially in charge, should not the law which protects 5 
men from adulterated food, and adulterated liquor, exer- 
cise its power also to protect him from adulterated air ? 
It is quite true that people get to be fond of adulterated 
whiskey, coffee, bread, and the like; so fond, indeed, that 
they seem to prefer them to the pure articles. Thus, if 
you go into large workshops you will generally find the 
men bent on keeping fresh air out on coldish days, think- 
ing that if they fill a work-room with the evaporations of 
their united bodies they will soon make it comfortable. 
Yet no reasoning is more fallacious than this. It is the 
fresh air, the cold air from the outside, which has the 
elements of heat in it, when warmed by a fire, whilst the 
evaporated air of their own bodies is pregnant with chills, 
however much warmed. 
You will always find, therefore, in closed workshops 
of such a kind, that the workmen clamor for more fire. 
Why ? Because what they conceive to be warming (the 
evaporation of the bodies of their fellow-workmen), is 
nothing but deathly iciness. To rid men of the false 
notion that an adulterated atmosphere which seems warm, 
is not warming, constitutes one of the most difficult 
problems which you, as well as we architects, have to 
contend with, since almost all classes of men labor under 
its delusion. 
THE SCIENCE OF VENTILATION. 
The special science which has for its object this 
mediating between the body in this the house, and the 
atmosphere outside of the house, is called the Science of 6 
Ventilation; Ventilation from ventus, wind, a moving of 
air. Hence, the problem of that science is to effect 
such a moving of the air as may be needed to feed and 
regulate the temperature of the human body within the 
house, by means of the house. There are two ways by 
which the air can be thus set and kept moving, ist, 
mechanically, by means of fans, called the system of pro- 
pulsion ; 2d, by means of heated chimneys and flues, 
called the system of suction. In addition to these 
methods, much is done by what is called natural ventila- 
tion ; but this is not to be depended upon at all'stages of 
the weather, nor at all seasons of the year, its operation 
depending upon three forces, viz.: diffusion, winds, and 
the difference in weight of masses of air of unequal tem- 
perature. I may here add that cleanliness in a building 
is an indispensable requisite in the proper working of any 
system of ventilation. 
Of the mechanical means of ventilation I shall not 
attempt to speak here for want of time, beyond saying 
that in all large buildings, nay, in all large cities, they are 
indispensable, however costly their arrangement. 
Concerning the second—it is first to be observed that 
to some degree every house is of itself necessarily a ven- 
tilator ; and thankful we ought to be that it is so. 
Streams of air pour continually from the outside through 
the walls into the inside, not to say through the ground on 
which the house stands. These streams may not be sensibly 
perceptible, as is the water that oozes through the walls 
and the ground ; nevertheless, they are constantly present 7 
and operative. Aye, and so powerful are these currents 
that you can blow out a candle held against the wall close 
on the inside of a house from the outside. Every wall 
(particularly the mortar) is porous, and walls are more 
porous in proportion as they are less moist, for moisture 
clogs up the bricks, stone, and mortar, and thus obstructs 
ventilation. Moist walls, therefore, being almost air-tight 
are unhealthy in a double way; firstly, by the action of 
their moisture, which draws the heat from our bodies, 
making us shiver, and causing all sorts of rheumatic com- 
plaints ; secondly, by obstructing the passage of the air. 
Hence, also, the great unhealthiness of new buildings, to 
which I desire to call your special attention. Doctor 
Von Pettenkofer estimates that a newly built house of 
fifteen rooms and cellar, contains in its materials some 
3,300 cubic feet of water, which must be evaporated 
before the house is properly inhabitable. Please realize 
this, and say whether or not the law which considers it a 
duty to provide punishment for the adulteration of food, 
drinks, etc., ought not by some means to prevent people 
from occupying newly built houses, wherein it is impossi- 
ble to breathe aught but adulterated air! 
RELATION OF ARCHITECTURE TO HYGIENE. 
One of the first principles of architecture in its rela- 
tion to hygiene is that all the materials of a building 
should be dry and porous before it is inhabited, and 
should be subsequently so kept. The very furniture of a 
house can chill and produce rheumatic affections if it is 8 
damp and has been long in an unheated room, for in that 
case it acts as a power of suction upon our body, drawing 
out its vital heat. It strikes me as one of the barbarisms 
of vulgar belief that cold bedrooms are considered maga- 
zines of health; they are rather breeders of disease, 
unless they also have ventilation. People go to sleep in 
air-tight, cold rooms, in the belief that it is healthy, par- 
ticularly if they have the bedroom well aired in the 
morning. Yet all the night long the air in the room stays 
unmoved and gets slowly poisoned, while the evaporation 
of the body settles upon the walls and makes them more 
and more air-tight. If anyone fresh from the outer pure 
air enters such a room he is almost nauseated by the 
vitiated atmosphere; even as that open air recluse of 
Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau, used to hold his nose when 
passing dwelling-houses, the doors of which were opened 
for the first time in the morning. Cold rooms in winter 
time, let me add, are not only uncomfortable for the poor 
but active agents of producing disease; and the phenome- 
non of epidemics in cold weather—which has excited so 
much wonder—is a very natural consequence of neglected 
ventilation ; and it is as one of the chief means of checking 
these winter diseases and epidemics, that Doctor Von 
Pettenkofer urges governments, above all things, to supply 
the poor with fuel in winter. For to have ventilation 
there must be difference between the air in the house and 
the outside air; just as to get ventilation by means of 
chimneys you must have fires in the chimneys. It is only 
when this difference exists, when there is a cold layer of 9 
air pressing the warmer air upward, that ventilation 
results. But in his cold room, the poor man has no ven- 
tilation and he is thus forced by the cold, not only to 
freeze, but also to breathe a vicious atmosphere. 
An erroneous idea seems to prevail in regard to the 
healthfulness of our sleeping apartments; it is often 
asserted that they should be cold in order to be healthy; 
in alluding to this a medical journal states that “A 
moderate amount of heat js needed in a bedroom, but 
that moderate amount is needed in winter time. There 
is no advantage in going to bed in a cold room, nor in 
sleeping in a cold room, nor in getting up and dressing 
in a cold room. Persons may survive it, many have 
lost health by it. To have the chill taken off the air 
on going to bed and when dressing, is comfortable and 
healthful. A room under forty-five degrees is a cold 
room for a sleeping apartment, and sleeping in an in- 
doors atmosphere lower than that is always hurtful, and 
always positively pernicious, for the simple reason that 
such a temperature causes the carbonic acid gas of 
a sleeping apartment to condense and settle in the lower 
part of the room, where it is breathed into the lungs 
with all its pernicious results. Sleeping in a room 
cooler than above named is especially dangerous to 
feeble, aged, or invalid persons, as it tends to cause in- 
flammation of the lungs. Persons may sleep out of doors 
with impunity when the thermometer is many degrees 
lower, because the out-door air is pure, is full of life, full 
of oxygen, without any admixture of in-door poison, and 10 
hence gives a vigor of circulation which keeps the whole 
body warmed to its natural point, resisting cold and all 
diseased conditions.” 
Cold, free, fresh air outside the hou'se is indeed quite 
a different thing from cold, putrid air inside the house ; a 
fact which, in examining the causes of diseases, is too often 
overlooked. Chimneys and flues that have no fire in 
them, far from ventilating, may rather become the means 
of hoarding and sweeping dqwn disease into the room. 
TWO FACTORS NEEDED TO MOVE AIR. 
That two factors are needed for the proper moving of 
air should never be forgotten. A means of escape of 
foul air, and an inlet of fresh, pure air ; and that the 
means of making these two factors operate upon each 
other is heat. 
Thus, as Doctor Von Pettenkofer wisely remarks, do 
the walls speak to us of a life of their own; and Shakes- 
peare was not over extravagant, after all, when he repre- 
sented the wall as speaking and disclosing its aperture, 
through which Pyramus and Thisbe (the human body 
inside the wall, and the air outside), spoke to each other, 
kissed each other, and committed the like absurdities. 
I have dwelt perhaps to too great an extent on the 
ventilation which a house may be made to furnish of 
itself, by means of its material, if properly dried after its 
erection, and kept dry afterward. This, however, is only 
a small item, and the chief ventilation of a house must 
always be procured by artificial means; that is to say, by 11 
chimneys in one form or another, and these means must 
be increased in proportion to the exigencies of the 
building. 
Thus it is estimated that there is required for every 
person each hour: 
In Hospitals, for ordinary patients, from 2,000 to 2,800 
cubic feet of fresh air. 
In Hospitals, for wounded patients, 4,300 cubic feet 
of fresh air. 
In Hospitals, for epidemic patients, 5,600 cubic feet of 
fresh air. 
In Prisons, 2,100 cubic feet of fresh air. 
In Workshops, from 2,000 to 3,500 cubic feet of fresh air. 
In Barracks, from 1,000 to 1,650 cubic feet of fresh air. 
In Theatres, from 1,400 to 2,400 cubic feet of fresh air. 
In Meeting-houses, from 1,000 to 2,000 cubic feet of 
fresh air. 
In Schools for children, from 400 to 500 cubic feet of 
fresh air. 
In Schools for adults, from 800 to 1,000 cubic feet of 
fresh air. 
Large as these figures appear, they have been deter- 
mined in two ways—by mathematical calculation, and by 
innumerable experiments all of which have corroberated 
the independent mathematical calculation. Ranke, in 
his “ Grundzuge der Physiologie ” (Elements of Physi- 
ology), fixes the average quantity at sixty cubic metres, 
or 2,118 cubic feet per hour for each individual, as the 
necessary minimum amount. In cities it has to be con- 12 
sidered, moreover, that each gas-burner needs the intro- 
duction of from four to five thousand cubic feet of fresh 
air every hour, facts, all of which it is necessary that the 
architects should keep in mind in order to secure a suffi- 
ciency of artificial means of ventilation whereby to furnish 
this amount of air, and furnish it in a proper degree of 
purity and warmth to make it conformable to the require- 
ments of the human body. Of course architecture is 
mainly an art, I am quite well aware, and I am, perhaps, 
more sensitive than many of my profession upon this 
point. I desire that our houses, as well as all our build- 
ings, should express externally and internally beauty,— 
that harmony, symmetry, proper proportion of sizes, 
colorings, and the like, which fill the eye with that supreme 
satisfaction, whereby men are lifted, as by the utterances 
of religion, to a higher and nobler life. 
ARCHITECTURE MUST NOT BE WHOLLY AESTHETIC. 
But there is this about architecture, that it must not 
give absolute and undivided supremacy to its aesthetical 
side. The sculptor, who models a statue, has only 
beauty in view ; the architect, who builds a house, should 
primarily consider its adaptability to health and comfort, 
and then proceed to mould those ideas of health and 
comfort into the utmost possible picture of beauty. It is 
sometimes argued that ventilation is expensive, and that 
its cost precludes the general introduction of complete 
arrangements. To secure a considerable degree of salu- 
brity in a dwelling at a trifling expense, is comparatively 13 
an easy achievement. In all the rooms flues may be con- 
structed to allow the heat and the combustion of the gas 
to escape, and gas-burners may be placed within the ven- 
tilating flues and chimney flues over the mantel-piece, to 
create a strong current in order to facilitate ventilation. 
These can be covered (where they would necessarily 
show in the rooms) by pictures hung on hinges in front 
of the openings having the gas-burners within. The same 
mode of heating the ventilating flues can be adopted for 
ventilating other domestic conveniences. Openings can 
be made and registers put into the partitions communi- 
cating with the halls, and these can be ventilated by sky- 
lights with ventilating cowls; these cowls will facilitate 
the outward and prevent an inward current. In case it 
should be desirable to close all the windows and doors of 
the rooms, perforated iron blocks can be built into the 
exterior walls, upon a level with the flooring beams, and 
the space between twro beams becomes a conduit for the 
fresh air, the outlet for it being placed (where possible) 
under the bed, by having a piece of the base board hung 
on hinges, with an opening behind it to admit the air. 
The placing of the ventilating registers in the ceilings 
instead of in the side walls of rooms, forms a feature of 
ornament, whereas in the side wTalls they are usually diffi- 
cult to arrange without being an eye-sore. For each flue 
in the ceiling a gas-light put into the same flue, upon and 
accessible from the floor above, heats the ventilating flue, 
and furnishes it with a more rapid current, and increased 
ventilation when desirable. The ventilating flues may 14 
also be connected with the heating flues by branch pipes 
for the purpose of exhausting the heat into the ventilating 
flues when it becomes necessary to shut off the heat, as it 
has often proved dangerous to shut the hot air registers 
and retain the heat within the flues. At the same time 
this exhausting of the superfluous heat into the ventila- 
ting flues greatly facilitates the draft of the ventilating 
flues. The main stairway of a house can also be made 
to form a great ventilating shaft, over which is formed a 
glass dome resting upon a cornice of stucco. The frieze 
of this cornice may be formed of perforated wood-work, 
representing a fine study of tropical foliage and birds.1 
For the supply of fresh air to each room special flues 
can be provided and connected with a steam heating 
apparatus by which the air is warmed before it passes 
into the rooms. 
IMPORTANCE OF GOOD DRAINAGE. 
The matter of drainage is also to be well considered. 
All the soil and drain pipes should extend to the level of 
the roof, and the roof be so graded in various places as to 
conduct the rain water to the soil and drain-pipes ; and 
i This, in a. private residence built under the supervision of the architect, 
gives, at first appearance, the impression of elaborately carved work. It is 
made of flat wood, sawed out to give the outline of the foliage and birds, and 
the shading and detail of forms have been done in color. Through the per- 
forations of this ornamental work the foul air passes into the space between the 
glass dome and the outer skylights, and it finds its exit through a ventilating 
cowl three feet in diameter. The glass dome is illuminated. The gas-lights 
answer the double purpose of features of ornament as well as great assistants 
in the ventilation, especially upon the occasion of a large entertainment when 
the house is filled with people, when by means of the heat of the gas, the im- 
pure air is being constantly drawn toward the dome, where it finds its exit. 
The gas flames cannot be seen below the dome. 15 
as a further precaution against any smell from the drain, 
they should be connected by a ventilating pipe with the 
smoke flue beyond the Range, to guard against any odors 
that might otherwise escape from the drain pipe in case 
of their breaking. The importance of good drainage 
cannot be valued too highly in connection with public 
health. We find that the great plague of London and 
Westminster, in the 17th century, as shown by the parish 
registers of the Church of St. Margaret, has been attributed 
to the want of sufficient drainage and to the narrowness 
of the streets and lanes. A more recent and convincing 
proof is the late sickness of the Prince of Wales, caused 
by the insufficient drainage of Londesborough Lodge. 
It is now fully admitted that warming and ventilating 
should be defined more particularly than has commonly 
been the case, previous to the erection of a new building, 
and incorporated with the structure from its first founda- 
tion. Since proper ventilation depends so largely upon a 
system of heating, I should perhaps say a few words upon 
several modes in use. The physiological effects resulting 
from particular modes of warming and ventilating in- 
habited rooms form a most interesting subject of inquiry 
and are not only interesting as matters of scientific 
research, but they closely concern every individual mem- 
ber of the community. It is a question which affects not 
merely the personal comfort of individuals, but according 
to the opinion of the ablest pathologists, it influences the 
health and affects the duration of life. Our dwellings 
are mostly heated by hot-air furnaces. The hot-air fur- 16 
nace in its present form was first employed at the end of 
the last century by a Mr. Strutt of Belper, near Derby, for 
warming his cotton mills, and was soon after introduced 
into general use. Its distinctive feature is that its appli- 
cation of fire-heat to metallic surfaces is a direct one 
without the intervention of either water or steam; and it 
is this feature which in my view makes it utterly object- 
ionable, except perhaps in cases where the object is 
merely to produce a drying and warming effect of con- 
siderable intensity for specific manufacturing or laundry 
purposes. In all other cases it is to be utterly condemned. 
Indeed, there seems to be a general concession that the 
the heat produced by hot-air furnaces is of the most in- 
jurious character in its influence upon health. Dizziness, 
coldness, and languor in the extremities, feebleness of 
pulse, fainting fits; such are some of the symptoms that 
have everywhere been noticed to accompany this mode of 
heating, undermining health in its most susceptible de- 
partment, the nervous organization. Air heated thus 
artificially without contact of water, acquires an aridity 
which causes it rapidly to absorb moisture from the skin 
and lungs of persons exposed to its influences, and the 
evaporation, by its refrigerating effect, contracts the 
blood-vessels at the surface, while other parts not being 
exposed to this influence become in consequence sur- 
charged with the fluids which are repelled from the 
extremities. 
“ There is a risk of dryness in air from highly heated 
metallic surfaces,” says Professor Faraday, “which leads 17 
me to prefer it warmed by steam or hot water which 
gives lower temperature; sixty-five degrees by the latter 
mode will not cause the air to lose any of its humidity, 
but by the former mode the air requires vapor of water 
to correct it.” All observers, indeed, are agreed on this 
injurious characteristic of heating with hot-air furnaces, 
as causing the absorption of the necessary humidity in 
the air of rooms, and thus inducing the nervous disorders 
before mentioned as well as being the cause of many 
other diseases. For as the dew-point1 of the air in a 
room rises beyond its proper degree, the dryness of the 
atmosphere draws a quantum of moisture from one body 
altogether beyond what the body can well spare. The 
most healthy state of the atmosphere can be obtained 
only when the dew-point of the air is not less than ten 
degrees nor more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit lower 
than the temperature of the room. When these limits 
are exceeded the air will be either too dry or too damp 
for healthy respiration. Moreover, this dryness of the 
air which is the invariable result of hot-air furnaces 
deprives the atmosphere to an inordinate extent of posi- 
tive electricity, whereas the evaporation produced by 
steam heating excites it, and thus relieves the unpleasant 
and injurious effect of close rooms. “ So greatly does 
evaporation affect the electric condition of the air,” says 
Mr Hood, “that the diurnal variation in the quantity of 
i Dew-point is that thermometric temperature of the atmosphere at which 
vapor is condensed. By exposing a cold body to the air, a fine dew is deposited 
on its surface, and by observing the temperature of this cold body, the exact 
quantity of vapor contained in the air at that time is ascertained. 18 
electricity follows nearly the same course as the exhala- 
tion of moisture, and evaporation is considered to be the 
principal course of atmospheric electricity.” Then, 
again, the air is always full of myriads of particles of 
animal and vegetable matter partly emanating from our 
bodies, and most of which are easily decomposed by heat, 
and experiments have demonstrated that the dry heat 
from metallic surfaces operates particularly most injuri- 
ously in effecting this decomposition. Hence the un- 
pleasant smell in buildings thus heated, the atmosphere 
becoming a mass of putrid noxious matter. “And not 
only,” says Mr. Hood, “will the hot-air furnace, which is 
particularly liable to these objections, act powerfully in 
decomposing the floating particles of extraneous matter 
contained in the air, resolving them into sulphuretted, 
phosphoretted, and carburetted hydrogen with various 
compounds of nitrogen and carbon, but it will likewise 
decompose a portion of the vapor contained in the air, 
absorbing the oxygen and liberating the hydrogen. To 
this must be added that the iron of the furnace, when 
heated to a glow, is rendered penetrable to the various 
hydrogen and carbonic gases of the burning material, 
which thus fill the air with additional impurities, and far 
from being an assisting agent in the ventilation of a 
building, the hot-air furnace considerably adds to the 
difficulty of providing the necessary ventilation. This is 
still more the case when the fire is kept high, for it has 
been fully established that air heated beyond a tempera- 
ture of 2i2°-25o° is unfit for breathing, and in furnaces it 19 
is often heated to a temperature of 3oo°-4oo°, at which it 
is, of course, utterly valueless for respiration. Indeed, it 
is almost an impossibility with furnaces to get air heated 
within the limit specified. Surely it is difficult enough to 
provide large public buildings with ventilation sufficient 
to supply them with pure air, without increasing the diffi- 
culty by the introduction of a heating apparatus that of 
itself tends to fill the air with impurities while it does not 
assist at all in the ventilation, and this is particularly to 
be remembered in the construction of public halls, court- 
houses, churches, etc., for vitiated air invariably produces 
those stupefying effects of a narcotic dullness, drowsi- 
ness, headache, nausea, etc., and all such feelings which 
are utterly destructive of the state of mind above all 
needed in such buildings. It is not, however, simply a 
question of comfort, but a most important question of 
health that is involved in this matter of excluding furnaces 
from our public and private buildings. Few persons fully 
realize the vast consequences which result from impure air, 
and how seriously the duration of human life is affected by 
want of proper attention to this important subject. Dr. 
James Johnson says, that ague and fever, two of the most 
prominent features of the malarious influence, are as a 
drop of water in the ocean compared with the other less 
obtrusive but more dangerous maladies that silently dis- 
organize the vital structure of the human fabric under the 
influence of this deleterious and invisible poison. In- 
deed, to compress the statement in a few words : Carbonic 
acid intoxication is the most terrible agent of disease, 20 
insanity, and immorality which we have to deal with, all 
the more terrible and dangerous as it is indulged in by 
all classes, by all ranks. The inhabitant of the most 
wretched house on Baxter Street clings to the inhala- 
tion of impure air with the same fervor and love as the 
owner of the finest dwelling on Fifth Avenue, who care- 
fully shuts out pure air under the pretext of excluding 
“ draughts,” and wraps himself up in the poisonous atmos- 
phere as if it were of all things his best and dearest 
friend; and what I desire particularly to insist upon as 
one of the most effective elements in the spread of this 
carbonic acid intoxication is the hot-air furnace. It not 
only impairs ventilation but assists in the adulteration of 
air. To put a hot-air furnace in your house is like 
furnishing your milkman with chalk, or your wine mer- 
chant with strychnine. 
While I have spoken against the use of furnace heat 
upon health principles, I am aware that it is not within 
the means of every one to have his house heated by steam 
or hot water. It would greatly mitigate the evils of fur- 
naces if in houses where one furnace is commonly thought 
sufficient, two of them were used, in order to obtain the 
necessary heat without overheating the iron surfaces of the 
furnace and without burning the air. 
In the construction of the furnace, cast iron should 
be avoided, wrought iron or soap stone should be used. 
In the distribution of furnace heat in houses the number 
of openings by which the heat is emitted into the rooms 
should be considerably increased, there should be several 21 
openings in an ordinary sized room instead of one, as is 
now the practice, so as to allow a greater diffusion of the 
heat. 
As I said at the beginning, sanitary architecture is a 
matter of transcendent importance to the human race. 
Vitiated atmosphere is quite as injurious and stupefying 
as the worst alcoholic drinks. It spoils every dinner, it 
kills sleep. It is the greatest enemy of the preacher, in 
that it makes people stupidly drowsy, and puts them 
asleep. It disarranges the whole natural organism. The 
judge and jury in a court-room filled with pestilential 
air, as most of our court-rooms are, are as much under 
the influence of a deathly narcotic as the inhalers of 
opium smoke. 
The poorer classes of our large cities suffer probably 
most from this demoralizing breathing of polluted atmos- 
phere. It is well to preach temperance, but is it not also 
well and of preeminent necessity to preach and procure 
clean, pure air, and healthy sunlight ? Is it not worse 
than folly to refuse the cup from which your friend has 
drunk, and at the same time breathe into the inmost 
recesses of your body the air from the lungs of a promis- 
cuous crowd, whether in rooms, halls, churches, or street 
or railroad cars, or from a pestilential neighborhood ? 
When we contemplate the almost universal fear of 
draught, that is to say, fresh air, which pervades almost 
all classes of modern society, and from the effects of 
which our little children are made to suffer even more 
yet than the adult generation, it seems that nothing could 22 
be more timely than a crusade against this carbonic acid 
intoxication, to which men seem so hopelessly given. For 
this breathing of foul air is nothing but an intoxication, 
accompanied by all its evil effects, want of appetite, head- 
ache, sleeplessness, etc., and the cause of most of those 
sicknesses which are foolishly ascribed to pure air under 
the name of draughts. In conclusion allow me to say 
one word in regard to drainage, whereby I mean to in- 
clude any kind of communication passing between the 
house and the ground upon which it is built. This ground 
is also porous (the more so, likewise, in proportion to its 
dryness), and is therefore also somewhat of a ventilator. 
At the same time, in the close streets of our large cities, 
where gas-pipes, sewers, etc., run through it to a vast ex- 
tent, it is also filled with innumerable agents of danger to 
health, all of which require the most careful watching on 
the part of the architect, and against many of which 
science has not as yet provided. Particularly in winter 
when the house, if heated, draws, as it were, the atmos- 
phere and gases of the adjoining ground into its rooms, 
are these elements dangerous and conspire to spread 
epidemics. 
Equally important to a good system of heating is that 
of plumbing. Typhoid fever and dyphtheria are invaria- 
bly produced by the escape of sewer gas caused by de- 
fective plumbing. The pipes should be of sufficient size 
and the joints well caulked and secured, waste pipes 
branching from a main pipe should not extend in a hori- 
zontal direction more than five or six feet without having 23 
a separate air or ventilating pipe for the “ trap,” otherwise 
the trap is liable to be syphoned. Rain water pipes 
should not be depended upon to ventilate the soil pipes ; 
during severe rain storms they become overcharged with 
water and closed against the escape of air, and the sud- 
den increase of water in the sewer compresses the air and 
forces the gases through the traps into our buildings. 
Another cause of the escape of sewer gas into our build- 
ings is the evaporation of the water in the traps when the 
houses are not occupied. It ought to be the duty of 
every person left in charge of an unoccupied building to 
let the water pass through the pipes of every wash basin, 
bath, sink, or water closet once a day of sufficient quantity 
to fill the traps. 
The basins of water-closets should not be of a conical 
form as commonly used, to which the excretions are apt 
to adhere and largely contribute to the impurity of the 
atmosphere of houses. The basins should be of a cylin- 
drical form with perpendicular sides admitting of the 
excretions to fall into the water at the bottom without 
coming in contact with the sides of the basin and which 
would thus be more readily kept clean. 
To guard against defective plumbing work, the same 
ought to be tested before it is made use of. The test to 
consist in stopping the waste pipes at the bottom, and all 
other outlets and before the wash basins, sinks, water 
closets, etc., are connected, to fill all the pipes with 
water, this would produce sufficient pressure to test the 
quality of the waste and supply pipes and would prove 24 
whether the joints were perfect or not and secure in this 
way an important agent in the ventilation of our 
buildings. 
I suppose you are all familiar with the case mentioned 
by Dr. Reid: where about fifty members of one of the 
Royal Society Clubs at Edinburgh dined in an apartment 
which he had constructed, so that the product of the gas 
combustion and the vitiated air were removed by a venti- 
lating pipe, and large quantities of a mild scented fresh 
atmosphere constantly passed into the room. The gen- 
tlemen present at the banquet were unaware of this 
arrangement, which had such an effect upon them that 
the caterer was struck with the enormous and increased 
amount of food and wines dispatched with utmost ease 
and nonchalance by the same men whom he had so often 
seen languishing over a dinner in the same, but foul-aired 
room. Not one of them knew he had displayed an 
unusual appetite ; and no one complained of headache or 
other indisposition at that dinner or afterward. 
Thus, in the most manifold ways is public health con- 
nected with architecture; and thus does the Science of 
Hygiene depend upon the cooperation of the builder. 
If, by the statement of a few general principles and in a 
necessarily brief and fragmentary manner, I have suc- 
ceeded in illustrating the cooperation and mutual depend- 
dence of this most noble art and this most beneficent 
science, I shall feel amply repaid for my endeavors.