The Wellington Enterprise

The Fresh Air Fallacy.

Fifty years ago few people knew much about ventilation, or, indeed, believed much in its importance; and a crusade in favor of "fresh air", was fought by the sanitarians. Now the tide runs the other way, and all the dull people have learned the phrase "fresh air," and insist on having "fresh air" at any cost, and without regard to times or places. Two men will come into the spacious parlor of a club; the air, though warm, is much purer, and cooler by five degrees, than the furnace-blast of the streets that they have left. The incomers are entirely comfortable until one of them notices that the windows are shut. Then they remember the formula "fresh air;" the windows are ordered open; in comes the heated gust from without, laden with the animal refuse that forms the chief ingredient of the dust in our large cities. These intelligent gentlemen draw near the open window; they inhale the "winged odors" of the streets, they murmur their formula, "A little fresh air;" they have cleared their consciences, and are happy.

And in traveling, what do we not suffer from this ignorant conception of "fresh air!" We have all seen the lady who must have the window open in the railway carriage; in the summer she breathes the railway sparks and cinders, and she catches a severe cold on every winter journey; nothing short of pneumonia will convince her narrow ignorance that there are other things to think about in traveling than what she calls "fresh air." T. M. Coan, in Harper's Magazine for May.