Our "house of
life" stands generously open, for every "inmate bad" to come and go
through the absorbent, unquestioned, except in the stomach, where the
tangible poisons have to go by the act of swallowing and where they
are often challenged and ejected. It seems at first thought very
strange that we are not so well protected by natural instinct or
sensibility from the subtle poisons of the atmosphere as from those
that can affect us only by the voluntary act of swallowing. The
obvious explanation, however, of this apparent neglect is that Nature
protects us in general from gaseous poisons by her own system of
ventilation; and if, when we devise houses, necessarily excluding that
system, we fail to devise also a sufficient substitute for it, the
consequences of such negligence are as fairly due as when we swallow
tangible poison.
I have hitherto referred only to the _dispersion_ of poisonous
exhalations, as if the best and most necessary thing the atmosphere
can do for us were to dilute the dose to a comparatively harmless
potency. But this is now known to be not the true remedial process
with respect to the zymotic germs. The most wonderful achievement of
recent investigation reveals a philosophy of both bane and antidote
that astonishes us with its simplicity as much as with its efficiency.
At the moment when humanity stands aghast at the announcement that
germs are not destroyed by disinfectants, comes the counter discovery
that they are rendered harmless by oxygen.
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