ing projecting shelf above the seats in such a way as to
prevent boys from standing upon them. It is usually wise
also to provide a dust-bin with a closed top, and a place
for removing dirt at the side or bottom. The seat-box
above the vault should be lined with zinc. Seats should
be of wood, and covers of wood lined with zinc. Covers
should be fastened with hinges and arranged to fall of
their own weight. Openings for ventilation should be
TOILETS 123
provided near the roof, and should be covered with wire
screens.
Detailed suggestions have been given for the construction
of outdoor privies because they are the commonest form of
toilet for the rural school. Local authorities should, how-
ever, seriously consider the question before deciding in their
favor. The privy of the country school is removed from
supervision. It is unattractive and sometimes repelling in
appearance. Because it is built of wood it is usually covered
with obscene markings. Not infrequently it is the scene of
disgusting and immoral practices, in which the younger
children are too often allowed to share. An indoor flush
toilet is more expensive than a dry privy; but its educational
influence is decidedly preferable.
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. Make a study of different types of toilet-room equipment now on the
market, comparing them as to cleanliness, freedom from odor, dura-
bility, simplicity, cost.
2. What are the common ways of ventilating toilet-rooms? How do they
work?
3. It is commonly said that the emptyings of privies form an excellent
fertilizer, and farmers frequently use them for that purpose. Dr.
F. B. Dresslar and others claim that the opposite is true. What
evidence can you find bearing on the question?
4. How is the sanitary toilet question handled by the army in time of
peace? In time of war? "What provisions are made in logging or
construction camps? What precautions are taken to prevent epi-
demics caused by poor toilet arrangements? What suggestions can
be gained for public school practice?
5. How and to what extent should toilet-rooms be supervised?
SELECTED REFERENCES
Ayres, Leonard P., and May. School Buildings and Equipment. Cleveland
Education Survey Monograph. Russell Sage Foundation. (1916.)
Dresslar, F. B. Rural Schoolhouses and Grounds. United States Bureau
of Education, Bulletin no. 12. (1914.)
One of the best discussions of the rural-school problem.
124 HEALTHFUL SCHOOLS
Dresslar, Fletcher B. School Hygiene. The Macmillan Company. (1913.)
Chapter on toilets gives good descriptions of privies for rural schools.
Sanitary Schoolhouses. Legal requirements in Indiana and Ohio. United
States Bureau of Education, Bulletin no. 52. (1913.)
Stiles, C. W. The Sanitary Privy, Its Purposes and Construction. Public
Health Bulletin no. 37. (Washington, 1910.)
Excellent discussion of the rural problem.
See also bulletins published by various State departments of education
giving suggestions to rural-school authorities.
See also printed reports of education surveys.
CHAPTER VIII
HEATING AND VENTILATING
The lesson of contagious disease. Several years ago, when
questions of school hygiene first began to assume a prom-
inent place in educational discussion, studies were made
showing the number of cases' of contagious diseases among
school children for each month in the year. It was shown
with astounding clearness that the number of cases increased
with the beginning of cold weather in the fall, readied a high
peak during the most severe winter months, and gradually
diminished as spring came on. The hygienic implications
were all too clear, for the epidemic of contagious diseases
coincided almost exactly with the periods during which
classroom windows were closed and classrooms were arti-
ficially heated. One of the results of this discovery was
the beginning of the medical inspection service. Another
was increased interest in and attention to the problems of
ventilation.
During the past decade immense amounts of time,
thought, and money have been expended in the effort to
secure for school buildings the best possible systems of
heating and ventilating. The hot-air furnace has been re-
placed by steam boilers. Window and gravity systems of
ventilation have given way to the electrically driven fan,
which blows air into the classrooms. Elaborate thermostat
systems have been installed, and in order to keep them work-
ing properly teachers have been warned that windows must
be tiglitly closed, for heating plants are sensitive things, and
nothing must be done which might disturb their equilibrium.
Careful tests have been made to measure the carbon dioxide
126 HEALTHFUL SCHOOLS
content of the classroom, and heating engineers have con-
scientiously tried to see to it that each child received his
33.3 cubic feet of hot fresh air every minute during the
school day. But in spite of all these improvements the
results have been discouraging. Epidemics of measles and
scarlet fever have become rarer, because doctors have been
on hand to detect preliminary cases and remove the offenders
from the room, but colds and grippe are nearly as common
as heretofore. Classrooms are frequently stuffy and filled
with unpleasant odors; and teachers, after vainly endeavor-
ing to live up to the rules, desperately seek relief by flinging
windows wide open.
Survey findings. This does not mean, however, that the
newer mechanical devices have proved worthless. It is true
that ventilation, even in our newest buildings, is frequently
ineffective, but in the old buildings where fans have not
been installed, and heating and ventilation are of the win-
dow or gravity type, conditions are sometimes almost
appalling. Take, for example, the conditions disclosed in
some of the recent surveys of educational systems. The
' report from Springfield, Illinois, runs as follows :—
Most of the schoolrooms of Springfield are overheated. The
temperature records taken in classrooms by the members of the
survey staff were one hundred and seventy in number, and showed
a range from fifty-eight to eighty-six degrees. The maximum
temperature allowed in classrooms should be about sixty-eight
degrees. More than two thirds of the temperatures taken were
above this, and nearly half of them were above seventy degrees.
In a number of the buildings the outdoor inlets are kept shut;
in others, the air is sucked out of the basement and toilet-rooms
instead of coming from outside, and in a considerable proportion
of the buildings some part of the equioment has been left uncom-
pleted or is out of order, so that the ventilating system works
only partially.
For Salt Lake City we find "members of the survey staff
repeatedly entered schoolrooms which had the stifling
HEATING AND VENTILATING 127
temperature of seventy-five to eighty degrees." Judging
from the records we may conclude that more than twelve
hundred children in this city were daily subjected to suffo-
cating temperatures above seventy-four degrees. It is little
wonder that twenty per cent were subject to frequent colds,
or that more than eight per cent were found to have chronic
throat or nose trouble. "It is recommended that in future
buildings, and wherever possible in the old buildings, air
washers be installed. The discolored walls of very many
rooms show that dirty air is being forced into the building.
Air washers are not expensive, and they prevent the breath-
ing of much injurious dust. The prevalence of smoke in the
atmosphere of Salt Lake City during certain months of the
year, renders their use more than ordinarily urgent in this
city." Finally we read in the Denver Survey, "In all the
Denver schoolrooms, with the exception of two buildings,
the air of the classrooms is found to be as dry as that of a
Sahara Desert."
Early theories concerning ventilation. One hundred and
thirty years ago the great French scientist Lavoisier suc-
ceeded in identifying carbon dioxide gas. This gas was a
poison, and for over three quarters of a century after it w;i^
identified scientists believed that the presence of too large
quantities of this gas was responsible for the harmful effect
of impure air. About 1861, however, the German chemist.
Von Pettenkofer, conducted a series of experiments in which
he was able to demonstrate that an excess of carbon dioxide
was not responsible for the unpleasant symptoms noted in
over-crowded or ill-ventilated rooms. While he was con-
vinced that the gas was not dangerous, nevertheless he felt
that since it was always found where many people were
gathered in small, closed rooms its presence in considerable
quantities did offer a trustworthy index of the presence in
the air of other harmful impurities.
128 HEALTHFUL SCHOOLS
It was on the basis of the work done by Lavoisier and Von
Pettenkofer that many of our State laws on ventilation have
been formed. These laws specify that the percentage of
carbon dioxide in the air or buildings must not be permitted
to exceed from seven to ten parts in ten thousand, and our
ventilating systems are built to keep the amount of the
gas within these limits. 1
Some recent experiments. Within recent times, how-
ever, a series of exceedingly interesting experiments have
been going on which are resulting in new and vastly differ-
ent theories concerning ventilation. At the University of
Minnesota, for example, two stalls were built as nearly air-
tight as they could possibly be made. In one of these a steer
was confined for thirty-seven days and lived in perfect com-
fort and robust health. He made true and steady gains in
weight, and seemed not to suffer in any way. In another a
steer was kept for twenty-eight days. This animal's horn
was accidentally broken, but not only did he enjoy perfect
health and comfort, but his wound healed with remarkable
celerity, in an atmosphere so contaminated that the carbon
dioxide content rose to ninety times the normal.
Professor Leonard Hill, of England, caused a small room
to be built and made completely air-tight. In this room his
students lived and worked for days at a time in perfect
health and comfort. He writes: "We have watched them
trying to light a cigarette to relieve the monotony of the
experiment, and, puzzled by their matches going out, bor-
rowing others, only in vain. They had not sensed the per-
centage of the diminution of oxygen, which fell below seven-
teen." (That is, seventeen per cent of normal.) The normal
proportion of carbon dioxide in outdoor air is about three
parts in ten thousand. The greatest amount permitted by
ventilating laws is commonly ten parts. In experimental
chambers of the kind conducted by Professor Hill the pro-
HEATING AND VENTILATING 129
portion has risen as high as two hundred and thirty-one
parts, or eighty times the normal amount without any bad
results whatever.
In one of Dr. Hill's experiments eight persons were con-
fined in a small, air-tight chamber which contained approxi-
mately three cubic meters of air. The oxygen fell from
twenty to between sixteen and seventeen per cent, and the
carbon dioxide increased from .04 to between three or four
per cent, or nearly one hundred times its usual amount.
As the oxygen fell, the eight persons in the chamber showed
all the unmistakable signs of suffering from vitiated air.
The temperature was between eighty and eighty-five degrees
Fahrenheit, and was very moist. After a short period three
electric fans attached to the ceiling of the room were started.
The air remained just as hot, just as wet, and just as stale
as it had been before, but the turning-on of the electric
fans brought complete relief, for the simple reason that
it whirled away the still hotter stationary air which had
gathered as a sort of an envelope on the surface of the body,
and allowed the heat generated by the body t^o be carried off.
Of perhaps equal interest are the experiments of Dr. Paul,
of the University of Breslau, who found that when human
beings were placed in experimental chambers where the air
was hot and very humid, symptoms of discomfort appeared
within a very few minutes, long before enough of the poison-
ous gases could have accumulated to account for the change.
Without telling the subject in the room what was happen-
ing fans were started, which caused the air to move* rapidly
about. Almost at once the unpleasant symptoms disap-
peared. The skin became cool and moist, ancl the subject
felt that fresh air had been supplied to the room. Later the
fans were stopped, and, after the subject had been confined
in the experimental chambers for some time and had again
shown all the acute symptoms of foul-air poisoning, a tube
130 HEALTHFUL SCHOOLS
was passed through the wall of the chamber and the subject
was allowed to breathe fresh air from outside through the
tube. Strange as it may seem, although he was filling his
lungs with plenty of pure, fresh air, the subject continued
to feel just as uncomfortable and stifled as before. Then the
process was reversed, and one of the men on the outside
applied his nose and mouth to the openings of the tube and
filled his lungs over and over again with the foul air con-
tained in the closed chamber. He suffered not the slightest
discomfort. It is as a result of these experiments that we
find the amazing statement: "Air is not to breathe, but to
bathe in." Stagnant air is like a hot wet blanket wrapped
tightly around the person's body, so thick and impenetrable
that the body heat cannot escape, and a man is, in a certain
very real sense, "consumed in his own fires." When the
covering is broken up and the air put in motion relief comes.
Another interesting piece of evidence is cited by Dr.
Leonard P. Ayres, in an address before the National Edu-
cation Association, in 1911. He says: —
A recent impressive illustration occurred last winter, during
the final stages of construction of a Connecticut school building
equipped with humidifying apparatus. During the very cold
weather in December the carpenters employed on the inside fin-
ishing work complained of the cold with the thermometer at
seventy-five degrees. The foreman did not wish to force the
temperature higher, because the new woodwork was already open-
ing badly at the joints. Suddenly a discussion with the architect
about the new humidifying apparatus occurred to him, and he had
the steam turned on in the fresh-air chambers. Soon the frost
began to appear on the windows, and in three hours the cracks
in the new woodwork were entirely closed. The most remarkable
result, however, was the effect of the humidity upon the workmen.
Before the steam had been on half an hour the men who had been
complaining about the cold began to take off their coats and then
their vests. The temperature was lowered, and soon the men were
happily working in their shirt-sleeves with the temperature at
sixty-eight degrees.
HEATING AND VENTILATING 131
The Springfield Y.M.C.A. experiment. One of the most
interesting experiments from the point of view of school men
was that carried on during the winter of 1912 in the gymna-
sium building of the Y.M.C.A. training college at Spring-
field, Massachusetts. This is a large modern building,
including two gymnasiums, laboratory, offices, and class-
rooms. It is used practically all the time. Under the direc-
tion of Dr. James H. McCurdy an experiment was insti-
tuted in which, instead of taking air from outside the build-
ing and delivering it heated to the various rooms, as is the
usual plan, the gymnasium was run for weeks at a time by
simply using the same air over and over again. The only
fresh air which was allowed in the buildings was that which
came in through natural leakage. When the process of
re-circulation of air was well under way, careful tests were
made to determine the volume of air moved, the humidity
and temperature, the chemical constituents of the air, and
the feelings of the students who were working in the build-
ing. The results were amazing.
It was found, in the first place, that through the process
of re-circulation it was possible, by washing the air carefully
each time it was circulated, to keep it more free from dust
and bacteria than the air outside. In the second place, the
washing of the air also removed all unpleasant odors so that
the building smelt sweet and clean. In the third place, the
air was kept at the right degree of moisture. In the fourth
place, during hot weather it was just as possible to cool the
air of the building by the washing process as it was to warm
the building with moist clean air during the winter. In the
fifth place, and from some points of view most amazing, the
expense of operating the ventilating and heating plant was
reduced from $1.07 to $.52 an hour. This reduction was
largely due to the fact that under ordinary conditions it is
necessary to take the air at the outside temperature and
132 HEALTHFUL SCHOOLS
bring it up to room temperature. When the re-circulation
is in process, extra heat is needed only to make good the
heat loss which the air has incurred during its passage
through the building.
The Springfield experiment has been so successful that
many people do not hesitate to declare that ventilating
schemes of the future will be entirely based on the re-circu-
lation plan. In discussing this matter Dr. Luther H. Gulick
has said : —
Ventilation seeks to control the conditions of the atmosphere
in which the body is immersed, rather than to control its com-
position; because its composition is practically stable and needs
no attention, while its condition is exceedingly changeable as well
as important. The ideal ventilation for a school building consists
in re-circulating and properly conditioning its contained air.
The advantages are that the air may be kept under more health-
giving conditions, through more perfect control of temperature,
humidity, air movements, dust, odors, and also because of the
financial saving. That is, we have now arrived at such a knowledge
of ventilation that it is possible to have indoors and practically
all the time those conditions which are found outdoors only when
Nature is at her best. Man has at last accomplished, with reference
to the air he breathes and in which he is enveloped, what he
learned to do years ago with reference to the water we drink —
have it at its best all the time.
Other experiments, quite different from that so glowingly
referred to by Dr. Gulick, were those carried on in the open-
air classes for tubercular children. Here it was found that
under the conditions of open air, warm clothing, good food,
and plenty of sleep, children became healthier and more
alert than were their classmates in the best-ventilated school-
room. All the evidence of the open-air classroom seems to
point away from the validity of the re-circulation plan and
toward the necessity of having entirely fresh air surround-
ing the children. As a matter of fact, however, there were so
many elements entering into the open-air class experiment
HEATING AND VENTILATING 133
that the success of the work could not properly be attribute 1
to the one cause of open air. One fact, however, proved to
be especially significant. It has been demonstrated clearly
that children who attend the open-air class speedily improve
in appetite. This has been found true even in those cases
where children in the open-air classes did not seem to gain
in any other way. Until recently very little attention was
paid to this fact, but within the past few months experi-
ments have been conducted which emphasize its impor-
tance from the point of view of classroom ventilation.
Work of the New York State Ventilating Commission. In
1913, at the request of the New York Association for
Improving the Condition of the Poor, the Governor of the
State appointed a ventilation commission for the purpose of
studying, in a scientific manner, various problems of venti-
lation. The cost of the commission was met from part of a
fund established by Mrs. Elizabeth Milbank Anderson for
carrying on various phases of constructive social investi-
gation. For the past three years this commission has been
carrying on a series of extensive and very careful experi-
ments, and has come to some exceedingly interesting con-
clusions. It finds, for example, that even very hot, moist
rooms have very little effect upon the actual power of the
subject to do mental work. Heat raises the temperature of
the body, increases the heart rate, and lowers the blood
pressure. People do not feel like working in a very hot,
damp room, but if obliged to work they do so very success-
fully. Stagnant air at the same temperature as fresh air,
even when it contains twenty or more parts of carbon dioxide
and all the organic and other substances in breathed air of
an occupied room, according to the commission's findings,
has no effect on any of the physiological responses listed
above, nor on the power to do physical or mental work, nor
even on the sensations of comfort of the subject breathing it.
134 HEALTHFUL SCHOOLS
On the other hand, and this is an immensely important
finding, the commission found that vitiated air results in a
diminished appetite for food. When it is moderately cool
and in motion students can work, study, and play in foul air
as properly as in fresh, but they cannot work up an appetite
in it. In the New York Commission's tests, after the sub-
jects had been in the experimental room for some two or
three hours, a luncheon, made up of weighted portions of
known caloric values, was served and the amount of food
left uneaten was weighed, to determine by difference the
amounts consumed. The diet was varied from day to day,
but was so arranged that each article of food appeared an
equal number of times on days when regular ventilation
was provided and on other days when only foul air was
admitted to the chamber. On the no-ventilation days the
carbon dioxide averaged between twenty-nine and fifty
parts, and there was usually a slight odor noticeable in the
room. Sometimes the odor was strong enough to be un-
pleasant. It was found to be a practically unvarying rule
that more food was eaten on the days when ventilation was
supplied than on the days when subjects sat in foul air.
It is interesting to note, too, in connection with this
experiment, that when the subjects were asked each day
concerning their opinions as to the comfort of the atmos-
phere — the actual condition being kept secret — they
usually felt that the no-ventilation days were the more
comfortable. In giving its report the Commission said : —
These experiments seem to warrant the conclusions that there
are substances present in the air of an unventilated, occupied
room (even when its temperature and humidity are controlled)
which in some way, and without producing conscious discomfort
or detectable psychological symptoms, dimmish the appetite for
food. The effect of such an influence might in time be very impor-
tant, and it seems possible that the observed beneficial effect of
fresh air may to some extent be connected with this phenomenon.
HEATING AND VENTILATING 135
Five principles of ventilation. The experiments described
above are only a few of the many which have been carried
on. Although the results are in some cases confusing, and
many problems have arisen which call for further experi-
mentation before they can be settled, there seem to be five
general rules which have been fairly well established.
1. Air warm, not hot. In the first place, air should be
warm, not hot. Probably one of the most important results
of over-heating in the classroom is that originally demon-
strated by Leonard Hill, and later confirmed by James
Alexander Miller, of the New York Commission. These
scientists have succeeded in demonstrating that over-heated
air promotes congestion of the membranes of the nose,
which in turn frequently brings about a susceptibility to
infection. It now seems probable that many of our colds
and coughs may be charged directly to over-heated rooms.
It was found in the New York Commission on Ventilation
experiment that the temperature of the body rises at almost
exactly the same rate that the temperature of the room
rises. The most desirable temperature for the classroom
where children spend most of their time sitting still seems to
be from sixty -five to seventy degrees Fahrenheit, depending
upon the humidity of the atmosphere and the amount of
motion in the air.
2. Air clean, not dirty. The second rule is that air should
be clean, not dirty. This rule applies more to the air which