THE EFFECT OF HUMIDITY ON NERVOUSNESS
AND ON GENERAL EFFICIENCY
 

CHAPTER I
 

History of Investigations of the  Effect of  Indoor and
Outdoor Atmospheric Conditions

The question of how man is affected by climate and by the
weather has been a fruitful subject of discussion ahke for philos¬
ophers and village wiseacres in all ages. In modern times we have
found a new topic for general conversation in the subject of the
effects of the indoor weather for which our heating and ventilating
systems are responsible. Fortunately we are beginning to sub¬
stitute a scientific treatment of the matter for the old speculative
method.

It is evident that the problems connected with ventilation have
been seriously considered only in modern times. The first aim of
civilized man has always been to get warm air, rather than ''good''
air. Even the highly cultivated Greeks and Romans, whose ex¬
travagance and splendor were pointed out to us in our early classical
education, never got beyond the problem of heating, and solved
that rather badly.^ In general, their heating arrangements were
no different in principle from those of the Iroquois Indians or the
Laplanders, who light a fire in the center of the apartment and let
the smoke find its way out by a hole in the roof. Since the ancients
commonly set braziers of burning charcoal about the room, the
indoor smoke nuisance was never done away with, as is shown by
the fact that Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in his De Architectura about
13-16 B.C. recommended dark mural decorations that would not
be stained by smoke. The walls and floors of Roman palaces and
baths were later heated by means of a network of flues leading from
a central fire. Even with this hypocaust^ system, ventilation was
provided only by vent holes in the roof.    The use of the chimney

^Cf. Bernan, Walter, "History of the Art of Heating and Ventilating/'
London, 1845. Cf. Joly, "Traite du Chauffage, de la Ventilation," Paris, 1873.
Cf. Billings, "Ventilation and Heating," New York, 1893.

2 Article Hypocausis in Dictionnaire des Andquites (Daremberg et Saglio)
Paris, 1899, 3K

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