A Lecture on the Preservation of Health | Page 8

so would the flame of life be sooner burnt out.
On the contrary, if the atmosphere contained a much less proportion of vital air, it would not stimulate the body sufficiently; the excitability would morbidly accumulate, and diseases of debility would occur.
Combustion, putrefaction, and the breathing of animals, are processes which are continually diminishing the quantity of vital air contained in the atmosphere; and if the all-wise author of nature had not provided for its continual re-production, the atmosphere would in all probability have long since become too impure to support life; but this is guarded against in a most beautiful manner.
Water is not a simple element, as has been supposed, but is composed of vital air, and a particular kind of air which is called inflammable; the same that is used to fill balloons. It has been found by experiment, that one hundred pounds of water, are composed of eighty-five pounds of vital air, and fifteen of inflammable air. [5]
Water may be decompounded by a variety of means, and its component parts separated from each other.
Vegetables effect this decomposition; they absorb water, and decompose it in their glands; and taking the inflammable air for their nourishment, breathe out the vital air in a state of very great purity; this may be ascertained by a very easy experiment.
This vital air is received by animals into their lungs, gives them their heat, and communicates a red colour to their blood; when animals die for want of vital air, their blood is always found black.
From what I have said, it is evident, that in large and populous towns, where combustion and respiration are continually performed on a large scale, the air must be much less pure than in the country, where there are few of these causes to contaminate the atmosphere, and where vegetables are continually tending to render it more pure; and if it was not for the winds which agitate this element, and constantly occasion its change of place, the air of large towns would probably soon become unfit for respiration. Winds bring us the pure air of the country, and take away that from which the vital air has been in a great measure extracted; but still, from the immense quantity of fuel which is daily burnt, and the number of people breathing in large towns, the air very soon becomes impure.
From the greater purity of the air in the country, proceeds the rosy bloom found in the rural cottage, which we in vain look for in the stately palace, or the splendid drawing room. Here then are reasons for preferring the country, which no one will dispute, and whenever it can be done, such a situation ought always to be chosen in preference to a large town: this cannot be better enforced than in the words of Dr. Armstrong.--
'Ye, who amid the feverish world would wear 'a body free of pain, of cares a mind; 'fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; 'breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke, 'and volatile corruption, from the dead, 'the dying, sick'ning, and the living world 'exhaled, to sully heaven's transparent dome 'with dim mortality.
'While yet you breathe, away; the rural wilds 'invite; the mountains call you, and the vales; 'the woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze 'that fans the ever undulating sky.'
But there are many whose occupations oblige them to reside in large towns; they, therefore, should make frequent excursions into the country, or to such situations as will enable them to enjoy, and to breathe air of a little more purity. I say enjoy, for who that has been for some time shut up in the town, without breathing the pure air of the country, does not feel his spirits revived the moment he emerges from the azote of the town. Let not therefore, if possible, a single day pass, without enjoying, if but for an hour, the pure air of the country. Doing this, only for a short time every day, would be much more effectual than spending whole days, or even weeks in the country, and then returning into the corrupt atmosphere of the town; for when you have for a long time breathed an impure air, the excitability becomes so morbidly accumulated, from the want of the stimulus of pure air, that the air of the country will have too great an effect upon you; it will frequently, in the course of a day or two, bring on an inflammatory fever, attended with stuffing of the nose, hoarseness, a great degree of heat, and dryness of the skin, with other symptoms of a violent cold.
Large towns are the graves of the human species; they would perish in a few generations, if not constantly recruited from the country. The confined, putrid air, which most of their inhabitants