of pure air.

It has been estimated that about 40 in every 100 of the deaths annually
occurring in Great Britain and the United States are of children under
five years of age. To avoid every possibility of exaggeration, we will
place the number in this country at 30 in 100. At this rate we lose
about 200,000 children under five years of age every year. Now, if nine
tenths of the mortality among infants in the Dublin Hospital were caused
by breathing bad air, we may reasonably infer that at least one half of
the deaths in the United States of children under the age of five years
proceed from the same fatal cause. And those who have noticed what pains
are taken by excessively careful mothers[48] and ignorant nurses to
exclude from the lungs of infants the "free, pure, unadulterated air of
heaven," and, by means of many thicknesses of enveloping shawls and
blankets, require them to re-respire portions at least of their own
breath, until it becomes a virulent and deadly poison, will think with
me that this is a low estimate, and wonder that the swaddling-cloths of
more infants do not become their winding-sheets. But, even according to
this estimate, 100,000 children in the United States annually fall
victims to the ignorance of their fond mothers. Many thousands more are
subsequently sacrificed in consequence of occupying small and
unventilated bed-rooms and school-rooms, which, by a practical knowledge
of the principles of physiology, might be saved. Perhaps as many more
become sufferers for life from the same cause, for a thousand forms of
disease, as it manifests itself in every stage of life, either owe their
existence or their severity to breathing bad air. These, then, who drag
out a miserable existence in consequence of this cruel treatment, are to
be more pitied than those who fall its ready victims.

[48] It would seem that the great majority of "educated mothers" do not
realize the necessity of supplying pure air to the new-born child.
Before birth, the blood of the fetus is purified in the maternal lungs;
after birth, in the lungs of the child, if at all; and for this purpose
pure air is necessary.

If so many thousand deaths occur annually in the United States from this
one cause, in addition to the vast amount of misery which is entailed
upon the wretched survivors, how many hundred thousand precious lives
might be saved, and what untold wretchedness might be prevented, by a
strict conformity to