SLEEPING ROOMS The objects and nature of sleep should be understood as a basis for the intelligent furnishing and care of the bed and bedroom. Perhaps no other subject in connection with the household is more important or less understood. Where more than one person occupies a sleeping room each individual should have a separate bed, even if the requirements of space or other conditions make it necessary for two or more beds to stand side by side. It is especially important that children, after a very early age, should have separate cradles or cribs pro vided for them and be taught to oc cupy them. The reason for this cus tom is that individuals vary greatly in the amount of heat required to keep the body in a normal condition during sleep. Children require less covering than grown persons, and aged persons require much more covering than those in middle life. Separate beds admit of each individual adjusting the cov ering to his own requirements. Again, while the bodily sensations are dor mant during sleep, they are not ab sent, or else a person could not be awakened. The body is still sensitive to outer impressions. Hence the mo tions of another sleeper or the changes in temperature produced by the addi tion or removal of coverings to ac commodate a bedfellow may awaken a sleeper who by his restless motions will keep his companion awake, and no sound sleep may be enjoyed by either person. Fortunately, the invention of cast-iron and other cheap metallic bed steads that may be obtained in half and three-quarter sizes makes it pos sible for many families to afford sepa rate beds, a luxury which would for merly have been denied them.
The introduction of iron and brass bedsteads in many homes on sanitary and hygienic grounds, and the con sequent discarding of old-fashioned wooden bedsteads that are heavy, dif ficult to clean, and that by collecting dust and furnishing harboring places for vermin are constantly contribut ing to the labor of the housekeeper, gives an opportunity to introduce this cleanly, healthful, and agreeable cus tom. Moreover, single or half beds can be readily moved from one room to another and from place to place. They
are easier to open, air, and spread, the bed coverings (which should be made specially for them) are easier to han dle in the laundry, and their use, in short, is advisable from every stand point.
Ventilation of Bedrooms.—The ef fect of entire lack of ventilation is illustrated by the celebrated case of the " Black Hole of Calcutta." About 150 Europeans taken at the capture of Fort Williams in Calcutta in 1756 were confined in a dungeon about twenty feet square, having two small windows. The following morning only twenty-three remained alive. In a similar case, on the steamer London derry, 150 passengers were confined in a small cabin for a number of hours. Of these, seventy died from constant ly rebreathing the air contaminated in the lungs and by various exhala tions of the human body. In breath ing (and also in the combustion of fuel, as wood or coal, or of oil or gas for illumination), a part of the oxy gen of the air which is necessary for human life is converted into carbonic acid gas. The atmosphere consists of about 78 per cent of nitrogen, 20.96 per cent of oxygen, 1 per cent of argon, and .04 per cent of carbonic acid gas mixed together. Each breath converts about one fourth of the available oxygen in the air into car bonic-acid gas; hence in an air-tight space death from suffocation would very quickly ensue.
Ordinary dwellings are, of course, by no means air-tight, and are par tially ventilated through the narrow openings about window frames, by the occasional opening of doors, and through various cracks and crevices. But these sources are not sufficient to supply the volume of pure air required for human breathing. Rooms occu pied by a number of persons are al most invariably so close that a great deal of air is necessarily breathed again and again. The results upon bodily health are in their nature the same as those which produce death by suffocation. Only the exhaustion is more gradual and extends over a lon ger period of time.