The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863

NIGHT AIR.

Consumptives, and all invalids, and indeed persons in health, are cautioned to avoid the night air. Do those who offer this advice forget that there is no other air at night but "night air"? Certainly we cannot breathe day air during the night. Do they mean that we should shut ourselves up in air-tight rooms, and breathe over and over again, through half the twenty-four hours, the atmosphere we have already poisoned? We have only the choice between night air pure and night air poisoned with the exhalations from our skins and lungs, perhaps from lungs already diseased. A writer pertinently speaks on this point after the following fashion:--

"Man acts strangely. Although a current of fresh air is the very life of his lungs, he seems indefatigable in the exercise of his inventive powers to deprive himself of this heavenly blessing. Thus, he carefully closes his bed-chamber against its entrance, and prefers