Library Collections: Document: Full Text

The value of such an atmosphere as that derived from steam and hot water apparatus, and an exhaustive system of ventilation, was wonderfully demonstrated to me in comparing the intellectually active and cheerful countenances, the vigorous circulation, the aspect of good condition of inmates of a modern asylum, with the listless, apathetic, irritable indolence of those within the older places of detention. Although long impressed with the general hygienic importance of a pure atmosphere at a proper temperature, upon the general health and prospects of life of the insane, I never before fully realized its connection with their mental and moral condition. In melancholy, despondent subjects, it will be found, I think, that such an atmosphere is almost essential, in the winter, when the open air must be more or less denied to them.

The modes of heating buildings by steam and hot water, although known under many names and complications, patented and unpatented, are comprised under three principles:

1st, Heating by steam under pressure, so that a heat far beyond the boiling point of water (212 degrees) is obtained, approaching even 5 and 600 degrees -- the apparatus containing the water, thus sustaining a pressure of 11 to 1200 lbs. to the square inch. The intense heat of the water is shown by the fact, that if a space on the tube is filed bright, it assumes the straw and then the blue tinge, indicating that degree of heat. This is the invention of Mr. Perkins, and I investigated its working at the asylums at Northampton and at Belfast, in Ireland, and was satisfied that it was not a safe and advisable mode of heating an asylum for the insane. In view of the well known loss of tenacity of iron, long maintained at a high temperature and the immense pressure upon the tube, it cannot be deemed permanently safe; it violates the essential principle in healthy warming, that is, that large quantities of air should be introduced in a moderately warm state, instead of small quantities intensely heated. In fact the peculiar changes wrought upon the air by high heat are identical, whether the metal be raised to the heat by contact with burning fuel or water raised to the same degree.

The apparatus is quite expensive, as every part must be made very perfectly and strongly to sustain the test to which it is subjected. It consists simply of a tube of wrought iron an inch in diameter, with an internal calibre of about half an inch; this is coiled up so as to form an ordinary coal grate in which the fuel is placed. The tube is continued from the ends of this grate until a circuit is formed, running into every part to be warmed, along the side of the walls, or in a groove in the floor, as most convenient. At the most elevated portion is an expanded portion containing about 1/12 of the whole water, and hermetically sealed. The water pure by distillation at first, never requires to be changed. It circulates with a rapidity determined by its change of specific gravity from heat and its friction on the sides and curves of the tube. In practice the temperature at different points is found to vary so much as to defy all calculation. The heat is radiated into the apartment, and whatever air is necessary to ventilation, is admitted from the outside in a cold state, in which state it is well known a ready admixture with the warm air is not effected.

I conceive that an essential improvement in this apparatus would be made, by carrying the tubes in a large flue below the rooms, into which the external air should be admitted. and the hot air drawn from this flue by the usual flues in the walls. A proper commingling of heated and cold air, would be thus effected, and the hazards of explosion and of patients burning themselves prevented. I saw, however, little or nothing in this apparatus which would lead me to recommend its use in hospitals for the insane.

2d. The mild hot-water apparatus, or where the temperature does not exceed 212 degrees, has had a great variety of forms. It may be so arranged as to radiate its heat directly into the apartment, by continuous tubes, or coils and ranges, in the form of sideboards, or filling any vacant recesses, as fancy may dictate, or the tubes may be arranged in a hot-air chamber in the cellar to which the external air is admitted and drawn off whenever required. It is hardly necessary to say that for an insane asylum where the cold air, should be mixed with the heated, before it is admitted, this last is the best method and the mode of doing this in large horizontal flues in the cellar the most convenient, as the air may thus be carried to any distance horizontally -- a very necessary circumstance in an asylum, unattainable equally in. any other mode, as far I have seen.

The tubes are, in some new methods of warming a range of rooms gradually augmented in size as they go more distant from the boiler. The increased quantity of water and radiating surface are thus made to compensate for the heat which has been parted with, and an equal portion reaches the nearest and most distant rooms.