The Silent Killer in the Boarding House
An 1878 editorial warns Seattle residents that the city's obsession with airtight rooms and coal stoves is fueling a tuberculosis epidemic.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Statistics prove that the percentage of deaths by consumption keeps exact pace with the number of inhabitants who follow indoor occupations. More women than men are victims to it, because more women spend their time indoors as a matter of course. The rooms in which they live are generally very warm and without ventilation. When their poor, abused lungs break down, they anathematize the 'disagreeable and unhealthful climate,' though their failing health can be traced directly to an outrageous violation of the physical laws of nature. How many people in this city are preparing for the coming of the undertaker by sleeping in warm rooms with the death-dealing base-burner in full blast? The old prejudice against night air still clings to many. They exclude it from their living and sleeping rooms, and when they shut it out, they shut in every night enough poison to carry them over Jordan’s stormy waves. Then the air in churches and public assemblies is universally bad. Apparently, the blessings of ventilation are unknown to the custodians of the doors and windows of such places. If Christians had half the regard for their lungs that they have for their souls, they would labor for a pure air ordinance in the churches. Factories, printing offices, and all places where human beings are corraled for several hours together are conservatories for the propagation of consumption. Pure air will make the dread scourge avaunt. Open the windows at the top, and keep them open night and day and see how quick consumption will sneak out of sight.
“How many people in this city are preparing for the coming of the undertaker by sleeping in warm rooms, with the death-dealing base-burner in full blast?”
This 1878 call for 'pure air' in the face of a respiratory health crisis feels hauntingly familiar to modern Seattleites who have weathered years of wildfire smoke, pandemic-era indoor air quality debates, and a housing market where many residents are forced into poorly ventilated, cramped living spaces.
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