The Deadly Destruction of the Innocents

This is courtesy of Maarten De Cock (and G.B. Morrison). People have been lamenting the air quality in schools and knew how to prevent transmission of viruses since at least 1887.

"Why is it regarded by the public with such indifference? . . . Why does the intelligent parent send his child to a school-room poorly ventilated . . . breathing into a stagnant air the germs of disease and death?"

"The deadly destruction of the innocents by impure air goes on silently, constantly, and powerfully."

(click for clearer reading)

"Could the real effects of breathing impure air be fully realized by the public, and the actual amount that is really breathed be definitely know, such a knowledge would constitute a most powerful stimulus toward solving the problem of ventilation."

"From an economical standpoint . . . the financial waste of breathing impure air . . . can not but be enormous. . . . In those school-rooms where ventilation is imperfect and the air impure six sevenths of the money expended to educate a child is wasted."

"Painstaking investigations as to the disease-producing power of these [airborne] organisms have been in progess. . . . Large number of impurities . . . congregate in inclosed, unventilated spaces where they are produced, and they have a detrimental influence on the health." 

"A complete analysis of impure air . . . for ordinary practical purposes the determination of the CO2 is by far the most important . . . the amount of this gas found to be present is, in air made impure by respiration, generally a good measure for other impurities."

The book also shows CO2 monitoring experiments in classrooms and illustrates the principle of displacement ventilation, long before it was known as such:

Source: The Ventilations and Warming of School Buildings by Gilbert Burnet Morrison