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SECTION XII.: OF VENTILATION, SHADING, AND COOLING. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 4.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION XII.

OF VENTILATION, SHADING, AND COOLING.

Of ventilation, considered as a part of the regimen, little need be said. In the cold season the process is carried on, and that in perfection, by the apparatus employed for warming: and even in warm weather, where no artificial heat is introduced, the same structure can scarce fail of ensuring the same effect. Were it otherwise, nothing more easy than to keep the windows open, especially on Sundays, and on week-days at airing times, when the prisoners are absent from their respective cells. In other prisons, comfort and health are at variance; and the preference given by uncultivated minds to present feelings over remote considerations, renders the enforcement of this part of the discipline more or less precarious. In a Panopticon, in this as in almost all other articles, transgression is impossible.

For shading in very hot weather, a strip of canvass to each window may be necessary in the greater part of the circuit.

Of the apparatus contrived for warming, a part might, if it were ever worth while, be made subservient to the opposite purpose. A cellar might occasionally be taken into the aëriduct spoken of in the section on warming, and in this cellar as in any other, there might be ice.

[]In countries where the intensity of the cold renders men particularly averse to ventilation, deaths, as is observed by Howard from Russian documents, are much more frequent in the cold than in the hot season: a fact the more worthy of observation, as the former, naturally the healthier season, is not there attended with wet, nor subject to vicissitudes as here. In a Panopticon thus equally warmed and constantly ventilated, the season which would elsewhere be the least healthy, may be expected to be the most so.

[]In a Lazaretto built on the Panopticon principle, as suggested in the Section on Warming, a provision of this sort would be not unsuitable, on the score of comfort. Whether on the score of economy, as a means of enabling work to go on at times when heat would not otherwise permit, any such thing could be made to answer, might not be altogether undeserving of consideration. The facility might depend in some measure on local circumstances.