The lighting by means of windows many feet from the ground was, in both rooms, lamentably deficient. In neither had due care been taken to provide sufficient ventilation. The admission of fresh air appears to have been chiefly effected by the simple contrivance of opening the windows, a practice not always possible, and not unlikely, at certain seasons of the year to be attended with as much danger as would have been the retention of foul air. Readers who remained in the stifling atmosphere of either room for any length of time were known to complain of a peculiar languor and headache, and the expressive term _Museum Megrims_ was invented to describe the uneasy sensations of the too persistent student.
The following is an extract from a private letter, written a short time since, in which, although the writer confesses that his memory, at this distance of time, is not as fresh as it might be, a fair description is given of the second or intermediate Reading-Room, as it was in the year 1846:—
“What I recollect about it is as follows. It was entered by a sort of lane going down from Montague-place into what must have been at one time a stable-yard. You then went up a staircase into a long, lofty room.... I think there were two great sort of chests of hot water pipes on each side of the entrance from the staircase. The entrance divided the room into two unequal parts, and I fancy that the smaller portion was reserved for readers of MSS. The catalogue was in a series of presses near the west wall, commencing about opposite the entrance, and extending north. The rest of the floor of the room was occupied by reading-tables. At the north end was a thing like a buttery hatch. From this you got your books, having previously given your docket describing them. The walls of the room, for eight or ten feet from the floor, were crowded with book-cases, except at the entrance and hatch, and all accessible to readers in the room. I think the room was lighted by windows above the book-cases, but, as far as I can recollect, on the east side only. I think the other walls above the book-cases resting on the floor of the reading room were also covered with book-cases, but these not accessible from the Reading-Room, but from galleries, &c., opening into the other parts of the building. I recollect nothing about the ventilation, but I know that after working some time, you found your head very hot and heavy, and your feet cold. These were the symptoms of the ‘Museum Megrims,’ about which there was, shortly after my experience of the place, a deal of chaff in the papers. I fully sympathized with it at the time.”