Dan Holohan makes The New Yorker

‘New Yorkers who live in old buildings heated by steam radiators often complain that they have to open windows during the winter to keep room temperatures in their apartments tolerable. Most assume that the cause is a flaw in the design of those buildings' heating systems, but in many cases the excess heat was a deliberate response to the flu pandemic. Dan Holohan, in "The Lost Art of Steam Heating Revisited," published in 1992, writes that, beginning about 1920, the authors of engineering manuals revised their recommendations for boilers and radiators in new construction. The changed specs called for equipment that was "large enough to heat the building on the coldest day of the year, with the windows open," he writes. Those overheated buildings are, in effect, the remnants of an early theory about the prevention and treatment of respiratory disease.’

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/inside-out