Abstract:
Sri Lanka is a proud nation in the world for its ancient architectural and irrigational
structures. Unlike today, the hospitals were not served for purpose of natural labor and
delivery. Most of the houses have had a private labor room (Thimbiri Geya) for the
purpose. However, the architectural plan of the labor room was different from the other
bedrooms of the house. The room had provided the better quality of hygienic level and
health conditions to the expecting mothers and the newborn babies. The room was
sometimes used for other functions including the control of epidemic diseases, control of
post childbirth psychosis and for healing wounds. It is interested to understand the
scientific concepts behind this labor room and then, to learn and practice them if possible,
for today’s world. Therefore, experiments were carried out using three sample labor
rooms (3×4 square feet sized) under the same environmental conditions to scientifically
investigate the ancient architecture. Unit A were constructed similar to the ancient labor
room while unit B was constructed similar to the ancient labor room, but the walls were
built by cement blocks and unit C was constructed according to the modern-day room with
cement floors. These three rooms were monitored for atmospheric temperature,
atmospheric humidity, dissolved oxygen (DO) of water samples of well water and pipe
born water and microbial actions on some selected food (bread, meat and fish). It was
found out that the room temperature and humidity levels of unit A were much lower to the
other rooms and the three strata of floor in unit A could be reason for those. In addition,
higher DO levels and lower microbial activities were recorded in unit A. The results
suggest the usage of ancient system is a way forward approach in the path of sustainability
in health care facilities in the modern world. However, it is also advised to have more
experiments in a longer time span to reveal more interesting features of the ancient labor
room (Thimbiri Geya) in Sri Lanka.
