THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MA.RCH, 1881. 

 PHYSICAL EDUCATION 



Br FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 

 IN-DOOR LIFE. 



"What is to the mind a healthy body, 

 To the body is a healthy house." 



Fabio Colonna, 



I 



Next to our dietetic sins, the abuses connected with our habits of 

 domestic life have contributed the largest share to the great sum of 

 human misery. Yet few evils might be more easily avoided. There 

 are diseases which may be considered as visitations of national iniqui- 

 ties whose consequences are almost beyond the control of individuals ; 

 but for the sufferings caused by scrofula and pulmonary disorders we 

 are indebted chiefly to our own prejudices. Prejudice and ignorance 

 have filled more consumptives' graves than poverty. Even in large 

 manufacturing towns air is free. If our artisans could realize the con- 

 sequences of breathing miasma, they would prefer the life-air of the 

 wildest wilderness to the lung-poison of their slums ; like a caged 

 bird, the tenement prisoner would refuse to pair rather than people the 

 earth with cachectic wretches. The exodus of their workmen would 

 soon induce manufacturers to imitate the founder of Saltaire ; build- 

 ing speculators would find it to their advantage to adopt the Philadel- 

 phia plan, adding suburb to suburb rather than loft to loft ; cities 

 would grow outward instead of upward. A reform of that sort would 

 imply various modifications of our present labor system ; but before 

 the enlightenment of public opinion such difficulties vanish like mist 

 before the rising sun. There was a time when it was actually proposed 

 to abolish the summer vacations of the French to^m schools " in order 

 to enlarge their curriculum in proportion to the advance of modern 



VOL. XVIII. 37 



