584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



books, flowers, and music, combined with pleasant conversation and a 

 cheerful fire, would neutralize the attractions of the average " saloon." 

 Playthings and social games, too, would help to compensate the young- 

 sters for the want of out-of-door sports, and where they have a room to 

 themselves I would suggest the introduction of some entertaining pet, a 

 raccoon or a tame squirrel-monkey. Let the boys have some fun pro- 

 vide pastimes ; it is ennui rather than natural perversity that leads 

 our young men to the rum-shop. 



The end of the day is the best time for a sponge-bath ; a sponge 

 and a coarse towel have often cured insomnia where diacodium failed. 

 A bucketful of tepid water will do for ordinary purposes ; daily cold 

 shower-baths in winter-time are as preposterous as hot drinks in the 

 dog-days. Russian baths and ice-water cures owe their repute to the 

 same popular delusion that ascribes miraculous virtues to nauseating 

 drugs the mistrust of our natural instincts, culminating in the idea 

 that all natural things must be injurious to man, and that the efficacy 

 of a remedy depends on the degree of its repulsiveness. Ninety-nine 

 boys in a hundred M^ould rather take the bitterest medicine than a cold 

 bath in mid-winter. If we leave children and animals to the guidance 

 of their instincts they will become amphibious in the dog-days, and 

 quench their thirst at the coldest spring without fear of injurious con- 

 sequences ; but in winter-time even wild beasts avoid immersion with an 

 instinctive dread. A Canadian bear will make a wide circuit, or pick 

 his way over the floes rather than swim a lake in cold weather. Bap- 

 tist missionaries do not report many revivals before June. Warm 

 springs, on the other hand, attract all the birds and beasts that stay 

 with us in winter-time ; the hot spas of Rockport, Arkansas, are vis- 

 ited nightly by raccoons and foxes in spite of all torchlight hunts ; and 

 Haxthausen tells us that in hard winters the thermae of Paetigorsk, in 

 the eastern Caucasus, attract deer and wild-hogs from the distant 

 Terek Valley. I know the claims of the hydropathic school, and the 

 arguments ^:)ro and con, but the main points of the controversy still 

 hinge upon the issue between Nature's testimony and Dr. Priess- 

 nitz's. 



Our beds are our night-clothes, and ought to be kept as clean as our 

 shirts and coats. Woolen blankets are healthier than quilts ; put a 

 heavy United States army blanket over a kettle full of hot water and 

 see how fast the steam makes its way through the weft ; a quilt would 

 stop it like an iron lid, and thus tends to check the exhalation of the 

 human body. In order to disinfect a quilt you have first to loosen the 

 pressed cotton ; a woolen blanket can be steamed and dried in a couple 

 of hours. For similar reasons a straw tick is better than a horsehair 

 mattress, though a woven-wire mattress is perhaps preferable to both. 

 Feather-beds are a recognized nuisance. Children over ten years 

 should sleep alone, or at least under separate blankets, if the bedsteads 

 do not reach around. 



