THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 481 



uct of that complex cause, either by flight to a colder climate, or by 

 adopting a less calorific regimen. The latter expedient is the cheaper, 

 and generally the shorter and safer one ; and in no other disease is 

 the remedy more clearly indicated by the promptings of instinct. The 

 premonitory stage of yellow fever is characterized by an intense long- 

 ing for refrigeration: fresh air, cold water, cooling fruits or fruit- 

 extracts. The fever-dreams of an ague-patient are crowded with 

 visions of tree-shade and mountain-brooks. Even " chills " are often 

 accompanied by a burning thirst ; and during the cold stage of an 

 intermittent fever the temperature of the system is actually higher 

 than during the sweating stage ; according to Dr. Francis Home, re- 

 spectively 104 and 99. 



In the first place, remove the patient to the airiest available room 

 in the house. The art of house-cooling seems to have been lost with 

 the ancient civilization of Southern Europe. There is not a room in 

 the narrowest alley of the Naples Jew quarter where open windows 

 and ten cents' worth of ice would fail to lower the temperature from 

 twenty to thirty degrees below that of the outer atmosphere. Create 

 a draught, and if possible a cross-draught, without fear that the ad- 

 mission of air from a sun-blistered courtyard, for instance, would make 

 the room equally uncomfortable ; the thermal contrast itself will cre- 

 ate an air-current, and that draught will be cooler to the feeling 

 than stagnant air of an actually lower temperature. The shade of a 

 leafy tree is never more grateful than when the surrounding fields 

 tremble under the rays of a vertical sun. The evaporation of ice- 

 water, or even of common cistern-water, will greatly aid the good 

 work. Pour it into flat basins, tubs, etc., and place them in the center 

 of the room, or get a wheelbarrow full of unglazed bricks, that can 

 be procured at any pottery, put them close together on the floor and 

 sprinkle them from time to time with cold water. The water will 

 soak into the porous mass and evaporate more rapidly than from an 

 impervious surface. A bundle of bathing-sponges or a sheaf of bul- 

 rushes, suspended from the ceiling and sprinkled from time to time, 

 will serve the same purpose ; and, where ice is cheap, a dog's-day 

 sirocco can be easily reduced to an April breeze. 



But the best time to begin the refrigeration-cure is an hour after 

 sunset. On this continent alone, the night-air superstition costs annu- 

 ally the lives of about fifteen thousand human beings ; for at least one 

 half of the thirty thousand North Americans who succumb every year 

 to yellow fever, ague, and congestive chills, could have saved themselves 

 by opening their bedroom-windows. In the jungles of our Southern 

 Gulf -coast thousands of hunters and lumbermen breathe with impu- 

 nity the air of the very swamps to whose neighborhood the city-dweller 

 ascribes the summer epidemics. Their febrifuge is the cooling night- 

 wind, for here, as in the dyspeptic shopkeeper cities and consumptive 

 factory -towns, each night labors to undo the mischief of each day, 



VOL. XXXII. 31 



