160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



other means ; and at any rate the possible danger of a climatic disease 

 is preferable to the sure evils of the poison-drug. But how can nox- 

 ious stimulants be distinguished from wholesome drinks? Tonic 

 medicines, stimulating beverages, and poisons, are synonymous terms. 

 Every known poison can become a lusted-after stimulant by forcing it 

 repeatedly upon the (at first) reluctant stomach. It is true that the 

 hankering of an old habitue after his tipple resembles the craving of a 

 hungry man for food, but that constitutes no reproach against Nature, 

 for the taste of the first clrink betrayed the poison. To the palate of 

 a child narcotic stimulants are bitter, alcohol is burning-acrid, tobacco 

 nauseous, mineral poisons either bitter or insipid. By a liberal admixt- 

 ure of sugar and milk the repulsiveness of various narcotic decoctions 

 can be diminished, but in no disguise could they be possibly mistaken 

 for nourishing substances if the natural-depravity dogma had not 

 weakened our confidence in the testimony of our instincts. 



4. The Cold- Air Fallacy. The influence of anti-naturalism is 

 most strikingly illustrated in our superstitious dread of fresh air. The 

 air of the out-door world, of the woods and hills, is, par excellence, a 

 product of Nature of wild, free, and untamable Nature and therefore 

 the presumptive source of innumerable evils. Cold air is the general 

 scapegoat of all sinners against Nature. When the knee-joints of the 

 young debauchee begin to weaken, he suspects that he has "taken 

 cold." If an old glutton has a cramp in the stomach, he ascribes it to 

 an incautious exposure on coming home from a late supper. Tooth- 

 ache is supposed to result from " draughts " ; croup, neuralgia, mumps, 

 etc., from the "raw March wind." When children have been forced 

 to sleep in unventilated bedrooms till their lungs putrefy with their 

 own exhalations, the materfamilias reproaches herself with the most 

 sensible thing she has been doing for the last hundred nights " open- 

 ing the windows last August when the air was so stiflingly hot." The 

 old dyspeptic, with his cupboards full of patent nostrums, can honestly 

 acquit himself of having yielded to any natural impulse ; after swelter- 

 ing all summer behind hermetically closed windows, wearing flannel 

 in the dog-days, abstaining from cold water when his stomach ci'aved 

 it, swallowing drugs till his appetite has given way to chronic nausea, 

 his conscience bears witness that he has done what he could to sup- 

 press the original depravity of Nature ; only once the enemy got a 

 chance at him : in rummaging his garret for a warming-pan he stood 

 half a minute before a broken window to that half -minute, accord- 

 ingly, he attributes his rheumatism. For catarrh there is a stereotyped 

 explanation : " Catched cold." That settles it. The invalid is quite sure 

 that her cough came on an hour after returning from that sleigh-ride. 

 She felt a pain in the chest the moment her brother opened that win- 

 dow. There is no doubt of it it's all the night-air's fault. 



The truth is, that cold air often reveals the existence of a disease. 

 It initiates the reconstructive process, and thus apparently the disease 



