PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 161 



itself, but there is a wide difference between a proximate and an origi- 

 nal cause. A man can be too tired to sleep and too weak to be Kick. 

 Bleeding, for the time being, may " break up " an inflammatory dis- 

 ease ; the system must regain some little strength before it can resume 

 the work of reconstruction. The vital energy of a person breathing 

 the stagnant air of an unventilated stove-room is often inadequate to 

 the task of undertaking a restorative process though the respiratory 

 organs, clogged with phlegm and all kinds of impurities, may be sadly 

 in need of relief. But, during a sleigh-ride, or a few hours' sleep be- 

 fore a window left open by accident, the bracing influence of the 

 fresh air revives the drooping vitality, and Nature avails herself of the 

 chance to begin repairs, the lungs reveal their diseased condition, i. e., 

 they proceed to rid themselves of the accumulated impurities. Per- 

 sistent in-door life would have aggravated the evil by postponing the 

 crisis, or by turning a temporary affection into a chronic disease. But 

 in a plurality of cases Nature will seize even upon a transient improve- 

 ment of the external circumstances : a cold night that disinfects the 

 atmosphere of the bedroom in spite of closed windows, a draught of 

 cool air from an adjoining room, or one of those accidental exposures 

 to wind and weather which the veriest slave of the cold-air supersti- 

 tion can not always avoid. For, rightly understood, the external 

 symptoms of a disease constitute a restorative process that can not be 

 brought to a satisfactory issue till the cause of the evil is removed. 

 So that, in fact, the air-hater confounds the cause of his recovery with 

 the cause of his disease. Among nations who pass their lives out- 

 doors, catarrh and scrofula are almost unknown ; not fresh air, but the 

 want of it, is the cause of countless diseases, of fatal diseases where peo- 

 ple are in the habit of nailing down their windows every winter to 

 keep their children from opening them. " In one such den," says Dr. 

 Bock, " I was so overcome with nausea that I could not speak till I 

 had knocked out a pane of glass. That is about the best thing one 

 could do in most sick-rooms " except knocking out the whole win- 

 dow. The only objection to a " draught " through a defective window 

 is, that the draught is generally not strong enough. An influx of fresh 

 air into a fusty sick-room is a ray of light into darkness, a messenger 

 of Vishnu visiting an abode of the damned. Cold is a disinfectant, 

 and under the pressure of a high wind a modicum of oxygen will pene- 

 trate a house in spite of closed windows. This circumstance alone has 

 preserved the lives of thousands whom no cough-sirup or cod-liver oil 

 could have saved. 



5. The Fever Fallacy. Fever-and-ague, being eminently a sum- 

 mer disease, could not very well be ascribed to cold air ; but the anti- 

 naturalists, still resolved to find an extraneous cause, have selected as 

 their scapegoat the only kind of natural food and drink most Chris- 

 tians ever touch in summer-time fruits and cold water. The police 

 of fever-stricken towns prohibit the sale of fresh fruit ; fever-patients 



VOL. XX. 11 



