1884.] HEALTH OF THE PARMER AND HIS FAMILY. 133 



greater freedom from ills than any other business or calling, but 

 that the farmer is not as free from disease as the possibilities of 

 his life will allow of. This controlling of disease is particularly- 

 practicable here in Connecticut. The soil is generally well drained, 

 and the climate, though fitful and severe in its changes, is on the 

 whole salubrious, and there are no obstacles beyond his reach to 

 which he must submit, as there are in some sections of our own 

 land and abroad, excepting the one instance of malaria, which has 

 appeared in some localities, but happily that is now on the decline. 

 Neither are there any special diseases to which farmers are liable 

 by reason of their calling, as are shoe-makers, painters, chemical 

 manufactures, hatters, etc., who constantly run the risk of receiving 

 lead, mercurial, arsenical, or other poisonings, but the manner of 

 their living does induce a long list of diseases possible and common 

 to all who disregard nature's laws, which, in retaliation, inflicts 

 upon them diseases which it should be a disgi'ace for any one to 

 have who controls his time, his premises, and the composition of 

 his diet, as does the farmer. 



I do not propose to trouble you with a long list of hygienic 

 laws, neither to descant upon the origin of disease, imless it may 

 be to discredit the argument by which 1 have been often met when 

 speaking of man's power in restraining ailments. That it came 

 hand in hand into the world with death when Esq. Adam and his 

 wife ate the Baldwin apple in Eden's orchard, and that con- 

 sequently mankind must be ill at times as a punishment for that 

 sin, and hence the physician a necessary evil, to this I will only 

 say that theology, which is a theory of man, does not agree with 

 physiology, which is a fact of God, I have a higher idea of God's 

 beneficent nature than J,o think that he delights to inflict the 

 tortures of bilious colic or rheumatism on a fairly good man, or an 

 angel of a woman, simply because of that little pomological 

 incident. I prefer to believe that the afflicted persons took a bite 

 at the apple themselves when presented by the serpent of lust or 

 pleasure. 



Let us go to the matter at once, and take up the objectionable 

 features of the farm. And now put aside for awhile your views 

 of a farmer's life, and look upon it with me and from my stand- 

 point. We shall find that the average fai-m-house is far from 

 perfect in its sanitary conditions. Living as I do in a house con- 

 structed more than a century ago, has caused me to notice and 



