52U FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



After making some investigation, I found that the cellar had been full of 

 water all summer, and the stench from the damp, mildewed mud hole that 

 remained explained the cause of the plague. 



PURE AIR. 



You probably have heard the student's definition of disinfectants: "They 

 smell so bad that people open the door, and fresh air gets in." Since the 

 atmosphere is 45 miles high, there is no need of breathing air a second time. 

 In a newly settled community we cannot expect all of the modern improve- 

 ments in the way of ventilation. However, we can have plenty of fresh air. 

 And we often find the farmer healthier in his log cabin than after he has 

 built his new house, in which carpenters and masons have managed to shut 

 all bad air in and all good air out. The first thing to be looked after, in ven- 

 tilating, is to provide some means for the bad air to get out. It is an easy 

 matter to let pure air in. The open fire grate is one of the simplest and best 

 means of disposing of impure air, and where fuel is so abundant one or two 

 should be in every house. 



If your bedroom is arranged so there is but one window, have it slightly 

 open during the night. Do not be afraid of night air. You will be more 

 likely to catch cold in an illy ventilated room than in one that lets in the 

 night air. I have had considerable experience in night air during the past 

 nine years, having ridden fifty miles in a single night, and I have my first 

 cold to catch by a ride in the night air. 



A man can live a long time without food. He can live a long time with- 

 out drink. But, a very few moments without air will terminate his life. 



I will give you some idea of the minute machinery of the lungs when I 

 tell you that each air cell if from one-seventieth to one-two hundredth of an 

 inch in diameter that there are 17,000 such cells around each terminal 

 bronchus; there are 6.0,000,000 in the entire lungs, and the estimated sur- 

 face of the lungs for aeration is 80 to 100 times the estimated surface of the 

 body, i. e., 25.000 square inches is the estimated average surface of the 

 body. This multiplied by 100 equals 250,000 square inches lung surface. The 

 thickness of the tissue between blood and air is one-three-thousandth inch. 

 Certainly such extensive and delicate structures need pure air. These 

 delicate tissues not only take the oxygen from the air, but they throw off 

 poisonous constituents from the blood, so that air breathed once is unfit for 

 further use. It is for this reason that every bedroom should be ventilated. 

 In the night, life processes are lowest ; if you then breathe poisonous gases 

 it gives the tubercular bacillus and other disease germs a chance to fortify 

 themselves in the delicate structures and begin to propagate, and you soon 

 find yourself the victim of that dread disease, consumption. 



BREATHING. 



In connection with the study of respiration, very naturally comes the care 

 of the skin. Many poisons that are not removed by the lungs are excreted 

 by the skin. Did you ever know a man to wear his flannels a month and 

 turn them wrong side out to wear them clean, and at the end of another 

 month return them? I did! Did you ever know a man not to bathe for 

 a year? I did. 



