LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 191 



attention to every daily habit that is periodic and essays to be regular, that 

 has to do with the bodily functions. It is not only the humane but the 

 patriotic duty of all parents to make the wisest use of both example and 

 precept, that their children may have the importance of perfect regularity 

 stamped on their very being. The piece of cake or candy that seems tied to 

 some children, so constantly is it in their hands, is too often the only cause of 

 the tears and fretfulness that it is given to check. I believe I could truly 

 say that the most common way that we break the Sabbath is by the irregular- 

 ities that we practice on that day. I believe that there is no single thing in 

 the lives of our sober^ industrious, and well meaning people that so makes the 

 black demon of disease, suffering, and short life dance with very joy as irreg- 

 ularity in sleeping, eating, and the sundry other periodic functions of the 

 bodily organs. 



Before I leave this subject of digestion and nutrition let me say that the old 

 idea that animal heat is the result of simple oxidation for this sole purpose is 

 no longer entertained by physiologists. Animal heat is the result of func- 

 tional activity. Certain kinds of nutrition, which are very expensive to the 

 tissues, seem to develop much heat, and are incited by nervous action if tiiere 

 is too little animal heat. By keeping our stock in warm well ventilated rooms 

 during the severe cold of winter we conserve the animal heat, save the expen- 

 sive nutrition, and add materially to the thickness of our pocket-books. There 

 is no single practice general among our farmers that savors so strongly of waste 

 and destruction as this custom of leaving stock unhoused and unsheltered during 

 the bleak cold days of winter. Go through the country any cold winter's day 

 and you will see good barns, presumably empty, and just outside the pinched 

 up cattle, etc., often by the score. What wonder that each one has its back 

 up? There is good and sufficient cause. These cold drivmg storms steal the 

 very tissues from the poor creature, and from us our hard earnings as well. 

 Thus thousands of dollars are snatched from our farmers each winter. Why 

 is this? Is it because it takes a little more labor to care for the animals in the 

 stables for 24 hours than for 12, or is it because our farmers do not know what 

 an expensive habit they practice? Is it not more probable that it is simply a 

 thoughtless habit? Whatever the cause the merits of the case demand that 

 we witness as radical a turn around in this matter as we witnessed in the recent 

 political elections. 



Of all the food required to nourish the body, none is so imperatively 

 demanded as oxygen or pure air. We know that a person may live at least 

 forty days with no food except water. If robbed of both food and water, the 

 vital forces will continue to act for many days. Not so with oxygen. Stop 

 the breathing and not only does every organ and tissue cry out for this life- 

 giving aliment; but even the heart, the most patient, restless, and untiring 

 servant of all the bodily organs, refuses to impel the life-giving current, and 

 so the source of all nourishment is dried up, and the spark of vital action goes 

 out. We no longer hold that the oxygen is taken simply to supply bodily 

 warmth, but that it enters into the formation of every tissue as an all import- 

 ant component of their substance. We also know by direct measurement that 

 it takes 350 cubic feet of pure air to supply our daily need; or a room, to put 

 it more graphically, seven feet each way, does not furnish the required amount 

 for each day's supply. More than this, each time we breathe the air is viti- 

 ated ; that is, a part of the oxygen is replaced not by simply harmless gases, 

 but by theses that are terribly hurtful and poisonous. How alarming, then, 

 the fact that countless thousands of our fellow beings are living and sleeping 



