LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 193 



his patients than a whole apothecary shop full of drugs, for he recognizes the 

 fact that nature is the great healer, and pure air the strongest lever that nature 

 uses in the good work of restoring lost health. 



The recent discovery of Koch that pneumonia is caused by the presence of 

 vegetable germs, and so is terribly contagious, adds a fearful emphasis to this 

 advice. It also explains the commonly observed fact that whole families are 

 frequently mown down by consumption where there is no reason to think the 

 malady is contagious. 



Of course any thing that hinders perfectly free breathing works towards the 

 same end as does ill ventilation. Here then I will briefly allude to the per- 

 nicious custom of compressing the chest with tight clothing. Of course the 

 ladies are most interested directly in this matter, but as all men are sooner or 

 later interested in the ladies, they too should give willing ear to this discussion. 

 Men will show more sense and taste when they come generally to admire the 

 normal type of the female form and not the hour-glass type now so common 

 among ns. No garment should compress the chest in the least. All garments 

 should hang from the shoulders. Even men need to reform in this respect. I 

 wish right here to protest against the atrocious custom of bandaging children 

 the first year of their lives, as if fitting them to be embalmed as mummies. 

 Too many of them succumb to this swaddling process, and are in truth ready 

 to be embalmed. As a writer, in a recent number of the Popular Science 

 Monthly, well say:^, "This is downright torture. They are swaddled of course; 

 it keeps them from nearly all movement, and paregoric does the rest. They 

 cry for liberty, and receive death. Opiates are sold under right pleasant names 

 uow-a-days, and at popular prices; but a spoonful of arsenic would, in many 

 cases, be a shorter and a kinder remedy. The epitaph of many a baby might 

 appropriately consist of these four words, bandages, crying, paregoric, death." 



No farmer should neglect this matter of ventilation in the care of his domes- 

 tic animals. The harmful effects of such neglect in case of sheep are so 

 apparent that most all know and guard against them. Sheep are kept in 

 large flocks, and the many pairs of lungs drawing constantly on the air deoxy- 

 genize it so that it very soon becomes utterly unfit for respiration. Thus 

 sheep become diseased and die in a single winter, simply from starvation, 

 when the needed food is not only as free as, but is the very air itself. Sheep, 

 however, need good air no more than do our horses and cattle. As before 

 stated, to keep our stock with economy, wo must protect them from the cold. 

 He is the wisest farmer who, while he arranges his barns so that they shall be 

 warm and comfortable, at the same time provides for a constant supply of 

 pure air. Long, close ventilating shafts should be so arranged that the free 

 out-door wind currents shall pass over them and suck the air from the rooms 

 below, and thus keep them filled with fresh and pure air. Better cracks, and 

 wind currents, even if more food is required, than a stifling atmosphere in our 

 stables and stock barns. 



In this discussion, I have referred to the fact that respiration not only 

 serves to furnish the most important food, but acts another very important 

 part, that of removing the noxious excretions, as the carbonic acid and organic 

 substances, which if not removed from the blood, become most active poisons. 

 Other poisonous excretions are poured out by the skin. Neatness and cleanli- 

 ness are absolutely necessary to the full removal of these harmful excretions. 

 Farmers, from their constant press of duties, their isolation, and the amount 

 of labor and care requisite to keep the whole place neat and tidy, are some- 

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