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THE FARMER*S MAGAZINE. 



artificial temperature can be easily maintained. 

 Somethinff, too, is doubtless owing to tbe cheering 

 effect of light upon an invalid ; but this effect is 

 not excluded from aj)artraents so situated that, out 

 of a western or a northern window, we may see the 

 finest scenery illuminated by the full blaze of a 

 meridian sun. 



While our distinguished countryman, Sir James 

 AVylie, late physician to the Emperor of Russia, 

 resided at St. Petersburg, he studied the effect of 

 light as a curative agent. In the hospitals of that 

 city there were apartments entirely without light ; 

 and upon comparing the number of patients who 

 left these apartments cured, he found that they 

 were only one-fourth the number of those who 

 went out cured from properly lighted rooms, In 

 this case, the curative agency could not be reason- 

 ably ascribed either to the superior warmth or 

 ventilation of the well-lighted apartments, because 

 in all such hospitals the introduction of fresh air is 

 a special object of attention ; and the heating of 

 wards without windows is not difficult to accom- 

 plish. 



But, though the records of our great hospitals 

 may not assist us in our present inquiry, yet facts 

 sufficiently authentic and instructive may be ga- 

 thered from various quarters. In the years of cho- 

 lera, when this frightful disease nearly decimated 

 the population of some of the principal cities in the 

 world, it was invariably found that the deaths were 

 more numerous in narrow streets and northern ex- 

 posures, where the salutary beams of light and 

 actinism had seldom shed their beneficial influ- 

 ences. The resistless epidemic found an easy prey 

 among a people whose j)hysical organization had 

 not been matured under those benign influences of 

 solar radiation which shed health and happiness 

 over our fertile plains, our open valleys, and those 

 mountain-sides and elevated plateaus where man is 

 permitted to breathe in the brighter regions of the 

 atmosphere. 



Had we the means of investigating the history of 

 dungeon-life — of those noble martyrs whom eccle- 

 siastical and political tyranny have immured in 

 darkness, or of those wicked men whom law and 

 justice have rendered it indispensable to separate 

 from their species — we should find many examples 

 of the terrible effects which have been engendered 

 by the exclusion of all those influences which we 

 have shown to be necessary for the nutrition and 

 development, not only of plants, but of many of 

 the lower animals. 



Dr. iidwards, whose experiments on animals we 

 have already referred to, applies to man the prin- 

 ciples which he deduced from them ; and he main- 

 tains even that, in " climates in which nudity is 

 not incompatible with health, the crpositre nf the 

 whole nurfacc of the body to lir/ht will he very fa- 

 vourable to the regular conformation of the body." 

 In support of this opinion, he quotes a remarkable 

 passage from Baron Humboldt's " Voyage to the 

 Equatorial Regions of the Globe," in which he is 

 speaking of the people called " Chaymas." " Both 

 men and women," he says, " are verv muscular : 

 their forms are fleshy and rounded. It is needless 

 to add, that I have not seen a single individual xdth 

 a natural deformity. 1 can say the same of many 



thousands of Caribs, Muyscas, and Mexican and 

 Peruvian Indians, whom we have observed during 

 five years. Deformities and deciations are exceed- 

 ingly rare in certain races of men, especially those 

 who have the skin strongly coloured." 



If light thus developes in certain races the per- 

 fect type of the adult who has grown under its in- 

 fluence, we can hardly avoid the conclusion drawn 

 by Dr. Edwards — " that the want of sufficient light 

 must constitute one of the external causes which 

 produce those deviations in form in children 

 affected with scrofula ;" and the more so, as it has 

 been generally observed that this disease is most 

 prevalent in poor children living in confined and 

 dark streets. Following out the same principle. 

 Dr. Edwards infers that, " in cases where these de- 

 formities do not appear incurable, exposure to the 

 sun in the open air is one of the means tending to 

 restore a good conformation.'" " It is true," he 

 adds, "that the light which falls upon our clothes 

 acts only by the heat which it occasions ; but the 

 exposed parts receive the peculiar influence of the 

 light. Among these parts, we must certainly re- 

 gard the eyes as not merely designed to enable us 

 to perceive colour, form, and size. Their exquisite 

 sensibility to light must render them peculiarly 

 ada[)ted to transmit the influence of this agent 

 throughout the system; and we know that the im- 

 pression of even a moderate light upon these organs 

 produces in several acute diseases a general exacer- 

 bation of symptoms." 



The idea of light passing into the system through 

 the eyes, and influencing the other functions of the 

 body, though at first startling, merits, doubtless, 

 the attention of physiologists. The light, and heat, 

 and chemical rays of the sun, combined in every 

 picture on the retina, necessarily pass to the brain, 

 through the visual nerves ; and, as the luminous 

 rays only are concerned in vision, we can hardly 

 conceive that the chemical and heating rays have 

 no function whatever to perform. 



If the light of day, then, freely admitted into our 

 apartments, is essential to the develoj)ment of the 

 human form, physical and mental, and if the same 

 blessed element lends its aid to art and nature in 

 the cure of disease, it becomes a personal and a 

 national duty to construct our dwelling-bouses, 

 our schools, our workshops, our churches, our 

 villages, and our cities upon such ])rinciples and in 

 such styles of architecture as will allow the life- 

 giving element to have the fullest and the freest 

 ingress, and to chase from every crypt and cell and 

 corner the elements of uncleanness and corruption, 

 which have a vested interest in darkness. 



Although we have not, like Howard, visited the 

 jirisons and lazarettos of om- own and foreign 

 countries, in order to number and describe the 

 dungeons and caverns in which the victims of po- 

 litical power are jjerishing without light and air, 

 yet we have examined private houses and inns, and 

 even ])alaces, in which there are many occupied 

 apartments equally devoid of light and ventilation. 

 In some of the principal cities of Europe, and in 

 many of the finest towns of Italy, where external 

 nature smiles in her brightest attire, there are 

 streets and lanes in such close compression, the 

 houses on one side almost touching those of the 



