A*U AND VENTILATION. 91 



CONOEPTIONAL PwHOD. Parents who desire exceptional children 

 can have them, but they must prepare before the period of conception 

 The repose of mind as well as the physical and mental purity of the 

 .father and the reading of good books immediately begin to modify the 

 character of the seed constantly being formed in his secret parts. As 

 he then is,, so will that soon become. Likewise the mother, with pure 

 and lofty thoughts, stimulated by reading the most noble books, in- 

 fluences at once the then ripening product of her ovaries. (These are 

 constantly ripening and being discharged.) So intimate is the nervous 

 connection between brain and secret parts that the condition of one is 

 immediately apparent in the other. If the prospective parents desire 

 offspring of a certain character let them first prepare themselves for 

 some weeks before any sexual union, and let the hopeful mother con- 

 tinue throughout her entire period "pondering these things in her 

 heart," as did Mary, the Mother of Jesus; and as sure as God's 

 eternal truth the results will be marked and effective on the coming 

 child. See page 131. 



AIR AND VENTILATION. 



Impure Air The impurities of the air may be ranked under 

 two heads: gases, and matters held in suspension. From the soil 

 are wafted into the air particles of every substance it contains. Near 

 the dwellings of men, particles of carbon, hairs, fibres of cotton and 

 woolen fabrics, etc., abound. The vegetable world contributes seeds, 

 spores, germs, pollen and light floating bodies. From the animal 

 kingdom there are also germs and particles of worn-out tissues. 

 The organic vapors arising from the decomposition of animal and 

 vegetable products have hitherto baffled man's attempts to discover 

 their precise chemical constituents, and a similar obscurity attaches 

 also to the organic substances known as the specific virus of contag- 

 ious diseases. These all deteriorate the air. 



Air Vitiated by Breathing In the process of breathing, 

 the air loses a third of its oxygen, the life-giving principle, and receives 

 in exchange carbonic acid gas, a gas not only incapable of supporting 

 life, but actually destructive of it. Such is the change effected by 

 the simple act of breathing, and if this process goes on in an ill- 

 ventilated room where there are several human beings, the carbonic- 

 acid gas accumulates, usurps the place of the oxygen consumed, and 

 so renders the air less and less fit to support life. Carbonic-acid gas 

 cannot support combustion ; hence a lighted candle partially or com- 

 pletely surrounded by it burns slowly or goes out. And so it is with 

 human beings; when more or less completely enveloped in an 

 atmosphere charged with this gas, all the functions of the body are 

 tardily and imperfectly performed, the muscular tissues are enfeebled, 

 the breathing becomes oppressed, the head aches and in extreme 

 cases life is extinguished amidst sufferings of the most distressing 

 nature. The fact can scarcely be too strongly stated that propei 



