94 SUNLIGHT. 



yet unsafe convalescents from the contagious diseases previously 

 mentioned. The only security we can suggest is, as far as possible 

 to avoid all places of public resort or private gatherings in which 

 the most ample provision is not made for the admission of fresh 

 air and for the uninterrupted escape of air spoiled by carbonic-acid 

 gas or animal exhalations. In the section on small-pox it will be 

 seen that in a recent epidemic the greatest success attended the 

 treatment of patients absolutely in the open air in mild weather, 

 and with the windows and doors constantly open, day and night, in 

 the coldest months of the year. In the cure of general diseases, 

 too, pure air exercises a very potent influence. Jackson, writing on 

 the Peninsular war, states that more lives were destroyed by accum- 

 ulating sick men in ill- ventilated apartments than in leaving them 

 exposed to severe weather by the side of a hedge or common dyke ; 

 showing the priceless value of fresh air. 



SUNLIGHT. 



The importance of sunlight for physical development and 

 preservation is not duly appreciated. Women and children, as 

 well as men, in order to be healthy and well-developed, should 

 spend a portion of each day where the sun can reach them directly, 

 this being particularly necessary when there is a tendency to scrof- 

 ula. Just as sprouts of potatoes in a dark cellar seek the light and 

 are colorless until they come under its influence, and as vegetation 

 goes on but imperfectly in places where sunlight does not freely 

 enter, so children and adults who live almost entirely in dark kitch- 

 ens, dingy alleys and badly lighted workshops are pale-cheeked and 

 feeble. And it should be said that houses are only fit to be occu- 

 pied at night that have been purified by the sun during the day. It 

 has been pointed out by Dr. Ellis that women and children in huts 

 and log-cabins which contain only one or two rooms remain healthy 

 and strong; but that after the settler has built a house and fur- 

 nished it with blinds and curtains, the women and children become 

 pale-faced, bloodless, nervous and sickly; the daughters begin to 

 die from consumption and the wives from the same, or from some 

 other diseases peculiar to women. At the same time the adult 

 males who live chiefly out of doors continue healthy. 



The value of sunlight for animal development may be illustrat- 

 ed by such facts as the following: In decaying organic solutions, 

 animalcules do not appear if light is excluded, but are readily or- 

 ganized when it is admitted. The tadpole kept in the dark "does 

 not pass on to development as a frog, but lives and dies a tadpole 

 and is incapable of propagating his species. In the deep and nar- 

 row valleys among the Alps, where tne direct rays of tne sun are 

 but little felt, cretinism, or a state of idiocy, more or less complete, 

 commonly accompanied by an enormous goiter, prevails and is often 

 hereditary. 



