96 HINTS TO MOTHERS. 



for some of the most fruitful causes of disease will thus have been 

 removed. If any gentleman regards his wife and children as an in- 

 cumbrance of which he would jnadly be rid, so the law did not hold 

 him guilty of their " taking off," let him build for them a stately 

 house in a fashionable locality and encourage them to follow the 

 prevailing fashion of shrouding its apartments in unnatural gloom, 

 and he will soon find himself a childless widower, consoled by the 

 tender sympathies of his neighbors, instead of being punished as a 

 murderer. 



This matter of sunlight makes the chief reason, perhaps, why 

 the wives and children of the poor are so much healthier, as a rule, 

 than those of the rich. Living, as they are compelled to, in a hut 

 or cabin, with but one or two rooms and without shutters and 

 shades, the necessary daily sun-bath of their homes and persons im- 

 parts to them unconsciously to themselves and while they are per- 

 haps complaining of the hard fortune which has denied to them the 

 deadly luxuries of the rich the very elixir of life and health. 



it has been discovered by the authorities in St. Petersburg, by 

 many actual and comparative experiments, that the proportion of 

 patients cured in hospital rooms properly lighted, was four times as 

 large as in dark rooms. This discovery led to a total change in the 

 method of lighting the hospitals of all Russia, which had the most 

 beneficial effects. And in all the Russian cities visited by the cholera 

 the greater number of deaths occurred in narrow streets and in 

 houses with a northern exposure. It may be added that similar 

 things have been noticed by physicians in American cities, although 

 not published in a formal way, and that the truth extends to any 

 prevalent malignant disease. JPerhaps something might be learned 

 as to hospital treatment here from the Russian practice. 



HOW PARENTS MAKE CHILDREN DISOBEDIENT. 



Training the Will Many times one hears a mother coax 

 and urge her baby to say words when somehow he has made up his 

 mind he won't; and if he has not made up his mind, the coaxing 

 causes him to do so. Ordinarily the baby says the one word of his 

 vocabulary with readiness; but this time the company before 

 whom he is being displayed makes him bashful or diffident, and he 

 does not say it when first asked. Then is the time for the mother 

 to stop. If she urge him in such a case, when he is not inclined to 

 talk, it will only induce a habit of setting his will in opposition to 

 hers; a habit that will "grow with his growth, and strengthen with 

 his strength," and develop into obstinacy. Now, of course, she cannot 

 reason with him, and there is no more moral wrong in his refusal 

 than in his rejection of milk when he is not hungry. But all child- 

 hood is seed-time. Much may be done almost from earliest infancy 

 by inducing, unconsciously to the child, habits of obedience an<3 



