VENTILATION OF BEDS AND CLOtHINO. 71 



changing and airing the clothes, so as to free them 

 from every impurity. It is an excellent plan, for 

 instance, to wear two sets of flannels, each being 

 worn and aired by turns, on alternate days. The 

 effect is at first scarcely perceptible, but in the 

 course of time its advantages and comfort become 

 very manifest, as the writer has amply experienced. 

 For the same reason, a practice common in Italy 

 merits universal adoption. Instead of beds being 

 made up in the morning the moment they are va- 

 cated, and while still saturated with the nocturnal 

 exhalations which, before morning, become sensible 

 even to smell in a bed-room, the bed-clothes are 

 thrown over the backs of chairs, the mattresses 

 shaken up, and the window thrown open for the 

 greater part of the day, so as to secure a thorough 

 and cleansing ventilation. This practice, so conso- 

 nant to reason, imparts a freshness which is pecu- 

 liarly grateful and conducive to sleep, and its real 

 value may be inferred from the well-known fact, that 

 the opposite practice, carried to an extreme, as in 

 the dwellings of the poor, where three or four beds 

 are often huddled up with all their impurities in a 

 small room, is a fruitful source of fever and bad 

 health, even where ventilation during the day and 

 nourishment are not deficient. In the abodes of the 

 poor Irish residing in Edinburgh, I have seen bed- 

 ding for fourteen persons spread over one floor not 

 exceeding twelve feet square, and when mornin 

 came, the beds were huddled above one another to 

 make sitting-room during the day, and at night were 

 again laid down, charged with accumulated exhala- 

 tions. If fever were not to appear in such circum- 

 stances, it would be indeed marvellous ; and we 

 ought to learn from this, that if the extreme be so 

 injurious, the lesser degree implied in the prevalent 

 practice cannot be wholesome, and ought, there- 

 fore, not to be retained when it can be so easily 

 done a waar with 



