HKALTH AND ITS PRESERVATION. 



205 



Vk cup of strong coffee or chocolate, as a preventive 

 of the faintness and exhaustion often felt when first 

 arising from one's bed, during the hot season, and the 

 European members of the company took, every few 

 days, a grain or so of quiuine as a preventive of ma. 

 larial fevers. 



Now although it may not be necessary to observe 

 the same care and precautions to avoid disease in 

 most parts of our own favored country, yet how 

 many are content to wear and sleep in the same cloth- 

 ing, drenched with fiutid perspiration, and the excre. 

 tions given off by the cutaneous surface, day after 

 day, and we may say week after week. 



We know that in hot weather the skin is excited 

 to an unwonted activity, and performs the offices in 

 part which belong to other organs in colder seasons. 

 Now while the skin is thus affected by the stimulus 

 of heat, let there be a failure in its functions, and dis- 

 ease at once follows. In fevers, how anxiously is the 

 moisture of the surface looked for which shows that 

 the skin is resuming its own peculiar functions. 



From our own experience, we believe that many 

 cases of fever might be prevented or much relieved 

 if thorough ablution in either hot or cold water, as 

 may be most agreeable to the feelings of the patient, 

 ■were freely practiced and resorted to whenever symp- 

 toms should indicate. 



La.st season, in our own family, a child of two years 

 of age was affected with whooping cough and infan- 

 tile remittent fever. Medicines seemed to have but 

 little effect on the chills and fever. The experiment 

 was tried every morning of putting the feet in tepid 

 or warm water, and freely sponging the surface of 

 the body with the same until the tranquil repose of 

 the little invalid showed its beneficial effect. We are 

 not a believer in any palhy, or particular system of 

 medication, to the exclusion of all others, but pure 

 water has virtues of its own which many have yet 

 to avail themselves of. 



In this connection we may advert to advice often 

 given to invalids to arise early in the morning and 

 take a walk before breakfast. Such advice may do 

 well enough for indolence, but we are quite sure, it 

 is not of general application. Nature, as illustrated 

 by the instinctive acts of the brute creaiton, directs 

 us to partake of food immediately upon arising, and 

 the practice so generally adopted in all warm cli- 

 mates of taking a cup of some refreshing beverage 

 ag soon as up, has been found by careful experiment 

 eminently conducive to health. 



We have seen many in their anxiety to secure in 

 good condition the various products of tke harvest 



field, arise at early dawn, and boast of having done 

 nearly half a day's work before breakfast; yet we 

 have noticed in repeated instances that such untimely 

 labor was followed by attacks of disease of protract- 

 ed duration. We know that during the summer sea- 

 son there is no respite from labor to the husband- 

 man, but health is a greater blessing than wealth, and 

 do not in the effort to secure the latter, irretrievably 

 derange the former. 



It is known that the use of chlorine in the va- 

 rious forms of chloride of lime, chloride of zinc, or 

 of disinfecting solutions, is well tested as a means of 

 removing noxious effluvia, but we apprehend that 

 there are many, very many, who, knowing its value " 

 and utility, do not provide themselves with it as an 

 indispensible requisite in housekeeping. Such is the n 

 affinity of chlorine for hydrogen, that prussic acid, i 

 one of the most deadly and quickly fatal poisons ' 

 known, is instantly decomposed and rendered harm- 

 less, and sewers and sources of pestilential infections 

 are immediately rendered comparatively innocuous; ' 

 we say comparatively, because as long as the cause , 

 of malarta exists, so long is there danger. 



A striking instance of its utility in preventing fe- 

 vers was furnished by the fact, that all the operatives 

 resident and near the factories of Belfast, where vast 

 quantities of this gas are employed in the operation 

 of bleaching, were exempt from the fevers that deso- 

 lated Ireland from the year 1816 to 1820. 



In Johnson's Medical Review for 1828, is an ac- 

 count of its use on board the Windsor Ca.stle, East 

 Indiaman, at the mouth of the Ganges. 



During their stay, they regularly sprinkled the gun 

 deck with solution of chloride of lime. The conse- 

 quence was a comparative immunity from cholera, ' 

 which was raging fearfully and fatally in other ships. 

 In China, too, they escaped the dysentery, which pre- 

 vailed on the river Tigris at the time. 



You may inoculate a person with matter from a 

 virulent case of small pox, and binding a compress of 

 linen or cotton cloth moistened with chlorine liquid, 

 the morbific matter will certainly be destroyed. 

 We might give instances at length of its efficacy in 

 specific diseases, but the above are sufficient. 



In conclusion, we would suggest an experiment 

 which will cost but little, and may prove of great 

 value. In some portions of our country, dysentery 

 and typhoid fevers are almost certainly prevalent to- 

 wards the close of the warm season. In such locali- 

 ties, we would use freely the chlorides, and so freely 

 that at no time during the season should its peculiar 

 smell be absent from our apartments, accompanied 



