PHYSICAL PREPARATION. 171 



strong bones, muscles, nerves, brain, mind and 

 character. Few persons enjoy or accomplish 

 what they might, if they would breathe more pure 

 air. It is amazing to see how the mass of man- 

 kind, even when there is positively no occasion 

 for it, shut out the fresh air, sleep, live and work 

 in unventilated rooms, from. which the oxygen 

 has been exhausted, until the atmosphere is vile 

 with the poisonous gases thrown off in respira- 

 tion. 



Unventilated theaters %nd churches are the in- 

 cubators of disease. How strange that persons, 

 who consider themselves refined and cleanly 



who would not use a towel, napkin, or dish, that- 

 Poor Ventilation, 

 had been soiled by another will go into an 



unventilated room, with all classes of people, and 

 breathe over and over again, the foul breath and 

 poisonous gases freighted with the fumes of 

 tobacco, or alcohol, and pregnant with disease 

 germs! Any attempt to raise a window by per- 

 sons who appreciate the importance of pure air 

 is usually met with frowns and rebukes from 

 those who are afraid of "taking cold." The fact Why We Take 

 is, cold air in a closed room is viler than hot air, Cold, 

 for when the room is thoroughly heated the 

 poisonous gases rise. There are twenty diseases 

 contracted and ten persons killed every winter 

 by sleeping and living in foul air for every one 

 that is injured by a draft or killed by exposure to 

 pure air. The whole list of epidemics that scourge 

 us every winter, and the score of spring ailments 

 that have come to be considered inevitable are 

 caused largely by living in overheated, unventila- 

 ted rooms in winter time. 



