THE DISEASES OF CATTLE. 75 



ventilation Lave been entirely disregarded? In this respect 

 some of our citizens are more humane to the inferior orders of 

 creation, for in the conftruction of some of their stables they 

 have inaugurated a thorough system of ventilation." 



An impure atmosphere not only interrupts the normal action 

 of the lungs, but in a majority of cases the digestive organs 

 become first affected. Medical men endorse the fact that 

 dyspeptic symptoms are the first indications of disease germi- 

 nated in an impure atmosphere, and that the lungs suffer only 

 after the digestive system has been for a time disordered. It is 

 physiologically impossible for human beings in a sound and 

 healthy state of body and mind to exist in the midst of a close, 

 ill-ventilated atmosphere. An individual possessing a strong 

 constitution may withstand the bad consequences of occasionally 

 breathing an impure atmosphere, but even he will suffer for a 

 time. 



" A healthy man will not experience the same amount of 

 mischief in the respiration of impure air as the invalid, but will 

 be perfectly conscious of a temporary feeling of discomfort, the 

 very purpose of which is, like pain from a burn, to impel him 

 to shun the danger, and seek relief in a purer air. The com- 

 parative harmlessness of a single exposure is the circumstance 

 ■which blinds us to the magnitude of the ultimate result, and 

 makes us fancy ourselves safe and prudent when every day is 

 surely, though imperceptibly, adding to the sum of the mischief. 

 But let any one who doubts the importance of this condition of 

 health, watch the dyspeptic, the pulmonary, or the nervous 

 invalid, through a season devoted to attendance on crowded 

 parties and public amusements, and he will find the frequency 

 of headaches, colds, and other fits of illness, increase in exact 

 proportion to the accumulated exposure, till, at the end of spring, 

 a general debility has been induced, which imperatively 

 demands a cessation of festivity, and a change of scene and air. 

 This debility is often erroneously ascribed to the unwholesome 

 influence of spring, — a season extolled by the poets, not as a 

 cause of relaxation and feebleness, but as the dispenser of 

 renovated life and vigor to all created beings." 



