40 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



up chimney like a witch on a broomstick. But who, unless 

 interested in science, ever acts on such a suggestion ? So in 

 respect to the whole vital subject of ventilation, and the entire 

 sanitary condition of the house. It is a singular fact that 

 farmers' families, which should be the healthiest, are as subject 

 to sickness as any other households, especially to fevers, — 

 perhaps from the inattention which seemingly robust health 

 gives to sleeping-room ventilation, and the fact that there is 

 much decaying or drying vegetable matter in the cellar and 

 around the barn. 



Thirdly. We are thus led to see that this study is imperative 

 on woman, because she is the physician of the family. To 

 illustrate : there is that boy or girl reading at a distance of ten 

 feet from the lamp. His unscientific mother does not notice it ; 

 or perhaps she learned at school the law that light decreases as 

 the square of the distance, with no idea that it had any house- 

 hold application. The rightly educated mother at once sees 

 that, at ten feet distance, the light is twenty-five times less than 

 at two feet. Again, in all probability, there is a child facing 

 the liglit, tlie pupil of the eye contracted, and the page of the 

 book in shadow. If health depends at times more on the 

 doctor's ministrations, these are more rare. Woman is really 

 the family physician and the whole Board of Health. 



Fourthly. Science would facilitate home work and improve 

 the great art of living. Mrs. Stowe rightly asserts that house- 

 keeping sliould be elevated to the rank of a profession, and be 

 thought worthy of a course of study. She says: " Women study 

 treatises on political economy in schools ; and why should not 

 the study of domestic economy form a part of every school 

 course ? If it be thought worth wliile to provide at great ex- 

 pense apparatus for teaching the revolutions of Saturn's moons 

 and the precession of the equinoxes, why should there not be 

 some to teach what it may greatly concern a woman's earthly 

 happiness to know ? " 



I hope a Professorship of Domestic Economy will be estab- 

 lished in the Massachusetts Agricultural College, for tiie benefit 

 of the many young women who will ere long claim the advan- 

 tages of that institution, especially the excellent facilities it 

 offers for the study of chemistry, botany and horticulture. 

 Woman has a right to all educational advantages. On the 



