374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not, however, that these over-careful people catch cold from fear, but 

 rather that their cowardice keeps them in-doors too much, or incites 

 them to " muffling " themselves when they do go out — they quake from 

 fear of " night-air," " draughts," and so cheat themselves of health- 

 producing influences. Lacking active exercise and fresh air or swel- 

 tering with an excess of clothing, they must suffer from indigestion. 

 That is, though they may eat as much, or more, they can not digest as 

 much as the fearless person who dresses light, pays no heed to the 

 weather, spends considerable time out-doors every day, and, because 

 of this, can not and will not remain in " stuffy " rooms. 



The " fresh-air idiot " seldom takes cold. " That may be," says the 

 timid, blood-poisoned, chilly man, " but he causes every one else to, 

 with the open doors and windows." There is a grain of truth, if not 

 of sense, in this assertion ; for the pure air in contact with the skin, and 

 in the lungs, of those who are most in need of it — who are filled up, so 

 to say, with the impurities of indigestion and deficient depuration — the 

 constipated air-haters — gives the needed stimulus, or, rather, so aug- 

 ments the vital powers that " the reconstructive process is initiated, 

 and thus apparently the disease itself, but there is a wide difference 

 between a proximate and an original cause. A man may be too tired 

 to sleep and too weaJc to be sick. Bleeding, for the time being, may 

 ' break up ' an inflammatory disease — the system has to regain some 

 little strength before it can resume the work of reconstruction. The 

 vital energy of a person breathing the stagnant air of an unventilated 

 stove-room is often inadequate to the task of undertaking a restorative 

 process — though the respiratory organs, clogged with phlegm and all 

 kinds of impurities, may be sadly in need of relief. But, during a 

 sleigh-ride, or a few hours' sleep before a window left open by acci- 

 dent, the bracing influence of the fresh air revives the drooping vital- 

 ity, and Nature avails herself of the chance to begin repairs — the 

 lungs reveal their diseased condition, i. e., they proceed to rid them- 

 selves of the accumulated impurities. 



" For," continues Oswald,* " rightly interpreted, the external symp- 

 toms of disease constitute a restorative process that can not be brought 

 to a satisfactory issue till the cause of the evil is removed. So that, 

 in fact, the air-hater confounds the cause of his recovery with the 

 cause of his disease. Benjamin Franklin, " whose wisdom was of that 

 rare kind which does not grow old," expressed his conviction of the 

 fact that " the causes of ' colds ' are totally independent of wet and 

 even of cold." f Dr. Herring remarks of a family of friends, " They 

 all invariably had * colds in the head ' the next day after dining on 

 roast goose ! " 



" I seldom catch cold, and, when I do, it gets away again right soon ! " I am compelled 

 to admit that all this is more profitable for patients than for the practitioner. 



* " Physical Education," by F. L. Oswald, M. D. ; New York, D. Appleton & Co. 



f "Essays," p. 216. 



