456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one's bedclothing ; and even nervous ladies will resist the temptation 

 to cover up their faces, if they find how soon the wonted morning 

 languor gives way to the influence of Nature's restorative. Those 

 who dislike to risk the discomfort of initiation before ascertaining the 

 value of the remedy can make another test-experiment : After a sum- 

 mer excursion, when fatigue and early rising enable anybody to sleep 

 soundly in an open tent, the first few nights after returning home will 

 be a favorable time for defying the night air superstition and sleep- 

 ing, perhaps with slight qualms of the old prejudice, but without the 

 least bodily discomfort, on a balcony or in an open hall, with open 

 windows on all sides. After a week, transfer the couch to the old air- 

 tight bedroom, and note the result : All the next forenoon a queer feel- 

 ing of discomfort, as after a prolonged exposure to the fumes of a 

 smoky kitchen, will illustrate the difference between natural and un- 

 natural modes of life. To persons who have thus emancipated them- 

 selves from the delusions of the night-air dread, the atmosphere of a 

 close bedroom is oppressive enough to spoil thd night's rest and bring 

 on a relapse of many of the distressing concomitants of nervous in- 

 somnia. A slight elevation of the window-sash will remedy the evil, 

 and we might expatiate upon the correlation between the nerve-centers 

 and the respiratory apparatus of the human body, but the plain ulti- 

 mate reason is that the organism has been restored to an essential ele- 

 ment of its original existence. 



Jacob Engel has a story of a splenetic student who composed his 

 own funeral dirge, with a lugubrious list of the sorrows from which he 

 anticipated demise would liberate his soul. On discovering the lyric, 

 his father ordered him to excavate a gravel-bank for a family vault, 

 as none of his relatives could be expected to survive his untimely 

 fate. The prescription proved a success, and a few weeks later Herac- 

 litus Junior was caught writing sonnets to the hired girl. Want of 

 exercise is, indeed, a most fruitful cause of nervous maladies. Our 

 Darwinian relatives, creatures so similar to us in the structure of every 

 muscle, every joint and sinew of their bodies, are the most restless 

 habitants of the woods. " It makes one dizzy to watch the evolutions 

 of the long-armed gibbons," Victor Jacquemont writes from the Ner- 

 budda ; " the first one I saw made me think that he was suffering 

 from an acute attack of St. Yitus's fits, but I have found out that it 

 is a chronic disease. They keep moving while the sun is in sight." 

 Savages alternate their wigwam holiday with periods of prodigious 

 exertion, and an occasional mountain tour would atone for a good 

 many days of city life, but hardly for weeks of sedentary occupation. 

 Without at least one hour per day of active out-door exercise, no na- 

 tive strength of constitution can resist the morbific influences of stag- 

 nant humors. Of the immortal soul's dependence upon the conditions 

 of the body there are few stranger illustrations than the psychic influ- 

 ence of narcotic drugs. A mere indigestion can temporarily meta- 



