by a closed drain and closed cess-pool, with a pipe leading from the 

 drain to a chimney, whereby all foul air is removed, the kitchen 

 admirably ventilated, and cholera sent 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 ven- 

 tilation, 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 fi'om 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. 



Woman, too, if properly enhghtened, would have the wisdom and 

 influence to carry reform into public assembly rooms, school-houses, 

 and our abominable winter railroad cars, where you are exposed to 

 extremes of heat and cold, to vile floors, and the Htter that follows 

 in the wake of apple-and-pea-nut peddlers, to whom the cars seem 

 to be rented as groceries. Man, less sensitive to Htter and nause- 

 ating air, will never move in the matter, it is plain. Eailroad con- 

 ductors, in particular, must be set down as "bad conductors of 

 heat." We must wait for the Coming Scientific Woman. 



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 household application. The 

 rightly educated mother at once sees that, at ten feet distance, the 

 Hght is twenty-five times less than at two feet. Agaia, in all proba- 

 bility, there is a child facing the light, the pupil of the eye con- 

 tracted, 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 famUy physician, and the whole Board of 

 Health. 



Fourthly, science would facilitate home work and improve the 

 great art of Hving. Mrs. Stowe rightly asserts that housekeeping 

 should be elevated to the rank of a profession, and be thought 

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

 on pohtical economy in schools ; and why should not the study of 

 domestic economy form a part of every school course? If it be 

 thought worth while to provide at great expense apparatus for 



