HYGIENE OF TEE EYES. 359 



But if it is deadly to sleep out of doors all night in a malarial locality, 

 would it be necessarily fatal to sleep in a house in such a locality ? It would 

 not. It would be safer to sleep in the house, especially if the windows and 

 doors were closed. The reason is, that the house has been warmed during 

 the day, and if kept closed, it remains much warmer during the night in- 

 doors than it is outdoors ; consequently, the malaria is kept by|this warmth 

 so high above the head, and so rarified, as to be comparatively harmless. 

 This may seem to some too nice a distinction altogether, but it will be found 

 throughout the world of Nature that the works of the Almighty are mosL 

 strikingly beautiful in their minutia'., and these minutice are the foundation of 

 His mightiest manifestations. 



Thus it is, too, that what we call fever and ague might be banished 

 from the country as a general disease, if two things were done. 1. Have a 

 fire kindled every morning at day-light, from spring to fall in the family 

 room, to which all the family should repair from their chambers, and there 

 remain until breakfast is taken. 2. Let a fire be kindled in the^family room 

 a, short time before sundown ; let every member of the family repair to it, 

 and there remain until supper is taken. 



In both cases, ths philosophy of the course marked out consists in two 

 things. First. The fire rarifies the malaria and causes it to ascend above 

 the breathing point. Second. The food taken into the stomach creates an 

 activity of circulation which repels disease. — HalVs Journal of Health. 



HYGIENE OF THE EYES 



A series of questions touching the care of the eyes were recently sub- 

 mitted to Dr. E. Gr. Loring, Jr., by the Medico-Legal Society of New York. 

 Dr. Loring replied in a paper which has since been published in the Medical 

 Record. To the first question — namely, whether bad air has any direct effect 

 on the sight ? — the author replies that vitiated air has a specially irritating- 

 influence on the mucous membrane of the eye ; and that bad air, as a primal 

 cause, may set in train morbid processes which not only will affeet the 

 working capacity and integrity of the organ, but may even lead to its total 

 destruction. The second question was, whether size and quality of type 

 would cause disease of the eye ? According to Dr. Loring, the smallest print 

 which a normal eye can readily recognize at at a distance of one foot is about 

 one-fiftieth of an inch, and at eighteen inches is about one thirty-second of 

 an inch. The normal eye should not be subjected for any length of time to 

 a type smaller than this size, or one-sixteenth of an inch, and it would 

 be better, after middle-life, to employ a type even a little larger than this ; 

 but the employment of spectacles removes in a great degree the necessity 

 of a larger type with advancing years. The finer the type the closes the 

 book has to be held to the eye, and the greater the demand on the focaiiz- 



