BREEDING, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF THE SAME. 317 
so slow in making it the basis of rational action in warding off 
disease, and in promoting the integrity of their existence! The 
reason is, our education is incomplete. We are all that Nature 
intended in elementary ability, and only deficient in its nse. 
The means are anatomical and physiological studies; the time is 
in youth, when the mind is pliant, capable of receiving permanent 
impressions. The place for the engrafting of the same is in our 
common schools and at the fireside, the mother and the teacher 
wielding a common scepter of instruction. 
Some people do not realize that our organizations are the result 
cf the most positive laws of Nature, and that our ailments are the 
result of our own ignorance or folly. The mass of mankind are 
not aware that our physical systems are capable of improvement 
analagous to the mental. No; they generally think and act on 
the false and ruinous proposition that our diseases, aches, and 
pains are so woven into the filamentary mechanism of the living 
citadel as to be beyond the power of either art or science to eradi- 
cate—a proposition that should never, for a moment, be enter- 
tained ; for, if we live right up to the laws of life, we are then 
within the impregnable ramparts of physiology, where our ac- 
quired and {ashionable maladies can not obtain. 
Within the bulwarks of physiology certain conditions are im- 
posed upon us, and we must observe them. For example, we 
require a pure atmosphere, at all times, to vitalize the blood, and 
thus deprive it of those defiling elements acquired by venous blood, 
and which would otherwise operate, as they often do, in our 
crowded assemblies and unventilated sleeping-rooms, as the germs 
to excite unnecessary disease. Next, the body should be kept erect, 
eo that the muscles and organs may acquire and maintain naturaj 
action. We require vigorous daily exercise of all the muscles of 
voluntary motion ; freedom from all compression by dress; apparel 
that shall afford needed protection ; a quantity of food and drink, 
at intervals, that shall furnish materials for the wants of our sys- 
tems, and that control of feeling which enlightened reason and 
virtue demand. Our time should be distributed into daily periods 
of labor, rest, and amusement; and, above all, we must bear in 
mind that infirmity wedded to infirmity is a sin against our na- 
ture—a wanton violation of the law of Nature and of our existence, 
to which a fearful penalty ie appended, even unto the “third and 
fourth generations,” 
