FRESH AIR. 
19 
cesspools to leak into his house. But how many men in a 
thousand see to these things ? how many women ? how many 
servants ? My experience tells me very few. This accounts 
for the faint odours and sickening smells that so often salute 
you in the houses of the rich as well as the poor ; of the 
medical man, who has yet to learn how to apply the laws 
of physiology to the maintaining the health of his own house- 
hold, as well as the poor mechanic, who is alike ignorant of 
the cause of the unhealthiness of his family, and powerless 
to remove it if he did. And yet, how angry people look if 
you tell them their houses are ee nuisances, injurious to health.” 
They believe in fresh air, they talk of the advantages of fresh 
air, but they have yet to learn how little they have of it at 
home, and how much more of it they need if they would secure 
the health and strength their Creator intended they should 
enjoy. 
But I must bring my sermon to an end. I have thrown 
these few remarks together as free from technical terms as 
I could, in the hope of calling the attention of the intelligent 
readers of the Popular Science Be view to a subject still 
greatly neglected. The more I see of the interior of our 
households, especially in London, the more I am convinced 
this subject is not fully understood. I have named only a 
few of the diseases which arise from deficient oxygenation of 
the blood, or, in other words, from want of fresh air ; and it is 
only when this subject is more thoroughly comprehended by 
all sections of the community that we shall find the effects 
of sanitary reform really telling on the health of the com- 
munity. At the same time, I am not unaware of the danger 
of treating a subject like this independently of the questions 
of food, exercise, warmth, and clothing. Fresh air is value- 
less without food, it will fail without warmth, and from these 
considerations the greatest of all practical measures for 
securing health is the inculcation on the minds of youth 
those laws by which God regulates the existence of the human 
body. From every pulpit in the land there issues, once a 
week, the voice of the preacher inculcating obedience to the 
moral law of God, and it is to an equally systematic enforce- 
ment of the importance of obedience to the natural law that 
we must look for deliverance from those evils which follow 
its violation. 
