'J'y.'fMt'.'.l't'i'ine': ,^X),l.Ki^HI..?l'"^(. Qlarnell Hitiucraitij litbrar^ Jlt()aca. S^em fork BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 S,l,eeR;.. or, The hygiene of the night. 924 031 304 417 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tile Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031304417 SLEEP: HYGIENE OP THE NIGHT. Dr. W^ W. HALL, SDXSOB. OV hall's JOURNAL OF HEALTH, AND AUTHOIl OF " HBALTH BY GOOD LITINa," *' BRONCHITIS AND KINDR£D DISEASES," " CODQHS AND COLDS," " HEALTH AHD DISEASE," BTO. ELEVENTH THOUSAND. LONDON: PUBLj:SHED BY JAMES W. WAED, 22 Buckingham Street, Strand. 1871. PREFACE. Between the closing of the chamber door at night and its opening in the morning, a third of human life passes away, and upon the manner of its employment the physical, mental, and moral character of man largely depends. If so considerable a portion of existence is spent in breathing an impure air, bodily disease and a premature death will inevitably result; to this subject the first part of the book is devoted. If during this third of life improper habits are cultivated, or there is an intemperate indulgence in the propensities of our nature, moral contam- ination and physical deterioration follow. If by the above or other causes a full propor- tion of sound and regular sleep is prevented, the mind sooner or later fails of its elasticity, its vigor, PKEPACB. and its life, to be followed by nervousness, weak- ness of intellect, softening of the brain, insanity, and death. The following pages are intended to urge the practical and individual application of these truths on the part of husbands, wives, and children ; hence every intelligent reader has a personal in- terest in ascertaining the most healthful method of filling up a portion of his existence which has such important bearings, — in acquainting him- self with "THE HYGIENE OF THE NIGHT." In addition to the ventilation of chambers and securing abundant healthful sleep, it was thought desirable to make the book more thoroughly prac- tical and extensively useful by discussing other topics connected with the night-time of life, — subjects in which every intelligent and thought- ful reader will feel a special, personal interest. SUBJECTS TREATED. ^' • PAOI. Bleefino with the Old 5 II. Deadly Natukb of Bad Aik 9 III. PUBE StEKPINO EOOMS 19 IV, Sleeping in Fbisons 48 V. Vitiated Chambebs 66 VI. Bodily Emanations 69 vn. Night Lodgings in Cities 81 VIII. Sleeping with Othebs 109 IX. Indulgences of the Night 119 X. Business and Sound Sleep I3C IV SUBJECTS TREATED. ^^' PASS. Ndksinq Children at Night 135 XII. UoBioNO Debilities 141 xnL Bad Night Habits 147 XIV. Ventilating Chambers 199 XV. Ventilation and House Warmikq 229 XVI. Ventilation and Longevity 243 XVII. The Breath of Life 277 xvin. SlKEPING with CONSt'MPTIVES 285 XIX. Poisonous Chambers 295 XX. Nervousness, Debilities, etc 326 XXL Private Considehatioss 333 XXH. Books on Physiology, Manhood, Marriage, etc., their False Teachings, their Pernicious Ef- fects, and their Corrupting Tendencies 341 SLEEP SLEEPING WITH THE OLD. On a beautiful September morning in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, a note was found on the author's table in a hand- writing which was immediately recognized as that of a wife and mother of high culture, in behalf of a young sister, whom she had hoped would have grown up as healthful, as beautiful, and as accomplished as herself; but the lovely blossom seemed to be fading in its unfolding, and the communication was a his- tory of the case, intended to give the physi- cian an idea of its nature and its needs. 6 SLEEP. " Baby Bell, as WQ all grew up to call her, might have been aa exquisite model for a i baby Hebe ; so rounded, so rosy, so full of vivacity and health 1 As I recall her child- ish form now, after the lapse of years, I can imagine nothing more beautiful in mortal shape. Her fair head was covered with sun- ny curls which dropped upon white and dim- pled shoulders. She was of the Saxon type, her eyes of the most limpid blue, 'roses were her cheeks, and a rose her mouth.' Until six years old, she retained all her health and beauty, when her system began slowly to undergo a change. Her limbs lost their roundness, her cheek its dainty bloom. Was it not strange? She seemed well; but as the next six years wore on, each succeed- ing day stole something of her vitality, which changed the once ruddy and healthful child into a puny, pallid, nervous girl. Yet she had no constitutional ailment; no hereditary dis- ease ever developed itself. She never had a serious illness, and yet she was always ailing. She was troubled with nervous headaches, so unnatural to a chUd, whose perfect organism should have made her unconscious of the possession of nerves. THE FADING CHILD. 7 " She was my little sister, my darling lit- tle sister. I saw her at intervals during the lapse of six or seven years, and was always troubled by the unagreeable changes which each succeeding year wrought in her person. Those who were in the habit of seeing her daily, laughed at my expressed fears that her health was declining; they said: 'She was growing, that was all.' Growing I Yes but so slowly, that at twelve years she was not taller than the generality of children at ten, and not so broad across the chest as an or- dinary child at five; and her little puny arms, how slender they were; the skin on her temples was transparent. Growing I Yes ! other children were 'growing' and developing likewise. Chubby faces and limbs are cha- racteristic of childhood. Slender and delicate forms in children are untrue to nature, there- fore there must be a cause for them. The constant exercise and generous appetite of a child should secure to it well-developed mus cles and an abundance of pnrt blood. When, therefore, the venous fluid seems through the Bkiii to be no more than mere lymph, and tlie limbs evince no muscle at all, there must 8 SLEEP. be a cause, and oagM to be a remedy. " What is it?" Special inquiry elicited the fact, that at the close of the fifth year, this promising child became possessed with the idea that she must sleep with an aged relative, and in failing health. Her whim was gratified. Time passed imperceptibly. The practice had become a habit which parental indulgence had not the firmness to break up. All suggestions that the evident failing in health and vigor and comeliness in the once beautifal child, was the result of sleeping in the same bed with an old person, who was evidently ncJw sink- ing into the grave with an incurable disease, or rather a complication of ails, were re- garded with indifference, and the child pined and withered away like a flower without water. ^ Authentic history records the following mournful narration: BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. 9 " Lord Olive, wbile a colonel in the British Army, commenced his career as founder of the British empire in India. Full of honors and wealth, he returned to England ; but being defeated in getting into Parliament, in. seven- teen hundred and fifty-five, sailed again un- der the King's command for India, the Com- pany appointing him to the governorship of Port St. David. But the very day he stepped into the gubernatorial chair at Madras, the Bengal Nabob took Calcutta. Then came that chapter of unheard of cruelty, familiar to every child who has learned to read his story- books. The tragedy of the Black Hole oc- curred in seventeen hundred and fifty-six. The dungeon was twenty feet square. The little garrison thought it all a joke when they were ordered to go in : but to refuse was to die, for Surajahul Dowlak's orders must be obeyed; prolonged suffering was better than instant death ; they entered I one hundred and thirty- six in all. The door was closed, the small aperture admitted neither light nor air. When they began to exchange breaths the startling truth burst upon them. The air already was almost putrid- they shrieked, they yelled in 10 SLEEP. mortal agony ; they screamed for water, and then killed each other over the cup which was passed through the grating. While the poor prisoners were biting and squeezing each other's life away, gasping for air, for water, for any thing that would relieve them of their agony, the jailers laughed and danced in pure delight. Holmeil, the highest in rank, offered the jailer heavy bribes; but no, the Nabob was sleeping, and no one dared to wake him. In the morning, when the debauch was slept away, he ordered the dungeon-door to be opened, and out staggered twenty -three swollen, distorted living corpses I One hundred and twenty-three were piled up, a putrefying mass of men ; all shapes and forms were represented in the death-struggle. The English woman who survived was sent to the harem of the Prince of Moorshebadad. Holmeil was saved, and tells the tale. The dead were burned on the spot, but the harrowing picture did not move in the least the granite disposition of the human tiger. The horrible deed reached Clive, and the celebrated battle of Plassey showed the inhuman Nabob that it was a 'boUhardy thing to trifle with the feelings of DEADLY AIB. 11 Englishmen. The soldiera fought like biill- dogs; revenge stimulated them, and the Na- bob's army of sixty thousand strong was broken like a reed. Clive lost but twenty- two men." At about four o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, in the latter part of August, eighteen hundred and sixty, the following distressing occurrence took place in Federal street, Alle- gheny City, Pennsylvania : "Alfred Bottles, William his Jjrother, and James Vance, were engaged in digging a well in the rear of the beer-hall of Herman Hendal, corner of Federal street and Center alley, on a lot owned by John Chislett, Esq., of the Alle- gheny Cemetery, from whom Hendal had leased. The object was to drain a privy-vault, and the well was dug thirteen feet deep close to the vault. Alfred Bottles, after four o'clock, descended into the well by a ladder, and made a hole in the vault, six feet from the ground, to drain off the contents. When he thought the hole was through, he stooped to look, when the foul air in the vault came out, suffocated him, and 12 SLEEP. he fell from the ladder to vthe bottom of the well, where the filth poured down upon him. Vance, seeing him fall, waited a few moments and followed him, but was also overcome by the foul gas, and fell to the bottom. William Bottles next went down to the assistance of the others, and shared the same fate. By this time there was a foot or more of liquid in the well, and those undermost, Alfred Bottles and Vance, were partially covered with it. At this juncture, John Taggart, gardener for Mr. "Wilson, at Shousetown lane, who was in a store on Federal street receiving pay for some articles he had sold, heard of the accident and hastening to the spot, jumped into the well, to save, if possible, the lives of the three suf- ferers. Wm. Bottles had then been in the well some five minutes. Mr. Taggart was overcome, in like manner with the rest, by the gas, and fell over Wm. Bottles, forcing his head partially under the fluid in the well. " The bystanders were paralyzed, and near- ly all were afraid to give any assistance. But u young German, named William Brown, about twenty-five years of age, fearless of the con- sequences, volunteered to go down. A rope NATIONAL HOTEL DISEASE. 13 was fastened around his waist and vvith an- ther in Lis hand, he was let down in the well, and fastening a rope aronnd the body of Tag- gart, he was drawn up. Brown descended a second, third and fourth time, and thus the four bodies were brought to the surface. Al- fred Bottles and James Vance were dead when taken out, and Taggart expired soon after being carried in a house adjacent. William Bottles was taken to his residence and re- covered." In the early part of the year eighteen hun- dred and fifty-seven, the inmates of the Na- tional Hotel in Washington City, the capital of the United States of America, were filled with consternation at the fact that several of their number were taken ill, in and about the same time. Eeports were immediately circulated, that the symptoms were uniform and were those which ordinarily attend arsenical poison, to wit, severe griping pains, uncontrollable diarrhea, inward "burning" sensations, and the like. Persons were attacked under a great 2 14 SLEEP. variety of circumstances. Some were babituea of the Hotel ; others ate there, but slept else- where. Some, neither ate nor slept there, but passed several hours of each day in the rooms on the ground-floor. Some were attacked who had slept there but a single night. A traveler ate a single dinner, and came near dying. Some persons died in a few days, others lingered for months and then died. Some lingered for years without recovering their wonted energy of mind and vigor of body. Some went to Europe in the hope of wearing the poison out of their systems, and returned the next year with but little of the desired improvement. Some of the first phy- sicians in the country gave their convictions in the public presses, that there could be no remaining doubt that all was the result of some mineral poison, in some way introduced into the food. But two simple facts were tes- tified to on an official investigation, and of their truth there was not the shadow of a doubt, DEADLY EMANATIONS. 15 and could not be denied. Persona were at- tacked who never ate an atom or drank a drop on tlie premises. Second, not a single case occurred in any family living across the streets which bounded the Hotel, and where none of the members of which had visited the build- ing. A third fact needed no proof, that persons, especially some of the ladies who had been living at the Hotel for weeks, and occupied rooms in it during the time, were not affected at all, and yet they came down to the common table day after day. On official inquiry, it was ascertained by ocular demonstration, that a large sewer of the city opened into the cellar of the Hotel, and also, that the privies under the same roof were in ^n ill condition, one of them being so full, that when a person stepped on the floor of it, the matter beneath spirted up. between the joinings of the boards. During the summer of eighteen hundred and sixty, a gentleman was traveling in 16 SLEEP. Italy. As lie left Eome, lie was warned of the danger of sleeping at Baccano. He was told to travel all night rather than stop at that place, as a malignant fever prevailed there. He arrived there about bed-time. The air was balmy, and the accommodations inviting. He concluded to stop for the night. Those whose interests would be promoted by hia doing so, told him there was no danger. He rose in the morning and proceeded on his journey. Some days after he had reached Florence the fever developed itself, and he was soon in his grave. Signer Ardisson, now of New York, an ex- fled Italian patriot of high culture, was born in Rome, where he spent the first twenty or twen- ty-five years of his life, and therefore must be familiar with the habits and customs of the people, and with the peculiarities of the country. While on a visit to his friend, Robert Earle, Esq., he informed the author, on inquiries made, that always when hunting in the Pontine marshes, it was well understood by himself and GEOTTA DEL CANE. IT companions, that it was necessary to avoid hunger during their excursions, and also to keep up a vigorous circulation, either by ac- tive exercise, or mental hilarity, such as by singing, shouting, and slapping one another on the shoulders. On one occasion, when there was a failure of. these precautions, it was followed in his own person by a danger- ous iUness of several weeks' duration. In the celebrated Grotta Del Cane, there is an apartment where a man may walk with impunity, and yet his dog following him will fall down dead, and if the master lies on the floor, he too will die, showing the existence of a poisonous air near the floor. The argument of this book is foimded on the narrations which have been given. Vol- umes of similar ones, well authenticated, might be easily collected, going to show that breath- ing an impure air for various durations, will occasion states of ill-health of all grades, from an almost imperceptible decline, to symptoms 2* 18 SLEEP. which have the malignity of the most virulent and speedily fatal poisons. It needs no caution, generally, to keep per- sons from breathing an atmosphere which will produce certain death in a few hours or minutes even. But the most earnest and irresistible arguments have failed thus far to impress upon the public mind the conviction of the certainly destructive influences upon human health which follow from too many persons sleeping in the same room, of several persons sleeping in the same bed, or of a single person sleeping habitually in a small apartment. The plan of this book is to show the de- structive influence on health and life which bad air exercises and state a variety of the causes of deterioration ; among these, the most rapid in their effects are emanations from the human body, and the expirations from the lungs; and therefore, as we spend a third of our existence in sleep, during which, in con- PUEE SLEEPING ROOMS. 19 sequence of its passive condition, the corporeal system is greatly more liable to the influ- ence of the causes of disease, it is of the utmost consequence that every practical and rational means for securing a pure air for the chamber should be employed, the most im- portant of these being large rooms and sin- gle beds. It is not only unwise, it is unnatural and degenerative, for one person to pass the night habitually in the same bed or room with an- other, whatever may be the age, sex, or rela- tionship of the parties. Unwise, because it impairs the general health and undermines the constitution, by reason of the fact, that the atmosphere of any ordinary chamber occupied by more than one sleeper, is speec^ly vitiated, and that in this vitiated condition, it is breathed over and over again for the space of the eight hours usually passed in sleep, amounting, in the aggregate, to one third of a man's entire existence. Unnatural, because it is contrary 20 SLEEP. to our instincts ; and it is lowering, be- cause it diminishes that mutual consideration and respect which ought to prevail in social life. A person feels elevated in proportion to the deference received from another, and there springs up a self-restraint, a consciousness of personal dignity, which has an exalting effect on the whole physical, moral, and social nature of man ; but the habitual occupation of the same chamber must largely detract from these in a variety of ways. "Without the argument of analogies, that the most spiteful, the vilest, and the filthiest of the animal kingdom — wolves, hogs, and vermin. — huddle together, the physical aspects of the case will be considered in their bearings on human health. It is not denied that two per- sons have slept together in the same bed for half a century, and have lived in health to a good old age; this only proves how long some may live in spite of a single bad habit. Persons have lived quite as long in the habit INTENT OF THE BOOK. 21 <«al indulgence in low, vicious, degrading, and drunken practices. It will be found, however, that in these cases there were counteracting causes in steady operation, such as open cham- bers, houses with a thousand cracks and cran- nies, and frequently during the time, the earth a pillow, a canopy the sky, with the additional ■ fact that a large portion of every day was habitually spent in wholesome activities in the open air. To these considerations may be added the high advantage of a good constitu- tion to begin with, and the necessity of a plain and primitive mode of life. Exceptional cases are not to be considered in a general argument. It is proposed to show that the tendencies of certain social habits are uniformly pernicious, and that prejudicial results will follow as cer- tainly as that water will fall over a precipice, if physical obstacles are not presented, such as that of its being frozen at the instant, diverted from its course, or caught in the beginning of •ts descent. 22 SLEEP. The general argument against sleeping witli others, is fpund in the undeniable fact, that when several persons sleep in the same apart- ment, the fewer conveniences are there for per- sonal cleanliness, which is at the very founda- tion of bodily health, of moral purity, and mental elevation. There is another argument of an exceedingly wide range, and yet a mind of very limited cul- ture can not fail to feel its force. As men im prove in their condition, there is a strong desire for greater domestic conveniences and com- forts ; the very first of these is " more room ;" and eventually, instead of several members of a family sleeping in the same bed, each child, as it grows up, has a separate apartment, and a rich man's dwelling has more than one room to each member of his household. In former times, it was oftener the case than at present, that the married children would remain with their parents as a matter of econ- omy, for several years ; but now it is usually a CEOWDED LIVING. 23 settled thing to secure a " home of their own" before the marriage ceremony; "going to housekeeping," is an event second only to the marriage itself, and is one of the surest indica- tions of thrift. On the other hand, as families herd together in the same building, there are found those brutal debasements ■which have made famous the " tenement-houses " of New- York, where as many as one hundred and twenty distinct fam- ilies lived imder the same roof, and where there were thirteen thousand six hundred and twen- ty-three houses which averaged nearly six fam- ilies each, and thus three fourths of the popula- tion of the metropolis of the United States of North- America, lived in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine, with the result of its being the sickliest of all the large cities of the civilized world; whUe Philadel- phia, but eighty-six miles away, with hotter Bummers and sometimes colder winters, without that proximity to the sea, which is so fruitful 24 SLEEP. of sanitary blessings, is one of the healthiest cities in the Union. But Philadelphia has a house to every six persons, while New- York has but one to every thirteen. Such facts as these prove, on a large scale, that the more house-room a community has, the more health- ful will that community be. Another great fact is, that there are three times the number of deaths, in proportion to the population, in those parts of the city where the poorest, and consequently the most persona live together in the same house, as compared with the mortality where nearly every family lives in a dwelling of its own. "For example, in the First "Ward of the city of New- York, where almost all are poor, one person died out of every twenty-two, while in the Fifteenth Ward, where the inhabitants live mostly to themselves, in large, roomy buUdings, only one died out of every seventy I Further, in the sixteenth century, when the great majority of mankind lived in huts and CONVULSIONS OF CHILDREN. 25 hovels, wliole families eating, sleeping, and worlring in the same apartment, the average of human life was five years, according to the estimate of Marc d'Bspine and others ; but in the former half of the nineteenth century, that is, from eighteen hundred to eighteen hundred and forty, it had increased to forty-one years. Nothing, perhaps, more accurately measures the thrift of any community than the greater number and size of its buildings, and the allowable inference - is, that the more houses there are, in inverse proportion to the number of people, the further they sleep from one an- other, the larger the number of persons who have rooms to themselves, and the more capa- cious are their chambers. The convulsions or " fits " of children usually occur at night, while sleeping ; these, in most cases, arise from over-eating or breathing an impure air. Fifteen hundred and ninety-nine children under two years of age died in New- York City during eighteen hundred and fifty- 3 26 SLEEP. five, from this malady alone. "While bad air causes these convidsions, immediate introduc- tion to a pure atmosphere gives instantaneous and efficient relief. The broad fact can not then be denied, that, as a general rule, and in the sense in question, the fiirther people sleep apart, the more they occupy, separate rooms, the greater are their chances of life. A more critical examination into the nature of things will show, in a most conclusive manner, the reason of such results. Dr. Amott reports that a canary hung up in a bed surrounded with closely-drawn curtains, and in which two persons slept, was found dead in the morning. This was because that, after the sleepers had breathed the air, there was not life enough left in it, not oxygen enough to feed a bird, and it perished. This shows in a general way, that when the breath comes out of the mouth, there is no substance in it, no nutriment, no life, and that we can no more live upon it than we could live upon food CAPACITY OF THE LUNGS, 27 after all its nourishment had been extracted from it, and it had become as innutrient as Baw-dust, or as the driest husks of the field. Experimenters have ascertained that a breath of air is so wholly deprived of its substance, its life, while in the lungs, that if re-breathed without any admixture of the common air, it would cause death in a minute or two. The lungs of an ordinary man hold some ten pints of air ; but as they are never entirely emptied in life, they take in about six pints, or one gallon at a full breath. In the breathing of repose, as in ordinary occupations, about one pint, or forty cubic inches, is talcen in at a breath. A person breathes about eighteen times a minute during deep, or two and a quarter hogsheads in one hour; or eighteen hogsheads during the eight hours which are usually given to sleep, or two hundred cubic feet ; that is, in eight tours, every particle of nutriment would be abstracted from a room containing that amount 28 SLEEP. of air. To make it more tangible, if a person were put to sleep in a room six feet tigh, eight feet long, and a little over four feet broad, and no air was allowed to come in from without, all the life of the air would be consumed, and he would die at the expiration of the eighth hour, even if each breath given out could be kept to itself. But this would not be the case, for the very first breath of the first minute would, on passing out of the mouth, mingle with the air of the room, and taint and corrupt it, so that in reality, the first breath of air taken would be the only one that was pure, each succeeding one would be less and less so, and long before the eight hours had expired, the whole miass, although not entirely vitiated, would be so to such an .extent that it could not possibly sustain Hfe. All have observed the disagreeableness of the air of an ordinary-sized room, in which one or more persona have slept all night, when first entering it from a morning walk ; and this, too, when the SIZE OF SLEEPESTG BOOMS. 29 Various crevices about the doors and windows, and an open fire-place, allowed some fresh air to come in, and some of the foul air to escape. "With this view of the case, physiologists ad- vise that each person should sleep in a room equal to twelve feet square and eight or more feet high. The floor-surface of a room is mea* sured by the length and breadth multiplied to- gether. But ordinary chambers do not equal twelve by twelve ; do not measure a hundred and forty-four square feet, Not one in a thou- sand hotel-chambers is as large ; very few of the "state-rooms," so called, of ships and steamers, measure over seven fbet long, seven feet high, and four broad, giving only two hun- dred and forty-five feet for two persons, which is barely enough to save one from inevitable death, if there were no crevices to admit the fresh air. Since, therefore, each out-breathing vitiates uhe whole body of air in a close chamber, as a drop of ink will discolor a glass of water, it 3* 80 SLEEP. should have a thorough ventilation ; that is, a current of air should be passing through the room from without up through the open fire- place and chimney, carrying before it the bad air, leaving a fresher and a purer in its place. But very few chambers in this country mea- sure twelve feet square, and consequently are not large enough for one person, let alone two ; and in proportion as the room is too small, in such proportion are the lungs and body and blood deprived of their essential food, as es- sential to life as water is to a fish ; and in such proportion are sown the seeds of disease and premature death. All know that a fish can not live an hour out of its natural element, water ; nor can man live an hour out of his natural element, air, nor a quarter of an hour, and to both a fresh supply of these must come in as steadily as used, or harm will follow as inevitably as uni- versal darkness would envelop the earth, if the sun were blotted from existence. SIMOONS OF AFRICA. 31 To sliow how a little taint of the atmosphere with a substance not natural to it will materi- ally influence the animal economy, it is suffi- cient to state a fact of repeated observation, that a man who sleeps near a poppy-field with the wind blowing steadily towards him from the field, will die before the ' morning. Intelli- gent readers have often perused descriptions of the fatal effects of the dreadfiil Simoons which sweep over the African desert, leaving whole caravans of beasts and men dead from the in- stant contact with their scalding breath. Simi- lar winds are also known in India. At a late meeting of the Meteorological Society of Lon- don, Dr. Cook remarked that there are certain days in which, however hard and violent the wind may blow, little or no dust accompanies it, while at other times every httle puff of air or current of wind raises up and carries with it clouds of dust, and at these times the individ- ual particles of sand appear to be in such an electrified condition, that they are even ready 32 SLEEP. to repel each, other, and are consequently dis- turbed from their position and carried up into the air with the slightest current. To so great an extent does this sometimes exist, that the atmosphere is positively filled with dust, and when accompanied by a strong wind, nothing is visible at a few yards, and the sun at noon- day is obscured. This condition of the atmo- sphere is evidently accumulative ; it increases by degrees tUl the climax is reached, when, after a certain time, usually about twenty-four hours, the atmosphere is cleared, equanimity is restored. Dust-columns appear imder a similar condition of electrical disturbance or intensity. On calm, quiet days, when hardly a breath of air is stirring, and the sun pours down his heating rays with fuU force, little circular ed- dies are seen to rise in the atmosphere near the surface of the ground. These increase in force and diameter, till a column is formed of great bight and diameter, which usually remains sta- tionary for some time, and then sweeps away SIMOONS OF INDIA. 33 across tte country at great speed, and ulti- mately, losing tlie velocity of its circular move- ment, dissolves and disappears. Dr. Cook had seen in the valley of the Mingochav, which is only a few miles . across, and surrounded by high hills, on a day when not a breath of air stirred, twenty of these columns. These seldom changed their places, or but slowly moved across the level tract, and they never interfered •with each other. The author then spoke of the Simoon, that deadly wind which occasionally visits the des- erts of Cutchee and Upper Scinde, which is sudden and singularly fatal in its occurrence, invisible, intangible, and mysterious. Its na- ture, alike unknown, as far as the author is aware, to the wild, untutored inhabitants of the country which it frequents, as to the Euro- pean man of science ; its effects only are visible, its presence made maftifest in the sudden ex- tinction of life, whether of animal or vegetable, dver which its influence has extended. Dr. 84 SLEEP. Oook gives the results of his information re- specting the Simoon as follows : 1. It is sudden in its attack, 2. It is sometimes preceded by a cold cur* rent of air. 3. It occurs in the hot months — usually June and July. 4. It takes place by night as well as by day. 5. Its course is straight and defined. 6. Its passage leaves a narrow "knife-Hke" track. 7. It bums up or destroys the vitality of animal and vegetable existence in its path. 8. It is attended by a weU-marked sul- phurous odor. 9. It is described as being like the blast of a furnace, and the current of air in which it passes is evidently greatly heated. 10. It is not accompanied by dust, thunder, and lightning. It is so generally known to be fatal to travel- ers to pass the night in the campagna in Italy, . ROBBINS AND OAEPENTEB. 85 that citizens uniformly caution strangers to pass directly through it. And nearer home it is known that it was considered almost certain death for those crossing the Isthmus of Pana- ma to spend a night there, and sailors' were threatened with severe punishment who did not return to their ships in the offing before the night came on. Dr. E. Y. Bobbins says of Professor Carpen- ter, the first physiologist of Great Britain, if not of the world, that, in his experiments, he "had ascertained that air containing five or six per cent of carbonic acid gas would pro- duce immediate death, and that less than one half that quantity would soon prove fatal. Now, if effects are proportioned to their causes, and if an atmosphere impregnated with five per cent, or one twentieth part of its volume, of carbonic acid, will thus produce death in a few minutes, what must be the probable effect ">£ breathing for twenty or forty years, even the much minuter proportions which must be 36 SLEEP. present in every inhabited room where there is not a constant ingress and egress of air? It must lower the standard of health and shorten the duration of hfe. But not only ia the air in a close room thus constantly being impregnated with carbonic acid gas to the amount of about twenty- eight cubic inches per minute for each adult man occupying such room, but there is also, according to the best authorities, constantly being discharged by the lungs and pores of the skin an equal amount by weight, that is, about three or three and a half pounds in twenty-four hours, of effete, decaying animal substance, in the form of insensible vapor, which we often see condensed in drops upon the windows of crowded rooms and railroad cars. These drops, if collected and evaporated, leave a thick putrid mass of animal matter. The breathing of these exha- lations is believed to be quite as efScient in producing disease as carbonic acid itself. In the winter of eighteen hundred and sixty, iQ pne small, ill-ventilated room in CHABOOAL FUMES FATAL. 87 a house at Higli Blantyre, Scotland, a man named Robertson, his wife, and three child- ren were in the habit of sleeping. One morning the wife awoke about five o'clock in a very exhausted state, and found her infant child, aged nine months, lying dead in her arms. She immediately aroused her husband, who also felt in a weakly condition, but had strength enough to get out of bed. They then discovered that their next eldest child, a boy aged about three years, was also dead, and the third, a girl nine years old, ap- parently dying, but upon being removed into another apartment she eventually recovered. Facts Kke these show that breathing a bad air for a single night is perilous to life. Few are so ignorant as not to have learned that if a, handful of charcoal is lighted in a small, close room, death before the morning is an in- evitable result, hence it is used sometimes as a means of self-destruction. The reason is, that charcoal in burning, subtracts the oxygen from 4 38 SLEEP. the -whole body of the atmosphere, and this oxygen is its life, and is as fully used up in breathing as in the burning of charcoal. It is not actually destroyed in either case, but a new combination is formed called carbonic acid, which has no oxygen, no life, and a single breath of it induces instantaneous suffocation. It is this carbonic acid which taints a sleeper's chamber, and the taint increases at every out- breathing, for every expiration is loaded with it, and where two sleep in the same room the. poisonous vitiation increases with a two-fold rapidity, and the unhealthful results are inevi- table and ruinous. To impress these vital lessons on the mind, the philosophy of breath- ing or respiration, should be understood. The object of breathing is to make a change in the condition of the blood, which is said in the sacred Scriptures, with philosophical ac- curacy, to be " the life of a man." It is suf- ficiently precise, for aU practical purposes, to Bay that a man takes into the lungs in twenty- OFFICE OF THE LUNGS. 89 four hours, about sixty hogsheads of air, as in health he breathes about eighteen times in a minute, on an average, for the twenty-four hours, and takes in about a pint or forty cubic inches at a breath. During the same time, there passes through the lungs an amount of bipod equal to twenty-four hogsheads; with this blood, the sixty hogsheads of air come in virtual contact, and a great change takes place in both the blood and the air ; for the oxygen, the life of the air, is taken from it as such and becomes, in a measure, incorporated with the blood so as to give life to it ; at the same time, the impurities of the blood are taken up by the breath of air just feken into the lungs, so that when expired, when passed out of the limgs, it is so loaded with these impurities, that it is utterly unfit for being breathed again ; so much so, that as has been already stated, Lf re-breathed, without the admixture of some fresh air, it would cause an instantaneous de- etruction of life, from its entire destitution of 40 SLEEP. mitritiotia particles. Each breath of air then, in healthful respiration, goes into the lunga perfectly pure, but comes out, loaded with the impurities of the blood, and thus the blood is purified, made fit to be re-distributed over the body, to impart life, renovation and growth. It is easy to see then, that if the air which is breathed is not pure, it Mia to unload the Dlood of its impurities, and hence it is unfit for the purposes of life; for to purify the blood, is to give health to the whole system ; and when it is not purified, disease and pain and ultimate death are the inevitable results. This, then, is the great physical evil of sleep- ing together, the air is rapidly contaminated by two sleepers in any ordinary room; this contamination begins at once to lay the foun- dation for disease, and that result is inevitable in the veiy nature of things. Such result, however, does not become very marked in a short time, as there are counteracting agencies, Buch as the fiict that there are crevices in the BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. 41 doors and windows, and through these some fresh air is constantly passing; small, it is true, yet enough to keep the body alive ; bnt how more dead than alive many a one feels without any suspicion of the cause, in that exceedingly languid sensation which some- times pervades the wjiole body on first waking up in the morning; a little greater depriva- tion, and the sleepers would have waked no more! In the case of the already narrated tragedy of the Black Hole of Calcutta, it may be well to state, that " It was eight o'clock in the morning, when the unfortunate prisoners were locked up, and in less than three hours, fifty of them had ceased to exist. The sur vivors of the next morning were said to be the ghastliest forms that were ever seen alive. But for two small windows for approach to which, there was through the night a frantic struggle, not one would have lived to tell the fearful tale." Another more recent incident of Indian 4* i2 SLEEP. history, is given to illustrate the pernicious influence of a deficient supply of fresh air, although not to the degree of causing instant death. "When Sir Charles Napier was the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army, the hill-stations of Sabathor and Kussowlie, which ought, from their position, to have been most healthy, were in disgrace, and denounced as pestilential. Sir Charles resolved to ascertain the cause of the mischief, and had no difficulty in accounting for the pestilence which had destroyed so many lives. The barrack-rooms were only eight feet high and had been crammed ftdl of soldiers. "I altered the barracks," said Sir Charles, "and put half the number of men in them, and they became at once the most healthy in India. When I last saw my own regiment with which I made the experiment, in con- junction with the 'Sixtieth Eifles,' both hav- ing been nearly decimated by fever, the twen- ty-second had but nineteen in hospitals, out PEISON ATMOSPHERE. 43 of one thousand and fifly, in the sick season, and the sixtieth about the same." In the times of Pope and Swift, the Au gustan age of England, a little over a cen- tury ago, "debtors and pirates were confined together in the Marshalsea. Thirty, forty, and even fifty prisoners were locked up at night in a single room, not sixteen feet square and eight feet high. For a whole year, there were sometimes forty, never less than thirty-two, persons locked up in George's ward every night, which is a room sixteen by fourteen feet, and about eight feet high. The surface floor was not sufficient to contain that num- ber when laid down, so that one half were hiing up in hammocks, while the others re- mained on the floor under them. The air was so wasted by the number of persons who breathed in that narrow compass, that it was aot sufficient to keep them from stifling, sev- eral having, in the heat of summer, perished for want of air. The more offensive part of 44 SLEEP. the account is omitted, but it may be found entire in the state papers of England." John Howard, of immortal memory, found that there were dungeons in Cornwall, mea- suring seven and a half feet long, six and a half deep, and five feet broad, in which " two or three persons were chained together. Their provision was put down to them through a hole in the floor of the room above, and the foulness of the air coming up through that hole was such, that those who thus served the food often caught the fatal fever, and the keeper and his wife died in one night." Other dungeons containing about four hun- dred cubic feet of air, measuring seven and a half feet long, by six and a half broad, and eight and a half high, had only a hole of four inches by eight, over the door, the only avenue of air to the interior, and even that coming through long, dark passages reeking with dampness and filth and slime. " Yet, in each of these dungeons, three human beings HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST. 45 were commonly locked up for tte niglit, whicli, in winter, lasted fourteen or sixteen hours." In Chester there were cells measuring nine feet by three, and seven and a half feet high, with a single aperture of four inches by eight. In each of these, three or four felons were locked up every night. In the Chink of Plymouth jail, there was a "diabolical dungeon," eight feet by seven- teen, and only five and a half feet high, with a wicket in the door seven inches by five. Yet Howard learned with horror, that three men had been confined in this dungeon "for two months. "They could neither see nor breathe freely, nor could they stand upright. To keep alive at all they were forced to crouch, each in his 1mm, at the wicket, to catch a few inspirations of air, otherwise,, they must have died of suffocation, for the door had not been opened in five weeks." No wonder is it, that with such arrange- ments, the jail-fever raged throughout Eng- 46 SLEEP. land, slaying tens of thousands in its fury, spreading its terrible contagions in sucli a deadly manner, that the prison-physicians would not engage their services in some oases, without the express understanding, that they should not be required to visit persons who had the jaU-fever. These cases show that a certaiu amount of fresh air is necessary to life, and that if that amount is largely curtailed, fearful diseases and speedy death ensue. If there is but a moderate diminution, as in sleeping together in small rooms, the consequences are not ia> stantly fatal, but the life of the system is slowly undermined, predisposing it to wast- ing disease. But why need the dark and dismal dun- geons of England, a hundred years ago, be cited for proof ? On the fifth day of October, eighteen hundred and sixty. Judge Pierrepont, of the Superior Court of the city of New- York, resigned his seat on the bench, which, by his RANDALL'S ISLAKD IMBECILES. 47 ability he had ornamented so long, on the ground that the court-rooms were " ruinous to health and dangerous to life." It is sad to note that valuable lives are often sacrificed by the breathing of a bad atmosphere for a few hours, as in the following, case : — Chief Justice Anthony Lispenard Robertson, of the Superior Court of New York City, loved, respected, and honored by the profes- sion as one of its brightest lights, eminent for his legal abilities, for his general acquirements, and his lucid decisions, was known among his peers as the " Just Judge." He was for some eight hours continuously exposed to the delete- rious air of a crowded court-room, a broken pane at the same time admitting a December wind upon him, inducing pneumonia, of which he died within a week ; died in his mental prime, from a few hours' exposure to a bad atmosphere. An observant correspondent of the New York Worldi having visited llandall's Island, where there are about eight hundred idiotic children maintained by public charity, says: — 48 SLEEP. "In a single room, perhaps eighteen by twenly-eight feet in area, I fonud thirty-seven imbecile children seated closely togethet upon benches and chairs arranged around the room — some rock- ing themselves incessantly to and fro, some screaming at the top of their voices, some yelling oat a laugh, itself the token of a vacant mind, others moaned and muttered, or emitted an unearth- ly noise, intended for music. Here they chattered and quarreled, and grinned^ their ghastly smiles, seemingly under little restraint other than might be needed to keep them glued to one spot. This room also is unclean and noisome; the floor reeks with a nauseat- ing stench; the air is loathsomely putrid, poisoning the ' breath of life,' which the inmates take impure, only to give back impurer; scrofulous sores saturate their clotiiing by their purulent issues. What a horrible picture this is ! What a fearful condition these helpless and miserable children are now in I How long is it to be protracted? How long shall they be permitted to suffer, languish, and die, when it is possible to make most of them useful persons in society, and to afford relief to all of them, at least 1 How long shall a gentleman — James B. Bichards — who has made the treatment of imbeciles a specialty, with the utmost success, beg the Commissioners to give him a chance to redeem these wretched and most unfortunate children, without expense as regards his time and labor? For the sake of oar character as a Christian peo- ple, whose welcome duties are philanthropy and active benevo- lence, as well as for the sake of the suffering children, it is to be hoped that the reform is not far off — that the beneficent agencies may soon be put in operation that shall consummate this humane work." Breathing a bad air for a very few days may introduce a poison into the system which shall INSIDIOUS AIE POISON. 49 SO impregnate it that no amount of subsequent exposure to a pure atmosphere will avail to arrest its malignant and fatal influences, al- though months and years have passed away since the occurrence of the infection. On Friday, June twenty-four, eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, the telegraph announced that the " Hon. D. P. Eobison, ex-member of Con- gress died from a disease contracted at the National Hotel in the spring of eighteen hun- dred and fifty-seven." The circumstances con- nected with this affair have already been de- tailed, among which it may be important to repeat, it appeared in evidence that persons who slept in the hotel a single night were attacked so seriously that their lives for a time seemed to be endangered. It has now been shown that a single sleeper requires a chamber twelve feet square, and well ventilated by having currents of air constantly passing from the crevices, about the doors and 5 50 SLEEP. windows, up through the fire-place aud chim- ney, carrying with it the foul, exhausted air. But a majority of sleeping-rooms do not have a length and breadth which, when multiplied into each other, will give a superfices of a hun- dred and forty-four square feet, and yet not one, but the father and mother, and for a long period of married life, a child also, sleep in such room; and more, aU three in the same bed, to say nothing of the space occupied by the furniture and clothing hanging around, nor of the sources of contamination of the air of the apartment, such as the toilet apparatus, wash- water, and other standing fluids. Under these circimistances, it seems to be little short of a murderous process for more than one per- son to sleep in a chamber of ordinary size. But when it is remembered that two and three and even more persons often sleep habitually in rooms less than twelve feet square, and when we take into account the harrowing details of the Black Hole of Calcutta, it must be ad- STINT OP PUEE AIB. 51 mitted that sleeping together as a habit, is a Bufficient caiise for a gradual dimimition of bodily vigor, a gradual undermining of the constitution, and an inevitable cause of prema? ture decline and death to multitudes. If ordinary chambers are but equal to twelve feet square, and that is barely enough for one sleeper, and it is the common custom for two at least to occupy such a room, we have the general fact of a world of people volun- tarily allotting to themselves just one half of the requisite amount of air during every night of their existence, by which their blood is just half purified, their systems just half washed out, just half renovated! No wonder then that there is that earnest craving for more sleep in the morning on the part of the frail and fee- ble, and of those who violate the laws of their being, in the manner pointed out. This is not all. If two married persons give themselves but half the needed amount of air for eight hours, and during those eight hours 52 SLEEP, and at the close of them, as is most generally the case perhapSj a new being is made, it is inevitable that it will be made in weakness, in imperfection, in incompleteness ; hence is born deteriorated, with a hereditary susceptibility to disease, and with an incompetency to resist the ordinary causes of human ailments. Thus it is that the children of large cities, especially in summer time, when the entire air has so much less nutriment in it than is normal, are swept away as if by a pestilence ; a pestilence more terrible than any epidemical cholera that ever visited our shores ; and yet it creates no alarm, seldom a' remark I According to Inspector Morton's returns for eighteen hundred and fifty-five, there died in New- York City during July and August, under five years of age, three thousand seven hun- dred and two children; more than the total number of deaths fi-om cholera during the pre- ceding year ; more than died of the first chol- era of eighteen hundred and thirty-two I These INFANT MOETALITT. 53 figures are found in the exceedingly valuable " Table of tbe Mortality of tbe City of New- York for the fifby-two years, comprising the full period from January the first, eighteen hundred and four, to December the first, eighteen hundred and fifty-five, inclusive." Total cholera deaths in New-York City for 18S2 3513 " " « 1849 mil " " " 1864 2609 " deaths of children alone during July and August 1866 3'702 Many are now living who have a vivid re- membrance of the terror pervading aU hearts during the prevalence of the first cholera, and yet when a greater number of children die during two months of any summer, it is passed without special remark. This is because in part we have become used to it ; and in part be- cause the greatest mortality is among the erowded poor, whose wailings rise not up to the ears of the great world above them. It is 5* 54 SLEEP. not claimed that this fearful annual mortality among children under five years of age is whoUy owing to the fact of too many persons sleeping together in the same room or bed ; but that, under all the circumstances of the case, as presented, this great sacrifice of life is attribu- table, in considerable part, to the habit alluded to, there can be not a shadow of a doubt in any reflecting mind. Let it be remembered that there is a double agency at work in this regard. The children are not only begotten in weakness, in want of vitality and vigor, but the causes of this are still in operation as to themselves ; for very generally the infant sleeps in the same bed with the parents, and if a bird actually dies in a night under the circumstances already de- tailed, it is no wonder that the bird-like life of a tender infant is gradually sapped away by the same causes kept in operation every night for weeks and months and years ; for it is not sooner than five years that children CATJSES OF VITIATED CHAMBERS. 55 in poorer families — and they are the majority — are put in other rooms than those in which the parents sleep; but after five years, the mortality of children diminishes fifty per cent. Our calculations have been made on the purity of the air in the twelve-feet chambers, yet the causes of rapid vitiation of 'that atmo- sphere are numerous. There are liquids of various kinds in every chamber, besides the soap for washing, which is constantly sending out its emanations ; and there are damp towels and bedding, combs and brushes, and the clothing worn during the day, which, as to some persons, is alone sufficient to taint the air of a whole room in five minutes after it is laid off. Besides these, if inner doors are left open during the night, emanations jfrom close cellars and warm kitchens, and slops of various kinds, are constantly ascending, espe- oiaUy during sleeping-hours ; for then the outer doors and windows are closed, no air is in circulation to carry them outside the build- 56 SLEEP. ing; hence they rise, by their own laws, to taint and corrupt the atmosphere of the sleep- er's apartment. Then again, there are found in most cham- bers, hung-up clothing, closets, wardrobes, drawers, and the like, with the carpeting, all of which are sources of dust and lint, and dampness and close air, so that, taking every thing into consideration, it is an almost un- known thing that any sleeper within the four walls of any private house or hotel, gets one single breath of real pure air in a whole night. In the third volume of HaWs Journal of Health, page one hundred and forty-nine, the following statements are made, founded on carefally conducted experiments in one of the best-kept European hospitals : " If a small portion of the air of a crowded room is made to pass up through distilled water, a sediment is left which contains various colored fibers of clothing, portions of hair, wool, bits of human skin or scales, and a fungus growth, AIR OF OKOWDED BOOMS. 57 with its particles of reproduction, wHcli adhere wherever they strike, or fall on wet surfaces or bruises, or sore places, and grow wherever they adhere ; there is also a small amount of inde Btructible sand and dirt, with great numbers of the forms of animal life. "But if that room be emptied for a few hours, and a portion of its atmosphere be treated in the same way, nothing will be found but a little sand and dirt, a few fibers of woven cot- ton, and only a trace of fungus; but no animal life, no bits of skin or hair, or scales of dead human matter. "If five times the amount of neighboring out- door air undergoes the same process, a single fiber of wool or cotton is now and then found, with a few specimens of fungus, and their atoms of reproduction, but no traces of decayed ani- mal matter, nor are there any signs of organic life : thus showing that in our close apartments we are surrounded with organic living bodies, and that animal matter, HAring, dead, and de- cayed, loads the atmosphere which we breathe in the chambers of our dwellings and crowded rooms, and that these corrupting particles are swallowed into the stomach, and are breathed 68 SLEEP. into the lungs every moment of in-door exist« ence, tlius strongly urging us, by all our love of pure blqod and high health, to hurry from our chambers at the earliest moment in the morning, and to consider every hour of out- door breathing a gain of life. "No wonder is it that the blood is soon tainted and corrupted, by making sitting-apart- ments of our chambers, by spending hours in crowded assemblies, or stage-coaches, or rail- cars, where every breath we draw is a mouth- ful of monster-life, or of decaying or foreign substances." But with all our precautions, foreign sub- stances are floating in the air every where. Dust falls on the tops of the highest moun- tains, and drops on the decks of vessels many leagues beyond the shore. Under, the head of Micographie Aimcspherique, the Gazette HA- dom, dated April 1st, 1859, reports a meet- ing of the French Academy of Sciences, at which M. Pouchet reported a paper as follows : " The atmosphere which surrounds us holds DUST OF ALL CENTTJEIES. 59 in suspension a mass of corpuscles, the detritus of the mineral crust of our globe, animal and vegetable particles, and the debris of all that is used for man's purposes. These diverse cor- puscles are proportionably more numerous and voluminous as the atmosphere, is more or less agitated by the wind, and it is to these that the term dust has been applied." The author enumerates the various cor- puscles of mineral, animal, and vegetable ori- gin with which the air is loaded. Under the latter — the vegetable products — he mentions especially particles of wheat, which are always found mixed with dust, be it recent or old, as well as those of barley, rye, potatoes, which have been discovered in rare instances. "Astonished at thfe proportional abundance of flour which I have found among the atmo- spheric corpuscles," says Mr. Pouqjiet, "I un- dertook the task to examine the dust of all cen- taries and of all localities. I have explored the monuments of our large cities ; those of the shore and those of the desert ; and in midst 60 SLEEP. of the immense variety of corpuscles that uni- versally float in the air, almost always have I found the dust of grain, in greater or lesser abundance. Endowed with an extraordinary power of preservation, years seem scarcely to have altered it. * " Whatever may be the antiquity of atmo- spheric corpuscles, we find among them the dust of grain yet recognizable. I have dis- covered it in the most inaccessible retreats of our old Gothic churches, mixed with their blackened dust of eigbt centuries ; I have met it in the palaces and hypog^es of Thebes, where it dates back perhaps to the epoch of the Pha- raohs. I have found it even in the interior of the tympanal cavity of the head of a mummi- fied dog, which I have recovered from a sub- terranean temple of upper Egypt. " It can be proposed as a thesis, that in all countries where wheat forms the basis of food, its debris is mixed throughout with the dust, and may be detected in it in laiger or smaller quantities." Perhaps thfe reader will pardon the quota- tion of an article entire, written by some un- DUST EVEET WHERE. 61 acknowledged worker for human entertain- ment and profit: " Whence does the dust all come ? You may sweep your room twice every day, and you will find that a cloud arises every time the broom and the floor make acquaintance. You may dust every article of furniture, every book, every picture; you may wipe all about the book-shelves and the floor with a damp cloth ; and yet, after all your labor, there wQl be dust. Dust flying in the air; dust settling on the books and tables ; dust on the pictures, on the flowers — dust, dust every where. It is dis- couraging. You think, perhaps, that 'tis bcr cause the room in which you sit is so large ; you think that if you were in snugger quarters there would not be so much of this annoyance ; you therefore move into a smaller apartment, but you are worse off now than you were be- fore. You can't turn around quick, nor even heave a sigh, without setting in motion ten thousand tiny particles of dust. You may sweep till your broom fails, and dust till your arms fall off, and the story will be always the 62 SLEEP. Bame. Even out M sea, where the good ship rides the billows, thousands of miles from land, the dust gathers. It matters not how much the sailors rub the masts and holystone the decks, the dust will gather, even amid the salt spray* of the sea. It is forever flying and settling wherever there is any solid substance on which it can alight. Where it comes from is no mys- tery, when we remember what sort of things we are. "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," is written on clothing, on wood, and iron and steel, just as truly as it is in our fraU, perishing flesh ; and this changing and going back to its despised original is going on before our very eyes, in each thing that we look upon. Con- stantly — some rapidly, others with a slower waste — but certainly all things are returning whence they came, 'Tis enough to make one fear the dust — to' make one feel a horror at the atoms falling oil one's garment and one's limbs, to read and understand their language. That language is one of decay and death ; of earth, the grave, and worms ; of darkness, forgetful- uess, and despair. This, if one can not look DUST XSD CONSUMPTION. 63 beyond tte dust, and see and take hold upon; the eternal life. _ " How carefully and purely should we step through the world, did we but read, as we walk, all that is written for our admonition and warning. But we go hastily, with care- less eye and dumb heart, taking little heed when we should be most studious. Many there be who have deep skill to read the dark sayings who yet have never understood the plain language of the gathering dust." Under the head of " Analytical and Critical Eeviews," in the British and Foreign Me- dico Chirurgical Beview for January, eigh- teen hundred and fifty-nine> is the following: "The fact seems to come out strikingly in these investigations,, that one marked indubi- table cause of lung diseases, and especially of consumption, is the inhalation of fine hard dust. This seems to be the case in Warwick- , shire, especially where the metallic manufac- tures are of a kind to give rise to such dust, 64 SLEEP, more t&an where the work is of a coarser de Bcription. The same fact is observed where fine pottery is made ; it is well known in the hardware manufactures of Yorkshire, and the mortality of mines where the ore lies in dry sandstone, is said to be from the same cause. " On the other hand, where the dust inhaled is of a soft character, as in woolen, flax and cotton factories, asthma and chronic bronchitis are more prevalent, as also in lace-making and straw-bonnet making." Alston, England,is situated in a most salu- brious country district, yet there are more widows there than in any other district in Great Britain ; at the same time, fewer infants die in Alston than in many other paris of the country. The actual facts of the case make this a very suggestive item in connection with the dele- terious influences of an atmosphere loaded with foreign particles. Alston is the most exclu- sively lead-mining district in England, but only INHEBITED INFIRMITIES. 65 the men work in these mines, ■where they are constantly breathing a dusty atmosphere, hence their early decease. But it is remarked that more women die of consumption in the healthy atmosphere of Alston, than in other localities which do not enjoy so pure an air. This is accounted for as "due to acquired hereditary tendency," those women having been born of men who breathed habitually a dusty atmosphere, bring- ing to the mind the strong conviction of the sentiment uttered on a preceding page, that children begotten by persons sleeping together in the same small room for eight hours out of every twenty-four, must inevitably partake of the parental infirmity, which, not enough to kill the parent outright, not enough to destroy the power of reproduction, not enough to eat out the life of the new-born in its first years, yet is enough to lay the foundation, either of actual disease or of feeble capabilities of re- eisting the ordinary causes of disease, with 6* 66 SLEEP. the result of becoming life-long martyrs to depressing and wasting sickness, to end in premature death. These are facts collected -by men of ability, of industrious research; facts gathered with reference to the discussion of theories of a different nature, hence are the more valuable ; and those not convinced by these would not likely be by the piling up of pyramids of such like. The great difficulty in having these state- ments result in immediately practical results, lies in this, that death does not presently follow from two persons sleeping together all night in the same bed or room. "Were this the case, the task were easily performed, and a few pages would tell the whole story. But most assuredly, wise men, of pecuniary abUily, are most inexcusable if they do not arrange in all their families, that each member have, as for as possible, a separate, airy room, to ileep in. The fact has been alreadj stated, that one of EOOMINESS XSB HEALTH. 67 the fery first channels of expenditure, on the part of those who are improving their pe- cuniary condition, is in the direction of more house-room; and this may reasonably be con- sidered, at least, one of the causes of the undis- puted fact, that in France, the average life of those who are well to do, is twelve years longer, than of those who are considered poor, and consequently huddle together more, and are restricted to fewer apartments. It is true, as has been remarked on a pre- vious page, that there are multitudes who have slept two and three in a bed, and double the number in the same room, and yet have lived to a good old age. But such persons generally live ia very open houses, and spend most of the twenty-four hours in the open air, in neces- sary labor, and these act as counteracting causes. But this argument is of little weight, inasmuch as the constitution of these hardy people, seldom, with all its strength and advan- tages, descends to their children, rarely indeed 68 SLEEP. to tlieir grand-ctildren ; and ttat tlieir close living lias a tendency to deteriorate the vigor of tieir descendants, can not reasonably be de- nied. As communities become enriched, their modes of life grow more enervating ; hence the necessity increases of greater care to ward off disease, of removing its causes, and of guarding against the avenues of sickness. What our fathers did with their stalwart frames and iron constitutions, and simple, temperate and regu- lar modes of life, we attempt at our peril, with our easy, gormandizing, pampered ways, our furnace-heated apartments, and our dwellings, three rooms deep, with chambers aU guiltless of a window, with curtained apartments as gloomy as the grave, and into which the bless- ed sun-light never enters, except on chance oc- casions, few and far between. Hence, if our motto be, "As our fathers lived, so will we," we will not live long; we will perish in our BODY EMANATIONS. 69 folly, and if we leave descendants behind us, they -will be but shadows, the mere outlines of men and women. All know that emanations are constantly passing from the body, its impurities, its dead and effete matter, which nature has no use for, and which she is constantly endeavoring to cast off by the pores of the skin, the average num- ber of which for each square incli of the body is estimated by Erasmus Wilson to be two thousand five hundred, or seven millions in all, makings if joined together, a canal twenty- eight miles long, which conducts from the sys- tem every twenty-four hours, in a state of sen- sible perspiration, or water called " sweat," or insensible perspiration, called "vapor," three pounds and a half from one person in the ordi- nary occupations of life, and much more in extjaordinary callings. For example, men employed in keeping up the fires in the gas- works, were found to have lost in weight, on an average, over three pounds in forty-five 70 SLEEP. minutes, while some, in an iinusually hot place, lost as much as five pounds two ounces in seventy minutes' work. The insensible perspiration from a sleeper during the. night, is of itself enough to taint the atmosphere of a whole room, even a large one, as almost every reader has noticed on entering a sleeping-chamber in the morning after having come directly fi:om the ont-door air ; and it is the breathing and rebreathing of an atmosphere contaminated in the variety of ways alluded to, which makes the night the time of attack of the great majority of violent human ailments ; it is this which fires the train of impending disease, and which would have been deferred, if not entirely warded off, with the advantages of a pure chamber. It is from close bed-rooms come the racking pains of fever, its torturing thirst, and speedy death; this it is which wakes up the cholera morbus, the cramp colic, the bilious diarrhea, and the multitudes of other ailments which surprise us HUMAN EFFLUVIA. 71 in the night-time, and from -which, it is worthy of repetition, a night of good sleep in a clean, pure, and well-ventilated chamber would have effected a happy deliverance, as expressed in the familiar phrase of " sleeping it off," It is related that a whole family was once suffering fi:om sickness which no skill of the physician could abate, when accidentally a win- dow-glass was broken out, and the means not being at hand for repair, the entire family began to get well ; the cause of the improve- ment was at once suggested to be the broken, pane, which admitted a purer air. It is not known as extensively as it ought to be, that if the effluvia which escapes from the human body, in a close room, is breathed by another person, some of the most incurable forms of disease resTilt therefrom, especially the "low fevers," a3 they are called, as well as "typhoid" ailments, which oppress the whole man, putrefy the blood, take away all sense and feeling, when muttering delirium comes 72 SLEEP. on, to be followed apace by a mortal atupon and the man passes away, but " makes no sign." All must look upon such a death with shrinking, and yet it is frequent in the abodes of the poor, whom hard necessity compels to huddle together like pigs ia a pen. Lesser de- grees of this crowding together will have a proportionate ill effect, without the possibility of avoidance. The whelming avalanche does not the less come because its motion is not at first perceivable, and as inevitably will come the destructive effects of crowded sleeping apartments, not only curtailing the health and vigor and life of the sleepers themselves, but ia perpetuating human infirmity on the innocent ones to whom being is given under the circum- stances. The high moral effect of each member of a famil y occupying separate chambers, wiU be least contravened by those who know most of human nature. There is great practical truth in the saying that " No man is a hero to his DEMORALIZATION OF CEOWDING. 73 vaht." "All men," said tlie first Ifapoleon, "lose on close view." Proofs of this are con- stantly recurring to the observation of the thoughtful. Hence there must be a greater or less depreciatory effect in the close associations of " bed-feUows." Those who, by humanity or self-interest, or in the discharge of official duty, have become familiar with persons living in crowds, have frequently given their testi- mony to the moral debasements, social, physi- cal, and mental, which follow therefrom ; and that these feed on one another, is proven by the testimony of one of the reporters connected with the Ifew-York Daily Times, as detailed ia the issue of that journal for the first day of July, eighteen hundred, and fifty-nine. No person of feeling and refinement can read the account without a shudder. And as these things are in passing, in the middle of the nine- teenth century, in the richest city on the conti- nent, and within five hundred yards of Broad- way, one of the most magnificent streets in the 7 74 SLEEP. world, occurring every night, being literally a standing institution, it is convincing proof that a book on the subject of human beings herding together, in personal propinquity, is a want of the times. The article referred to is headed " THE ABODES OF THE POOR. nsrr to the cellars and attics of the fourth WARD, NEW-TORK CnT. GOV BAT AT HIDNIOBT. " There is no pleasure in visiting the hsiuiits of wretched men and women, and none in writing about them. Indeed, if we tell what makes their abodes most wretched, cleanly peo- ple think we have sullied our sheet. StUl, it is wholesome to know how humanity suffers in our midst, how it even contents itself amidst its suffering. "We continued our rambles in the Fourth Ward last week. " A house in Dover street, near Front, for its rickety, lazy look — as if the winds must not visit it too roughly lest it throw up all efforts to maintain its uprightness and crumble down ^arrested attention. The policeman said it cow BAY AT MIDNIGHT. 75 would be an ugly place to visit at night, but by- daylight -was safe enough. Picking our way through the filth on the staircase, we ascended to the second story. A knock on the half- open door of the first room brought no answer. Pushing in, a fat baby, some two years old, whose face was plasteled thick with dirt, sat on the floor, a cat purring at her side. On the bed lay a woman dead drunk — •a nursing infant cuddled beside her. No other person was visi- ble, about the premises. Before frightening the baby or alarming the guardian kitten we retreated. In the next room two women were idly gossiping. "We asked who lived in the room we had just left. They said it was a woman who had gone out somewhere. In the third room, a woman was washing— she said she knew nothing about the rest of the house, and didn't know what rent she paid. Ascend- ing another flight of stairs that creaked and trembled at eveiy step, we found one vacant room under the attic. In another a woman lay drunk o!n the floor, face upward, snoring heav- ily. Two children, about three and seven years old, wqire playing together. There was no means of exit from this house except by 76 SLEEP. the front-door. The out-house of the concern waa accessible through the adjoining shed, where a negro kept a rum-shop. " We next yisited the cellars in James street, between Oak and Madison. One of them, kept by a man of insignificant stature, but consider- able self-respect, waa particularly interesting. This and the adjoining house are old two-story shanties ; still, one of them rented last year for $387. For the two, $550 was offered and refused this year. The cellar was just deep enough for us to stand erect in with our hats on. It was fitted up for lodgeys. It contained no bedsteads, but on the left side as we entered, two shelves were placed against the wall, one above the other, making accommodations for four beds. A door on the right opened into a room where more shelves were placed for the same purpose. Stooping low to avoid a beam, we passed to the rear-room, where were a stove, a few kitchen utensils, and three more beds. Passing into the area behind, we thought we had seen the last bed, but the landlord opened the door of what was built for an ash-hole, and pointing through the darkness to a heap of -ags, said that it was his bed. The side of a LODGING CELLAES. 77 Btoe-box fastened by leathern hinges, stood as a door to what we took for a dog-kennel — but he said it contained another bed. All told, the beds numbered eleven. Our policeman said he had seen one of them occupied by a woman and her five children. The landlord protested, however, that he only took in male lodgers, and " some of them were gentlemen too — cap- tains who sailed their own boats, having been on a bit of a spree, and coming here to sleep it off before going on board." He charged a shil- ling a night for lodgers, and meant to take none but those he knew ; but they would break his door down if he didn't take them in, so some- times his company wasn't so select as he would choose to have it. . " In the next cellar were three women. They too took lodgers, but only families that they knew. While the two who belonged on the premises were quietly responding to our in- quiries, a young woman, who sat on the side of a bed, gaudy in a high-colored and low-necked dress, suddenly burst out in a very loud tone of voice, but decidedly a low tone of morality, that her cha-rack-ter was being assailed; that she knew some body who would not stand it ; 7* 78 SLEEP. that if some folks could not attend to their own business, she knew some body who knew what was what, etc. The two ladies of the cellar fell to quieting their gayly-dressed visitor, in such loud tones of entreaty to shut up and be civil and not be offended, and of assurance that no body meant her, whereupon she grew so much more turbulent, and they so mu<}h more demon- strative in their efforts to hush her, that the policeman on that beat turned in to see what the row was, and we prudently retreated. " Our next visit was to the famous Cherry street tenement-house. It consists of two build- ings, both standing with their ends toward Cherry-street, one double the width of the other. Between , them runs ' Gotham-oourt,' into which the lower entry-ways open. 'Bast Gotham-court ' is the alley into which the den- izens of one half of the larger building debouch. The wisdom of the builders of this five-story box of brick and mortar for the packing of mortals, led them, when there was a fair oppor- tunity to get a ventilation, carefully to exclude it If you enter from Gotham-court, wishing to get through to Bast Gotham court, there is no way but to climb to the roof and pass down THE TENEMENT-HOUSE. 79 again five fliglits of steps, and if a current of air should feel inspired to blow througli, it would need to take the same route, which of course it would refuse to take, and die out first, vainly endeavoring to dilute the prevalent stench. As if eight feet width of air, walled in feetween two five-story buildings, might still be rather raw and cool for the lungs of those whose windows open upon it, the proprietors of the place have erected at the far end of the court a blacksmith shop, whose perpetual emis- sion of charcoal smoke and heat tempered the summer wind to the pretty well shorn lamba inside. Five years ago the Croton water pipes were laid on each floor, but since then they have been taken out ; and if, under the eaves of this model tenement, a weary woman should resolve to try the virtue of cleanliness, she must first descend to the foot of all the stairs to fill and then tug up to the top again with her pail of water. Some ninety-six families claim this abode as their home, and pay va- riously from $4.50 to $6 rent. It has no cel- lar, but from every haU a flight of steps leads iown to a drain under the pavement of the court, that empties into the street-sewer. Over 80 SLEEP. this drain are erected the water-closets, without doors. The stench that emanates from this drain, and that is thrown back from the sewer, pervades the whole place. A more successful device to poison slowly, on a large scale, hun- dreds of poor people, could not easily be con- ceived, a " This ended our tour for the day. The wretchedness it exposed seemed as if it could scarcely be paralleled in a civilized city, but to some of the miserable shanties we looked back after our next expedition, and in comparison they seemed cleanly, wholesome, and tolera- ble! " It was late Sunday night when our party set out from the Sixth Ward Station-house, under convoy of Sergeant Preston, and another officer, who took the lead, lantern in hand. The first cellar visited was at No. 85 Baxter street. Down half a dozen rickety steps, the door was already open to one of the filthiest, blackest holes we had yet seen. The stout Irishman, who claimed to be landlord, assured us that we should find clean sheets in his lodg- ing-house, whereat we laughed, supposing him to be of a merry turn ; but he was ia earnest — KIGHT LODGINGS. 81 he waslied tHein himself every Thursday, he said. "We looked in rain for sheets, however ; they might have been there, but all the bed- clothes were of one color, whatever their tex- ture. There were bunks arranged along the wall, two or three deep, and in most of them men or women, black or white, sleeping soundly. The glare of the lantern in their eyes did not disturb them at all — ^pretty clearly indicating the possession of consciences cleaner than their faceSj or that the sleeper had had the run of the back-door into the liquor-shops during the day. The landlord charged six- pence a night for lodging, and lodged none under any circumstances but honest hard-work- ing people — which statement the police received with smiles and without contradiction. Two inner rooms were equally well occupied — in one of the hideous beds two children sleeping as sweetly as if their couch had been down, and the horrible den a cottage. The older sister of these children was out begging even at this hour. " In another cellar close by, a young woman with a single scanty garment on, sat on a chest crying. That old woman's husband, she said, 82 SLEEP. (the keeper of the place,) had been ' banging his wife, and hit her a lick sideways that al- most killed her.' The wretch had kicked an- other girl so severely that she had gone to bed early in the day and not got up since. The person thus alluded to, lay on a pile of shavings in the corner of the room, snoring vigorously. The old woman, wife of the brute who admin- istered the ' banging,' the ' sideways lick,' and the ' kick,' sat on the side of her bed in very good spirits. The old man was a little wild when he was in liquor, but he'd gone now, and that was a comfort. She BjmpaiMzed. with the crying woman, and said it was a shame to treat the other gitl as he did, but he'd gone now. She evidently was disposed to let by- gones be by-gones. There was a child asleep in a cradle, whose mother was also asleep m another bed. Two men slept soundly' in the next bunk, and never minded the light sud- denly flashed on them fix)m the lantern. But the state-bed, the one that occupied the central position, and looked as if a double fare had to be paid for its use, was occupied by a stalwart negro. ' Then you have no prejudices about color?' we asked. 'No,' said the old woman^ SCENES IN NEW-TOEE. 83 ' he pays for his bed, and his money is as good as any body's.' " The next visit was to a spot a little south of the Ladies' Five Points Mission-room. The access to it was through a long, winding hall. Reaching the end, the door of one room stood half- open, through which a giant negro was visible, lying in bed, and, by the light of a candle, reading a yellow-covered novel. 'Who's there?' he asked, but as no one an- swered, he kept his eyes on the crack of the door, though the book was stUl held in its place. But it was at an adjoining door at which the ofSieer knocked. The only answer was a volley of oaths. Another knock and another explosion of oaths. ' Come, Mose, turn up and let us in,' said the of&cer, and his voice seemed to explain the matter, for there was soon heard a noise inside as of Mose fumb- ling for his clothes, and of feet shuffling off into a distant part of the room. At last Mose was ready. He turned a key, took down two bars, drew a bolt, and took the lighted match handed to him. A bottle in the center of the floor held the candle, to which he applied the light, and Mose's quarters were dimly visible It 84 SLEEP. was a large room, with a low ceiling, hung round with torn posters of great mass-meetings and candidates for office, pasted up, however, not so much for ornament as to stop the chinks in a windy day. In one comer lay a man asleep on a blanket ; in the distant comer lay rolled into a heap, from which Mose essayed in vain to kick off the blankets and show the face of his wife, two white women. His own bed was invisible, though when asked where it was, he pointed to the fireplace. There was no furniture of any sort on the premises. Mose apologized for being sober ; the Sunday liquor- law didn't work very well for him — ^being short, and every thing shut up, he had gone to bed earlier than usual. He was about the blackest specimen we had yet crossed, his legs were set on his body crookedly, his stature ex- ceedingly short, and his humor large. He evi- dently felt flattered by the visit, and boasted that, though his room was nearly empty now, it was generally fiiU enough. He could accom- modate with a board on his floor all that would come. " Leaving Mose to mourn his enforced sobri- ety, the gfficer pushed open the door of the THE COLORED BACHELOB. 85 colored bachelor wtom we had seen reading in bed. His book was the Volunteer, one of the choice issues of the Philadelphia press. He was evidently in an interesting passage when we entered, and had no courtesy to spare for us. He answered questions with the air of a man who feels that his house is his castle, which no man has a right to enter unless to search for stolen goods. He would be obliged to us if we would knock the next time we came — ^gentlemen always did. He declined to bid us good night as we left. His room was a contracted one, but his outfit of crockery and kitchen-ware creditable — showing that though literary tastes may not conduce to polished manners, they are not always inconsistent with order and neatness. We dropped in};o another cellar, some twen- ty feet long and ten feet wide, at one end, and eight at the other. Two tiers of bunks, placed end to end along the side, were only in part occupied. In an emergency the sleepers were tucked under the lower one on the earth. Twenty could be lodged there comfortably, Baid the German lessee of the premises, and he had taken thirty in. The loud voices of 8 86 SLEEP. the people carousing in the 'closed' bar- room over head did not prevent one little one from sleeping soundly by the side of its mother. Air there was none, nor could be, except as it might be forced in throug'h the only door of entrance. Quite a company had gathered about the cellar- way, who asked as we left ' whether we found it? ' When as- sured that we were not looking for stolen property, one asked earnestly, if it was yel- low fever we were looking for then, instinc- tively presuming in what haunts Yellow Jack will be sure to be found when on shore. " Next, we turned into Cow Bay, and in turn explored most of the rooms that are entered from this noted alley. Climbing to the top of one of the furthest up, much knocking on the door brought an answer from a gray-haired old man who deplored his poverty. He used to take lodgers, but all his bed-clothes had been stolen, and now he had none, but lived in filthy solitude. In another attic room a black man owned the drunken white woman at his feet on the floor as his new wife. Three wretched white women were in a corner, one of whom protested that theirs was the true DEGEADATIONS OF CROWDING. 87 happy family, but their ribdldry degenerated into angry oaths and curses on us as we left. A vacant room adjoining emitted a most sick- ening odor, and for causes that were apparent on entering it. In another an infant was cry- ing. A woman of reputable appearance and cleanly, who was trying to comfort it, with a scowl of despair on her face, said her husband was away, locked up now three months, as a witness. And so they all were, each with a tale of misery to tell, or if asleep, witli a stUl more hopeless story written in their faces. Some of these people pay rents that would se- cure for them decent apartments in decent parts of the city. But they seldom leave them, ex- cept to go up to Blackwell's Island, or to their common lod^ng in tbe ditch of Potter's Field." That tbe same degradations, social, civil, and moral, are found in other countries and otber ages, to result from many persons herding to- gether in tbe same small house, or hut, or single apartment, and that a cibange to larger apart- ments and more roomy buildings, effects a like change in social character and position, 88 SLEEP. is strikingly Ulustmted by a writer of the past age. ' " The town of Oardington, England, was one of the worst localities in the kingdom. Like all others of their class, the huts of the people were huddled together, were dirty, ill- built, ill-drained, imperfectly lighted and wa- tered, and altogether, so badly conditioned and unhealthy, as to be totally unfit for the resi- dence of human beings. While thus miserably cabined, compelled to be uncleanly on their do- mestic hearths, uncomfortable in their homes, any attempt to improve their minds, to induce them to become more sober, industrious, and home-loving was useless, except by first aim- ing to improve their physical condition, to supply them with the means of comfort, at- taching them thus to their own fireside, the great center of all pure feelings and sound morals, to foster and develop in them a relish for simple domestic enjoyments and thus open to them a way to the attainment of such mo- derate intellectual pleasures, as their lot in life did not forbid." To these wise and humane ends the first HOVELS AND COTTAGES. 89 step taken was to render the tomes of the poor fitter dwellings for self-respecting men, by removing the mud huts, and replacing them with handsome little cottages, and in a few years, Cardington became one of the most orderly and prosperous localities in the king- dom ; the people kept their homes neat, clean and comfortable, while they themselves became honest, sober, industrious, and religious; and at the end of nearly a hundred years, this same village is distinguished for the order, regularity, respectability, and thrift of its in- habitants. These changes, be it remembered, were commenced by exchanging the contracted mud hut of the family, for the roomier and more inviting cottage. In these inud huts, as in Ireland to-day, which the author has visited in person, a whole family dwells, of half a dozen or more, in the one single room^ which answers at once for kitchen, chamber, dining- room, and parlor. In such a mode of life there must be degradation, self-debasement 8* 90 SLEEP. and disease, proving fully all that was charged on a previous page ; and more, that the breaking up of this huddling, crowded life, with other things which naturally follow in their train, is the first, the essential step to- wards elevating the people and fitting them for the duties of citizenship and religion. The force of the above statements, which are corroborated by other writers, will be par- ried perhaps, by those living in the country, by saying that they apply only to the crowded portions of large cities, but that those who live in separate dwellings in the healthful and pure atmosphere of the country, need not be specially careful in having large airy rooms for each individual member of the fiimily. To this it may be replied, that Dr. Green- how, in an official paper on "The Preventar bility of certain kinds of Premature Death," published in London in eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, states that one half of the deaths occurring m a certain district within a period ATMOSPHERIC TAINTS. 91 of seven years, were of persons under twen- ty years of age, and tliat sucli a resiilt — " Does not require large aggregations of im- purity for development. A neglected sewer, ash-pit or cess-pool, an unsound soil-pipe, whether in town or country, may be aU that is required. " The farm-house or laborer's cottage, nay the mansion of the squire, though situated in the most healthy district, if putrefying animal and vegetable refuse is permitted to taint its immediate atmosphere, is as liable to be in- vaded by fever, as the town dwelUng in a close alley. " The taint of the atmosphere in the vicinity of fermenting and decaying matter, proceeds chiefly from the gases, but partly also from organic matter, in a state of active decomposi- tion. Letherby and- Barker most thoroughly demonstrate, not only how certainly sewerage gases affect both health and life, but how small \ proportion of the gases are capable of extin- guishing of life, giving rise to forms of disease according to the intensity and duration of their administration. 92 SLSEP. " The demonstrations of Dr. Barker were cliiefly in the way of experiment. Exposure by means of a suitable and mgenious contri- vance, to the gas of a large cess-pool, proved fatal to a mouse, and produced in larger ani- mals a series of symptoms analogous to those of febrile disease. Sulphureted hydrogen, car- bonic acid and ammonia, (hartshorn,) the prin- cipal and most deleterious components of sew- age gas, were experimented with separately. Of the first, less than two per cent in the air killed a puppy in two minutes and a half, and so small a proportion as forty-three hundredths (or less than one half of one per cent) killed another within the hour. " A dog exposed to an atmosphere contain- ing one quarter of one per cent of the gaa, died in nine hours and a half, but another in the same description of atmosphere, suffered at first, but soon recovered. Others were more violently affected in a less contaminated air. " Hartshorn and its salts produced what may be unhesitatingly considered typhoid symptoms^ and prostration and diarrhea followed the in- halation of carbonic acid in small proportions.'" Two most important facts developed by EMANATIONS IN THAMES TUNNEL. 93 these statements are, first, that different in- dividuals are affected with a different degree of violence on exposure to the very same causes of sickness, as was exhibited in the matter of the "National Hotel Disease." Second, the smaU amount of a deleterious gas mixed with the atmosphere, suf&cient to produce disease. Let it be remarked that sulphureted hydrogen, carbonic acid and ammonia, so small a proportion of which be- ing mixed in a pure atmosphere causes disease and death, are the very gases which axe given out in largest proportions by a sleeper, and the usual standing liquids of a chamber. In the cutting of the Thames Tunnel, the workmen suffered seriously from the delete- rious gas. Falling away in flesh, low fever, and actual death, were the result in several «ases, and this,, when' all chemical tests, and those of the most delicate kind, failed to dis- cover more than one part of the gas in a hxm- 94 SLSEP. dred ■ thousand of the air in which they worked. These facts show beyond denial, that it matters not how healthful the location of a man's residence may be, whether in city, village or country, whether on a plain or on a mountain-top — if there are causes in opera- tion which taint the atmosphere of the room in which he spends hours together, disease wiU inevitably result, and speedily^ And as crowding in rooms and sleeping together in the same bed, are indisputable causes of a vitiated atmosphere, it would seem to be an imperative duty on the part of all reflecting persons, to make it a study how to best secure large, airy, well-ventilated rooms to sleep in, one person in a bed, and, as often as practica- ble, one apartment to each person. In order to make an in^Eaceable impression on the reader's mind, of -the immediate deadly effects of breathing a bad air, the very kind of air which comes from the lungs at each out- FATAL EXPEBIMENTS. 95 breatliing, to wit, Carbonic Acid Gas, the fol- lowing memorandum of a French gentleman is giVe;i Verbatim. From some cause, he became tired of life, and not being willing to commit the fearful crime of self-destruction, without having something useful connected with it, he wrote a statement of his sensations as long as he was able to trace an ihtelligible line, thus secu- ring for himself an imtnortalily, which, perhaps, could never have been achieved by him in any other way. M. Deal resolved to destroy him- self by burning oh&rcoal in a close room, and thus narrates: " I have thought it useful in the interest of science, to make known thes effects of charcoal upon man. I place a latnp, a candle and a watch on my table, and commence the cere- mony. '' It is a quarter-past ten ; I have just lighted the stove ; the charcoal bums feebly. " Twenty minutes past tfen ; the pulse is calm^ and beats at its usual rate. "Thirty minutes past ten; a thick vapor 96 SLEEP. gradually fills the room ; the candle is nesirly extinguished ; I begin to feel a violent bisad- ache ; my eyes fill with tears ; I feel a ge leral sense of discomfort ; the pulae is agitated. " Forty minutes past ten ; my candle has gone out ; the lamp still bums ; the veins at my tem- ple throb as if they would burst ; I feel very sleepy ; I suffer horribly in the stomach ; my pulse is at eighty degrees. " Fifty minutes past ten ; I am almost stifled ; strange ideas assail me. ... I can scarce- ly breathe. ... I shall not go fer. .... There are symptoms of madness. . . " Sixty minutes past ten ; I can scarcely write. . . . my sight is troubled. . . . My lamp is going out. ... I did not think it would be such agony to die. . . . ten . . " . . Here followed some quite illegible characters. Life had ebbed. On the following morning he was found on the floor." The expired breath is loaded with Carbonic Acid, which was the agent of death, in the case just cited. The fatal effects were produced in a little over an hour. But not less destructive are the results of breathing the atmospher j of a EFFECTS OF BAD AIK. 97 room crowded with human beings, as was terri- bly illustrated in the passage of the steamer Londonderry, which left Liyerpool on the sec- ond of December, eighteen hundred and forty- eight, for an Irish sea-port. A sudden and fearful storm came on, which threatened the immediate destruction of the vessel. In order to allow the sailors the fullest opportunity of managing the ship well, the passengers, two hundred in number, were required to go below into the cabin, which was eighteen feet long, eleven wide, and seven high. The hatches were closed, and a stout tarpaulin was fastened over the only entrance, so as to prevent the passen- gers jfrom coming on deck in their uncontrolla- ble alarm. There is no evidence to suppose that the captain acted otherwise than in good faith. He took the course, best calculated in his own opinion, to secure the safety of the ves- sel and passengers, but he was feaxfuUy igno- rant of the nature of bad air and himian ema- nations; as much so, perhaps, as some who 9 98 SLEEP. may read these lines. He acted on the " spur of the moment;" there is no time for delibera- tion in a sudden, fearful storm at sea. The re- sult, however, was, that in a short time, in the fearful agony of the death-struggle, the surging mass of suffocating unfortunates burst open the hatches an(i poured out on the deck, the blood started from nose, eyes, and ears, and horrible convulsions agonized the sufferers. Many were dying, seventy-two were already dead I What they endured, no pen has described; but in the very nature of the case, they must have en- dured the terrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta, already referred to ; and in the wish to produce complete conviction on the reader's mind as to the corrupting influences which human emana- tions have on the atmosphere of a close room, and as to the deadly effects of breathing such an air, the description of Commander HolweU is given, as printed in the Annual Begister for seventeen hundred and fifty-eight, he, himself, having been one of the prisoners. BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. 99 " Figure to yourself the situation of a hun- dred and forty-six wretches, exhausted by continual fatigue and action, crammed together in a cube of eighteen feet, in a close sultry night in Bengal, shut up to the eastward and southward (the only quarter whence air could reach us) by dead walls, and by a wall and door to the north, open only to ^he westward by two windows strongly barred with iron, from which we could receive scarce any circu- lation of &esh air. . . We had been but a few minutes confined before every one fell into a perspiration so profuse, you can form no idea of it. This brought on a raging thirst, which increased in proportion as the body was drained of its moisture. Various expedients were thought of to give more room and air. To gain the former it was moved to put off their clothes ; this was approved as a happy motion, and in a few moments every one was stripped ■ — ^myself, Mr. Court, and the two young gentle- men by me, excepted. For a little while they flattered themselves with having gained a mighty advantage ; every hat was put in mo- tion to gain a circulation of air, and Mr. Baillie proposed that every man should sit on his 100 SLEEP. hams. This expedient was several times put in practice, and at each time many of the poor creatures, whose natural strength was less than that of others, or who had been more exhausted, and could not immediately recover their legs, when the word was given to rise — fell to rise no more, for they were instantly trod to death or suffocated. When the whole body sat down, they were so closely wedged together that they were obliged to use many efforts before they could get up again. Before nine o'clock every man's thirst grew intolerable, and respiration difl&oult. Efforts were made to force the door, but in vain. Many insults were used to the guard to provoke them to fire on us. For my own part, I hitherto felt little pain or uneasi- ness, but what resulted from my anxiety for the sufferings of those Tvithin. By keeping my face close between two of the bars I obtained air enough to give my lungs easy play, though my perspiration was excessive, and thirst com- mencing. At this period, so strong a urinous volatile effluvia came from the prison, that I was not able to turn my head that way for more than a few seconds at a time. "Now every body, except those situated EFFECTS OF CEOWDED E00M3. 101 in and near tlie windows, began to grow out. rageous, and many delirious. "Water 1 water f became the general cry. An old Jemmantdaar, taking pity on us, ordered the people to bring us some skins of water. This was wbat I dreaded. I foresaw it would prove the ruin of the small chance left us, and essayed many times to speak to him privately to forbid it being brought ; but the clamor was so loud it became impossible. The water appeared. Words can not paint the universal agitation and raving the sight of it threw us into. I flat- tered myself that some, by preserving an equal temper of mind, might outlive the night ; but now the reflection that gave me the greatest pain was, that I saw no possibility of one escaping to .tell the dismal tale. Until the water came, I had not myself suffered much from thirst, which instantly grew excessive. We had no means of conveying it into the prison but by hats forced through the bars ; and thus myself, and Coles, and Scott, supplied them as fast as possible. But those who have experienced intense thirst, or are acquainted with the cause and nature of this appetite, will be sufficiently sensible it could receive no more 9* 102 SLEEP. than a momentary alleviation ; the cause still subsisted. Though we brought full hats through the bars, there ensued such violent struggles and frequent contests to get it, that before it reached the lips of any one, there would be scarcely a small teacupful left in them. These " supplies, like sprinkling water on fire, only seemed to feed the flame. my dear sir ! how shall I give you a just concep- tion of what I felt at the cries and cravings of those in the remoter parts of the prison, who could not entertain a probable hope of ob- taining a drop, yet could not divest themselves of expectation, however unavailing, calling on me by the tender considerations of affection and friendship. The confusion now became general and horrid. Several quitted the other window (the only chance they had for life) to force their way to the water, and the throng and press upon the window was beyond bear- ing ; many, forcing their way jfrom the further part of the room, pressed down those in their passage who had less strength, and trampled them to death. "From about nine to eleven I sustained this cruel scene, stiU supplying them with TERRIBLE SCENES. 105 water, thougli my legs were almost broke -with the weight against them. By this time I my- self was near pressed to death, and my two companions, with Mr. Parker, who -had forced himself to the window, were really so. At last I became so pressed and wedged up, I was de- prived of all motion. Determined now to give every thing up, I called to them, as a last in- stance of their regard, that they would relieve ihe pressure upon me, jnd permit me to retire out of the window to die in quiet. They gave fraj, and with much difSculty I forced a pas- sage into the center of the prison, where the throng was less by the many dead, amounting to one third, and the numbers who flocked to the windows ; for by this time they had water also at the other window. ... I laid my- self down on some of the dead, and, recom- mending myself to Heaven, had the comfort of thinking my sufferings could have no long duration. My thirst now grew insupportable, and the difficulty of breathing much increased ; and I had not remained in this situation ten tqinutes before I was seized with a pain in my breast, and palpitation of heart, both to the most exquisite degree. These obliged me to 104 SLEEP. get up again, but still the pain, palpitation, and difficulty of breathing increased. I re- tained my senses notwithstanding, and had the grief to see death not so near me as I had hoped, but could no longer bear the pains I suffered, without attempting a relief, which I knew fresh air would and could only give me. I instantly determined to push for the window opposite me, and by an effort of double the strength I ever before possassed, gained the third rank at it — with one hand seized a bar, and by that means gained a second, though I think there were at least six or seven ranks between me and the window. In a few mo- ments the pain, palpitation, and difficulty of breathing ceased, but the thirst continued in- tolerable. I called aloud : ' Water, for God's sakel' I had been concluded dead; but as soon as the men found me amongst them, they still had the respect and tenderness for me to cry out, ' Give him water 1 ' nor would one of them at the window attempt to touch it till I had drunk. But from the water I had no re- lief; my thirst was rather increased by it; so I determined to drink no more, but patiently wait the event. I kept my mouth moist from TEEEIBLE SCENES. 105 time to time by sucking the perspiration out of my shirt-sleeves, and catching the drops as they fell like heavy rain from my head and face; you can hardly imagine how unhappy I was if any of them escaped my mouth. . I was observed by one of my com- panions on the right, in the expedient of al- laying my thirst by sucking my shirt-sleeve. He took the hint, and robbed me from time to time of a considerable part of my store, though, after I detected him, I had the ad- dress to begin on that sleeve jBrst when I thought my re*rvoirs were sufficiently replen- ished, and our mouths and noses often met in contact. This man was one of the few who escaped death, and he has since paid me the compliment of assuring me he believed he owed his life to the many comfortable draughts he had from my sleeves. No Bristol water could be more soft or pleasant than what arose from perspiration. " By half-past eleven the much greater num- ber of those living were in an outrageous delirium, and others quite ungovernable; few retaining any calmness but the ranks near the windows. They now all found that water, 106 SLEEP. instead of relieving their uneasiness, rathei tightened it, and Air ! air 1 was the general cry. Every insult that could be devised against the guard was repeated to provoke them to fire on us, every man that could, rushing tumultuously towards the windows with eager hopes of meeting the first shot. But these failing, they whose strength and spirits were quite exhausted laid themselves down, and quietly expired upon their fellows ; others who had yet some strength and vigor left, made a last effort for the windows, and several suc- ceeded by leaping and scramWing over the backs and heads of those in the first ranks, and got hold of the bars, firom which there was no removing them. Many to the right and left sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon sxiffocated; for now a steam arose from the living and the dep,d which affected us in all its circumstances, as if we were forcibly held by our heads over a bowl of strong volatUe spirit of hartshorn until suffocated ; nor could the effluvia of the one be distinguished from the other. I need not ask your commiseration when I tell you that in this plight from half an hour after eleven till two in the morning, 1 TEEEOES OF SUFFOCATION. 107 Bustaioed the weight of a heavy man with hia knees on my back, and the pressure of hia whole body on my head ; a Dutch sergeant who had taken his seat on my left shoulder, and a black Soldier bearing on my right : all which nothing would have enabled me to support but the props and pressure equally sustaining me all round. The two latter I frequently dis- lodged by shifting my hold on the bars, and driving my knuckles into their ribs ; but my friend above stuck fast, and, as he held by two bars, was immovable. The repeated trials I made to dislodge this insufferable incumbrance upon me, at last quite exhausted me, and to- wards two o'clock, finding I must quit the window or sink where I was, I resolved on the former, having borne truly, for the sake of others, infinitely more for life than the best oi it is worth. " I was at this time sensible of no pain, and little uneasiness. I found a stupor coming on apace, and laid myself down by that gallant old man, the Eeverend Jervas Bellamy, who lay dead with his son, the lieutenant, hand in hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison. Of what passed in the interval, to the time of re- 108 SLEEP surrection from this hole of horrors, I can give you no account." Surely, further argument can not be needed to produce a practical conviction on th6 read- er's mind of the absolute necessity to health, of so arranging, that these destructive, human em- anations shall not accumulate in the chambers where a third of existence is passed, but that while as few of them as possible shall be emitted, even these should be swept away by such ventilating contriisances as will most effi- ciently secure so desirable an object ; the two first steps being large rooms and separate beds. A conjectural reason forms another argu- ment against two persons sleeping near each other. Bach individual has an amount "of electrical influence, which in its normal pro- portion, is health to him. Electricity, like air and water, tends constantly to an equi- librium, and when two bodies come near each other, having different quantities, that which SLEEPING WITH OTHERS. 109 has the greater imparts to that which has the less, until both are equal. The lightning and the thunder are caused by this exchange between a cloud which has plus, and another which has its own share, minus. Wind is the passing of air from a section which has more to a another which has less. But if a human body, with its healthful share of elec- tricity or other influence, gives part of it to another which has less, it gives away just that much of its life, and must die, unless it • is recovered in some way ; hence the frequent fact, which it needs no authority to substan- tiate, that a healthy young infant, who sleeps with an old person, will wither and wUt and wane and die. Thus, also, the healthy have been observed to grow diseased themselves, by sleeping with sickly persons. In the author's experience, of some twenty years, in the special study and treatment of I'ommon consumption of the lungs, the fact Has stood out with constant confirmations, that 10 110 SLEEP. of the widows and widowers applying for relief, quite a large proportion had lost their companions by consumption. On the other hand, no facts have come to light as yet, which prove that the more weak or sickly person is at all benefited by what injures the healthier party. If then, two clouds of different electrical states, can not approach each other without a mutual change of conditions, and if a man, who has an electrical state, natural and healthful to him, comes near another in an unhealthful state, it would seem demonstra^tive that harm, by an unchangeable physical law, must fall to the healthier, without benefiting the other; and that sleeping together in the same bed, is a certain injury, and ought to be avoided as a habit, by every reflecting person, who is so fortunate as to have the means of having a "oom and a bed to himself. It certainly is undeniable, that influences are e'cohanged, call them what we may, which waste k.wfl.j the. lift HOW TO SLEEP SOUNDIY. Ill of the child, and make it -wither and wUt and die, like a flower without water. The sarae is true of the robust sleeping with the weakly ; and the feeble sleeping with the strong. This interchange of influence from close associa- tion, is such, that in the course of years, the man and wife have been taken for brother and sister. But it is a law of nature, enforced by authority, human and divine, that kindred shall not intermarry ; observation shows that it deteriorates the race morally, mentally, and physically. This may point to the fact that human health, that the perfection of our physical nature, at least its preservation, ia dependent to a great extent on intermarriages between persons who are at as great a remove as possible from one another, and, we may say, of electrical states, as different as possible. It must be confessed that this is conjecture as to the system, but the on 3 fact is clear, that sleeping together in the same bed is des- tructive to health as between the old and the 112 SLEEP. young, as between the well and the sick, and we may infer as between persons of different constitutions. A beneficent Providence has wisely ordered that the preservation and perpetuation of the race should depend on the gratification of certain appetites and propensities, and that such gratifications should be pleasurable. But a high wisdom dictates that these should not be blunted by immoderate indulgence, nor marred by too frequent repetition ; and it should be remembered that they are all under the same general laws, for infinite wisdom avoids unnecessary complications and diversi- ties. "Few and simple" may be considered the description of all the regulations neces sary for the preservation of corporeal man. "Regularity and moderation" is wmtten on all that gives us pleasure, with a wise view that it should wear out only with life, and that at a good old age. The regulations connected with eating, drinking, sleeping, etc., INSTINCT AND EEASON. US are so much alike, tlie temptations to over indulgence so constant, the necessity of re- straint so apparent, and the evils of excess as to times and amounts, so much to be dreaded, that a volume might be filled in illustrating each. It may, however, suffice to treat only of one or two, leaving it to the intelligence and aptness of the reader to make a general application, and thus much time and space will be saved, while the practical lessons wiU be equally valuable. Instinct is given to the brute, but diviner reason to man — the great end and iaim of both being the preservation and perpetuation of the species of each. This instinct and reason were implanted for the purpose of re- gulating the enjoyment of those pleasures which are wisely and benevolently made a happiness and a necessity. Instinct leads the brute 'to the indulgence of the appetites, and how often and how much it shall eat and drink and sleep is apportioned in a manner 10* 114 SLEEP. which makes excess impracticable ; hence there is a happy exemption from the mil- lion forms of disease and pain and suffering belonging to the lot of man. He was made of a nobler nature, and was treated as a nobleman, in that he was not bound down to rules and regulations as inflexible as fet- ters of brass, but was left to govern him- self, to choose for himself to act for him- self, with the reward of elevation here, and happiness hereafter, if he deported himself well; but with the penalty of suffering and death, physical and moral, if he failed to practice a high and wise and dignified self- restraint, the first element of which, as to eating, drinking, and sleeping, is uniformity, A certain amount of sleep rests, renews, and strengthens the whole man, but to accomplish such a result, sleep must be regular. As to what constitutes regularity, it is only neces- sary to remark, that the general habit should be to retire at the same hour in the early HOW TO SLEEP SOUNDLT. 115 evening of every day. In a short time the result will be an ability to go to sleep witMn a few moments after retiring, and to sleep con- tinuously until morning, provided the sleeper leaves his bed at the moment he first wakes up, and does not sleep during the day. In this way sleep will be refreshing, will be de- licious, and to the busy worker of brain or body, will be worth more than silver or gold, and this priceless habit of sleeping soundly will be continued to a good old age. It is in one sense a daily miracle that a man wakes up out of sleep ; the more it is considered, the more wonderful will it ap- pear. With a regularity of retirement, and arranging to guard against interruptions, na- ture wakes us up the very moment the sys- tem has had enough repose, the propensity to sleep will come on within a few minutes of the regular time, will grow stronger until it is yielded to, and eventually wiU become m a measure irresistible, or its resistance will 116 SLEEP. be attended with great discomfort. Another result vnll be that the body will wake up from sleep within a few minutes of the same point of time, from one month's end to an- other, being a little sooner or a little later, making variations according to the tempera- ture of the weather, the condition of the at- mosphere, and the amount of the exercise of the precediag day. Thus it is with other desires of the animal nature. Let there be an appointed time, not to be changed for any common reason ; the feelings wUl come at that appointed time, and when satisfied, nature calls for no more until the appointed time comes round again. But suppose enough sleep is not given. Suppose we make an effort to rob nature of her due allowance, madness, imending and hopeless, is the result; if the curtailment ia not great, various degrees of debility and wasting and decline come on apace. Suppose, on the other hand, it is attempted SLEEPING AND EATING COMPAEED. 117 to force more sleep on nature than she re- quires, it is an unnatural sleep, it does not rest and refresh and invigorate ; and instead of having more good sleep, the whole of it is restless and disturbed, and we lose the lusciousness of it all. As to eating, there is a remarkable paral- lel. If a man eats when he is decidedly hungry, and at regular hours of the day, not stimulatiag or teasing or tempting the appe- tite by a great variety of food or otherwise, he will be regularly hungry under ordinary circumstances, will digest his food well, and will not desire it especially, except at the stated times. li^ on the other hand, the appetite is stimulated, if it is tempted, or if a person places himself in a situation where food can be had for the tiftning round, or for the stretching out of the hand, and it is taken when there is no special desire for it, and lis SLEEP. wHen the person would just as lief let it alone as to take it, under these circumstancea a fictitious and an unnatural appetite will be jreated, the digestion will be deranged, a de- praved craving for food will be set up; but no sooner is it swallowed, than some trouble- some feeling will arise, only to be arrested by another gratification ; and thus the whole life is a craving, an unsatisfied desire, and so much of a burden that the predominating wish is to die. In this same manner have multitudes fallen from high positions into degrading habits of beastly intoxication, by allowing themselves to have convenient drinks at hand, and at first to taste them, not for any particular re- lish, but just to be doing something; and having no regular hours for drink, and no regular quantity, an unnatural desire springs up, a steady craving is generated, increasing in its remorselessness day by day, until there BEGULAEITY OF GRATIFICATIONS. 119 is no happiness but in constant indulgence, •when at length even that ceases to satisfy, and Ufe is a torture. The appetites, then, are to be .gratified at stated times, and at none others; they are not to be teased or tempted or stimulated by always having at hand the facilities for grati- fication, but kept in abeyance for fixed oc- casions; those occasions being determined at first by the decided calls of nature, which will then be made regularly, moderately, and continuously, to the end of Hfe. But if the means of gratification are kept at hand, if the mind is permitted to rest on them and cherish them, to look forward to them, to tempt and tease and worry, the in- evitable result will be a morbid appetite, a voracious craving never to be satisfied, ener- gies wasted, powers prostrated, and an early and irretrievable decay, inducing, in a greater multitude of cases than one in many would imagine, a depleted and soured life, and a 120 SLEEP. miserable suicide's grave. If tlie victim sur- vives incessant tortures, life is but a drawn- out agony. Inordinate indulgence wastes away the physical constitution, the influence of which is perpetuated to all that is born of it; throwing around the hapless victim the slimy coils of a boa-constrictor, which are tightened pitilessly every day, until health and hope, and life itself, mortal and im- mortal, are crushed out helplessly and for- ever. What is said of real but unlawful indulgen- ces, is true of all forms of the artificial ; and ex- cesses in the lawful are not the less pernicious, are not the less destructive of body and health, and heart and soul, than are excesses in the un- natural and the unlawful; and in this state- ment there is a lesson of the very highest prac- tical importance to every reader ; hence, one of the grounds for the pains taken in these pages to convince the understanding, that as to the appetites of our nature, barriers should be op- EESTEAINT OF APPETITES. 121 posed to the too inordinate and too facile op- portunities of gratification; and that as to them all, there should be such metes and bounds as the nobler reason may indicate, ami as observation and experience may show are proper, healthful and safe. Without wise re- straints, as experienced physicians well know, effects, unsuspected by the sufferers themselves, or by their friends, are sometimes induced, which have a deplorable influence on mind and body ; as to the latter, wearing it away into hopeless emaciation and decline ; and as to the mind, inducing an exaggeration of many of the most undesirable characteristics of oijr nature ; it becomes unsteady, vacillating, fretful, mo-^ rose and suspicious ; self-respect and self-esteem are lost ; an intolerable depression weighs down the whole man ; hope, and desire, and ambition MI, and relief is madly sought in suicide, the sorrowftd verdict being, "Died by his own hand ;" a verdict rendered, oftener than mai»y 11 122 SLEEP. thiiik for, over tlie doubly dishonored body; dishonored in the manner of the death, and more deeply stUl by the degrading causes of it. Such being some of the results of over-indul- gences, thoughtM persons naturally seek for some rule of guidance, and we are not left ■without an index, without some friendly line of right and safety. Eevelation seems to mark out that line, interposes a mete and bound, de- cides the measure of our gratifications in the comprehensive expressions : " Be ye temperate in all things." "Let your moderation be known to all." If this temperance is not ob- served, if this moderation is not practiced habit- ually, persistently, and with a wise, noble, he- roic self-denial, the penalty will not fail to be inflicted, pleasure will first lose its keenness, next, it will paU upon the senses, and ultimate- ly faU, In one direction, the power of sleep has been lost; in another, the appetite for food has been lost; and the person becomes the vie- EXTINCTION OF FAMILY NAMES. 123 tim of ills, physical, mental and moral, which make of life a crushing burden, a miserable failure, and a continual cnise. It is to the excessive indulgence of the appe- tite which leisure and easy opportunity affords in large cities, that family names die out so soon. It is rare in Paris, that the grand-child reaches manhood in vigorous health, if at all, whose parents and grand-parents were bom, and lived, and died in that voluptuous capital. The rapid disappearance of family names which were prominent and numerous in New- York in the beginning of the present century, shows that the greatest city in the New World is not behind the greatest of the Old, in the respect named ; not owing wholly, it is true, to extrav- agant indulgences, but largely owing to that, beyond contradiction. In every direction, idleness and opportunity have led multitudes every where, in the cily and in the country, to brutalize themselves. For example, one very common cause of some 124 SLEEP. of the worst forms of dyspeptic disease, is the not being particularly engaged, while at the same time, some inyiting article of food is at hand, in the same room. This has been al- ready referred to ; it is the same in relation to drink, and every other form of indulgence, and there is no safety against any of them, but in the interposition of efficient barriers to too facile gratifications, and the more of these a man can erect, the safer will he be, and they are wisest, who use all means for the purpose which can even slightly aid' in accomplishing the desired result. The reflecting reader can here form the re- quisite rules of action ; the first great laws be- ing regularity and temperance ; the latter being promoted by not having at hand the easy op- portunity of indulgence ; by putting temptation out of the way ; by cultivating an active and fully occupied life, and by not making it his chief aim and end, to eat, and drink, and enjoy the pleasures which perish in the moment of AVOIDING TEMPTATION. 125 their using, but to live for the high and absorb- ing purpose of human elevation, and of achiev- ing an immortal existence beyond the present scenes. Sight, and propinquity, and touch, bring wants which otherwise would not have sprung up, wants which grow, and strengthen, and overpower, until reason and common-sense are swept away as with a flood, and the reign of unrestraint sets in, to the end of a complete brutalization; and to prevent such results, or any approach to them, the expedient of the book is proposed, as offering a comparatively easy remedy ; for a quaint writer says : " When a man has once got into the rapids of Niagara, the next thing he will do, wiQ be to go over the Falls. Having once got in, there is no pos- sibility of getting out. The way for him to escape going over, is not to get into the rapids. When a man has once put a spark to powder, he need not clap his hand upon it to keep it from going off. It will do no good. The only way for him to keep it from going off, is to IL* L23 SLEEP. keep tlie spark away from it. Many men can let the cup alone if they keep away from it ; who can not, if they go where it is. Many men can abstain from lust, jf they do not go within the circuit of its malaria, who can not free themselves from it, after they have once become infected by it. Many men can control their temper, so long as they avoid every thing calculated to arouse it, who have no power over it, after it has once become aroused. Many of our dispositions must be taken care of, beforehand, not afterwards. And when they have led us into wrong courses, our error consists, not in the fact that we could not keep ourselves, but in the fact, that we did not learn enough about ourselves to know that some parts of our nature were not to be exposed; that some parts of our nature must be carried with watching, with vigilant forelooking." The great principle is well put here, that to avoid excesses, we must not put ourselves in the way of a too easy indulgence of what is al EFFECT OF EXCESSES. 127 fowable. If all tlie evils whicli arise from any kind of over-indulgence, ended in tlie persons who practice them, it would be, comparatively speaking, a happy thing ; but they are far-reach- ing in their pernicious influences ; they extend beyond those who practice them, and are car- ried into the ages to come, destined to be a blight on generations yet unborn. AU excesses beget debility of the organs connected with them, and these organs, whether they be the lungs, the stomach, the liver, or any others, will always, under this excessive action or stimulation, prepare a vitiated, im- perfect material, diseased and monstrous, ac- cording to circumstances. Hence the multi- tude of weakly, sickly, puny persons, in every direction; muscles flabby, bones slight, face wan, gait unstable, and the whole "physique" an abortion. As to the moral nature, there is a blight over it all — a wanting to be some- thing, without an ability to be any thiag— fickle, wayward and unfixed; while in another di- 128 SLEEP. rection, there are low inclinations, vicious ten- dencies, degrading practices, and a general lack of all that is high, and noble, and ele- vating. As to the mind of those begotten in brutalizing indulgences, it is without strength, without persistence of purpose, and without either the capacity or the desire for high cul- ture and exalted ajms. Thus the whole na- ture, physical, moral and mental, is a blight, a blot, a blank. That the characteristics of the future being, in body, and brain, and heart, are colored by those of the parents, which prevail about the time of reproduction, is conceded by scientific men, and demonstrated by facts. A Massa- chusetts ' state paper, on "Lunacy," reports that four fifths of the idiotic children, were those of parents one or both of whom, lived in habits of drunkenness — indicating that children begotten in the stupor of debauch, will have a vacuity of mind for life. On the other hand, it is known that the mother of IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION. 129 the first Napoleon, for montlis before he was born, accompanied her soldier husbana in his martial expeditions, and traversed the country side by side with him on horseback, thus sharing in all his toils. Hannah of old, conceived and carried Samuel, while her whole nature was imbued with a deep reli- gious devotion, under the influence of which she consecrated the future prophet to the supreme service of his Maker. It would seem, then, to be a wise forethought, that perpetuation should be accomplished under favoring conditions of mind and body ; the lat- ter in high health, invigorated by a regular, imbroken and refreshing sleep, the blood all pure, by an eight or ten hours' breathing of fresh, luscious, life-giving air ; while the former, fully aroused to a sense of high responsibili- ties, the heaxt and affections, at the same time, loving and pure, would present a combina- tion of desirable circumstances, which could not possibly be hoped for in any other way 130 SLEEP. than by the expedient which the idea of the book proposes, whereby every thing could be made a subject of deliberate, thought- ful, and rational calculation, and surprise, in moments of mental, moral and physical un- fitness, would be impossible. BUSINESS AND SLEEP. It will not be denied that a night of sound, undisturbed sleep, is essential to bodily com- fort for the next day, and quite as essential in its renovating influences on the brain, for the proper discharge of the business duties of each; and it can not be gainsaid that separate apartments greatly promote this end. To provide weU for the family, is the first social duty, and it is the absorbing aim of every intelligent and affectionate parent. Such provision falls mainly on the fether, and it is of primary importance that when he comes home fi:om the labors of the day, he should be able to retire early, and remain undisturbed BROKEN SLEEP PERNICIOUS, Vdl until the morning, that fully refreshed and invigorated as to body and mind, he may be placed in the most advantageous position possible, for the exhibition of that activity and alacrity which are essential to business success. That in moments of weakness, in- attention, or want of concentration, men have made mistakes, have fallen into errors of judgment foreign to their general character, by which fortune, and perhaps position too, have been compromised, and their families brought to subsequent deprivation and actual destitution," will not be disputed. That there were causes for such transient mental weak- ness, is just as true, and that want" of suffi- cient rest and sleep is an adequate cause, is patent to all. Certain it is, that battles have been lost, and the fate of nations decided, for less causes than the want of a good night's sleep. In order to secure this to business men and to laboring men, to the fullest ex- tent, they should have rooms, or at least 132 SLEEP. beds, to themselves It is of importance, also, to tlie wife, but not to so great an extent, because she is always at home, and if her sleep is interrupted from any cause during the night, she can take it iu the daytime; but the husband is at his business, and it is impracticable. In very many cases, house- hold duties may not allow the wife to retire at an early hour. Ten, eleven, and even twelve o'clock finds some of them barely able to complete their daily round of duties, in consequence, how»ver — ^in too many cases — of the inexcusable habit of remaining in bed during the precious hours of the early morning. But be that as it may, whether it is actually necessary or not, the effect is the same, to wit, to disturb the sleeper in the first sleep, preventing falling asleep again, in many persons, for hours afterwards — ^valuable hours utterly wasted. And as similar results occur to both parents, while infant children are growing up, it is in place to propose some INFANTS SLEEPING. 133 rules in reference to the same; this is espe- cially desirable for the mother's sake first, and that of the child itself, also ; for if she has her ifest broken, it has a most debilitating effect on the body, and causes great mental irritability or depression, all of -virhich react on the body and mind of the child through its natural aliment, and in other ways. It may be proper, for the first month or two, that the child should sleep in the same bed with its mother, but after that, both will be greatly "benefited by separate beds. An infant shoiild not be allowed to sleep for several hours previous to ita bed- time, which should be about one hour after sun-down, when it should be fed and put to sleep. When the mother retires, it should be fed again, then if the crib be on the same level with the bed, and close to it with the side let down, the mother can place the child in it without straining herself. At the end of several hours, hun- 12 134 SLSEP. ger will wake it up, when it can be nursed replaced in its crib and sleep sound- ly until the morning, if it has not been allowed to sleep too long or too laite in the afternoon, and thus afford the wearied mother a delicious night's rest, to arise in the morning with a renovated system, re- freshed, thankful, and hopeful, and ready to enter on the duties of the day with a light and cheerful heart. On the other hand, in consequence of bad management and a want of system as to the times of eating and sleeping for the nursling, and by keeping it in the same bed with her, it be- comes restless, it wakes up a dozen times perhaps in a night, and each time, by some noise or motion rouses the mother, with the result of depriving her of that rest and re- pose which she so much requires, and the morning finds the body still weary, the mind discouraged and depressed, totally unfitted for the proper discharge of house- NURSING AT NIGHT. 135 hold duties, as is too plainly indicated by the expression of listlessness and sadness which pervade th.e features. Indeed, a mother can better afford to eat too little than to sleep too little, but by arranging to have the regularities named carried out for several nights in succession, there ■wUl be a happy change in all respeqts. When a child is six months old, it can safely fast five or six hours if asleep, and, as before, if fed a little before sun-down, it should be put to bed a little later, and not be allowed to take any thing more until the mother retires for the night, which may be about ten o'clock, and if nursed then, it need not be- repeated until the morning, thus allowing the mother to have her "first" sleep unin- terrupted, a consummation so earnestly de- sired by many an overtaxed wife, but which she is unable to arrange for want of a lit- tle thought, firmness and management. The reader is earnestly requested to make par- 136 SLEEP. ticular note of it, that the seeds of a life- time suffering, if not an early death, are sown in the constitutions of children by their own mothers during the nursing pe- riod. Millions of children die before they are two years old, by a wrong system of feeding, originating in the ignorance of the parents. The instinct and the highest plea- sure of the new-born child is to eat, it is the balm for aU its cries, it hushes every complaint. The young mother soon finds this out, and putting it to the breast is the panacea for infant fretfulness. But it soon happens that the stomach is overtaxed. A second feeding occurs before the first has been disposed of, the stomach is thus kept working aU the time, and soon has not the strength to work any longer, and the food being unacted upon, begins to ferment, turns sour, generates wind and this is the "colic" of infancy. Colic gives pain, pain excites crying, to quiet which, food is given, or FEEDING OF INFANTS. 137 "soothing" syrups are administered, -with the inevitable result in all cases, of exaggerating tlie trouble sooner or later ; and in countless instances, tbere is a speedy and entire break- ing down of the system, and death ends the outrage, as to the child, but in the mean while, by reason of the child's sufferings, many a night has been passed in sleepless- ness by both parents. Under such, circum- stances, separate chambers are a necessity, so that at least one of them may have the repose so much needed in the increased de- mands of the occasion. Under the circum- stances, it is fitting here to append a few remarks, as a means of avoidiag nightly disturbances, on the FEEDING- OF INFANTS. For the first few weeks the child may be nursed every two hours, at the beginning of the third week every three hours. When six months old, no good purpose can be 12* 138 SLEEP. subserved by feeding a child oftener than every four hours, and never between. Hence if fed at sun-down when it it should be put to bed for the night, then fed again when the mother retires four hours later, she will not be waked during the first sleep which does so much good, and only once during the night, and long before the child is two years old, she will have brought it into the habit of not requiring food during the whole night, a consummation which many a mother has earnestly looked for, but not knowing how to bring it about, has fallen into irregu- larities of nursing, which in the way already described, have entailed life-long injuries, physical, mental and social. DIFFERENT TEMPERAMENTS SLEEPING- TOGETHER, It is a well-known fact that some persona require more bed-clothing than others; one feels so much oppressed as not to be able CHILDEEN SLEEPING TOGETHER. 139 to sleep with an amount of covering which leaves another in so chilly a condition as to make refreshing sleep an impossibility. A high hard bolster is essential to the com- fort of one, while another is incommoded by a slight elevation of the head during sleep. There are cases not a few where one person can not sleep with a window up without especial bodily suffering for some time afterwards ; others feel as if they would suffocate, or are in a process of certain poisoning, unless the windows are hoisted to their fullest capacity for the admission of an abundant supply of out-door air. In all these varieties of cases, there does not ap- pear to be a better and an easier remedy than that of separate beds and rooms for all. CHILDREN SLEEPING TOGETHER. As soon as children reach their seventh year, various good purposes would be sub- served by their sleeping apart; indeed, the 140 SLEEP. neglect of this arrangement has chensbod feelings, and has ultimately led to early- vicious practices, alike destructive of the health of the body and the purity of the heart — to become, years before adolescence is passed, a source of physical and mental maladies sometimes, from •which death itself is a welcomed deliverance. Here, a branch of the subject opens a field of investigation at once wide and im- portant, but one which requires so much judgment in the handling, that it is a debatable question, whether or not it should be left unexplored. Some have treated the subject, but with such want of discretion, that Carpenter, of England, one of the best physiologists of the age, hesitatingly records his opinion and regret at the evil tenden- cies of the publications made. During the later " teens " of youth, cer- tain debilitating occurrences take place in the early morning hours in the rather un MORJSriNG EXHAUSTIONS. 141 Bound or dreamy sleep wHicli precedes the waking up, which, if allowed to continue unchecked, waste away the vigor and flesh and strength of the body, eventually impairing the miad itself, causing an unaccountable depression of spirits, a distressing nervous- ness which declines sometimes into a settled stupor or deplorable idiocy; others again become furious maniacs, according to the various constitutions and temperaments of the persons affected. This malady does not occur to all young or unmarried persons by any means, but it does afflict many to a greater or less ex- tent ; not especially hurtful to any, if it does not occur oftener than two or three times % month ; that much is perhaps a necessity ; beyond that, it soon becomes a disease, with the manifestations already described. These occurrences take place as a result of nature's exuberance, or as a consequence of practices, of the ill effects of which, 142 SLEEP. those who engage in them, are most profound- ly unconscious. These effects are sometimes traced to their legitimate causes by those ■who are unusually bright or thoughtful, the practices are at once abandoned, and the effects cease to be observed to any special- ly hurtful extent. But multitudes of the young never have the practices nor the de- plorable results presented to their minds as cause and effect, and hence they continue the practices, and thus aggravate the effects, until the bodily and mental condition are alike pitiable and deplorable. Many parents who have grown up virtuously, witness with deep concern the pallid faces of once ruddy children, the trembling fingers, the averted eye, the thinned flesh, and the melancholy features; on inquiry, the feet are cold, the limbs weak, the body chilly, the appetite indifferent, the general system irregular, and pictures of a deep decline, wake up the af- fections in the deepest alarm ; but nothing ia THE UNFOETUNATE. 143 complained of; there is no pain, no suffering, while both parent and cluld may be alike unconscious of the existence of the causes of such effects ; and while they are hoping for a change for the better to take place, for the renovating influences of the gladden- ing spring-time, or the bracing- power of the coming fall, the malady may have run on to a condition irremediable, and the victim passes to the mad-house or to the grave. The writer knew a gentleman of wealth, who had two sons ; the elder was sent to a distant institution of learning at the age of eighteen years. He was a youth of manly bearing and of high promise. His attain- ments were unusual for one of his age ; an estate was coming to iim at his majority, which would yield him a revenue of twenty- three thousand dollars a year. His health bgaen to decline. This was traced to prac- 14:4: SLEEP. tioes into which he had been inveigled of whioh no one could know any thing but himself. He was ignorant of their tenden- cies, and continued them until the morning debilitations became a drain so exhaustive to the vital powers, that he grew pale and thin and nervous. In a few months his bodily elasticity was gone. In place of the habitual courtesy, the high-bred deport- ment, and the joyous abandon which once characterized him in a remarkable degree, there was a listlesness of demeanor, a slov- enliness of person and dress, with a settled shade of deep melancholy. A mental de- pression seized upon him, which it seemed impossible to remove by the amusements and diversions which commonly have great attractions for the young. In short, he be- came idiotic eventually, lost the power of speech, and now for nineteen years has not uttered a single word, nor is it at all like- EFFECTS OF BAD HABITS, 145 ly that he ever will, althougL. thousands are spent every year in vaia efforts for his re- storation. Some by the same means fall into con- sumptive disease and die in a few years ; others become insane, and spend their weary lives in a lunatic asylum, or, in a moment of frenzied delirium, end their tortures and their exist- ence by a suicide's guilty hand. Standard medical books abound in such deplorable narrations, but no public good could arise from varied repetitions. The causes and the consequences are the same, and the end uniformly deplorable. A very common cause is allowing children to sleep together, and when once the practices are commenced, sleep- ing together nourishes and cherishes them until they become an unquenchable and an unappeasable pleasure. There are, however, some so pure-minded, who have been so well brought up by worthy mothers, in being kept away from evil associations, that they 13 146 SLEL'P. have never learned the pernicious lessons, and learning them intuitively is a bare proba- bility. One of the very best safeguards, in this direction, is never to allow your own children to sleep with the children of others, even for a portion of a single night. Your neighbor may be as pure and blameless as yourself, but never having had the attention directed to the point in question, may have been remiss in the matter of her children's associations, or may have had an overweening confidence in their correctness, by which the taint may have been introduced, and may have grown into a settled habit without any concep- tion of its existence ever having entered the imagination. While sleeping together generally founds the habits in question, on the part of children and youth, sleeping alone affords the amplest opportunity of unbridled indulgence. Hence, if parents observe a decided manifestation of symptoms which have been enumerated, very COEEECTING BAD HABITS. 147 especially if connected with a seeking for solitude, witli a desire to be alone, and sleep alone, the best means for ascertaining certainly that such habits exist, and at the same time, ■without wounding the self-respect, is to occupy the same bed for several nights in succession, in wakefulness, and the manifestations will be made in a most unmistakable manner, either as to the habits or the exhaustions. It is barely possible that a week shall pass without such exhibition. In either case, take your child into your confidence, and without blame or accusation, without any charge of crimi- nality, but in an incidental and affectionate manner, say : " My child, I noticed something last night not uncommon with youth, and as you may not know the nature of it, perhaps it might be best for me to tell you all about it, because sometimes persons become deranged by it, or loll themselves." Then make the communication in' such a way that your child may not feel like a criminal, and at the same time, may be deeply impressed with the nature 148 SLEEP. of the results which will follow a coatinuauce of the practice. K the exhaustions occur without any connection with the practices, as is the case in multitudes of instances, from an exuberance of nature's fires, and hence without an iota of blame to the subject of them, or whether they have arisen from the practices in question, the remedy is the same, which is to adopt such means as will most effectually break up the occurrences, which •can be done with comparative ease when the parent and the child work together, without there being any necessity of calling in a physician, which would be more or less em- barrassing to all parties. In using the methods about to be proposed, it is again particularly urged, as an important means of arriving more speedily at valuable practical results, that parents take special pains to show that they do not regard these things as degrading, as the result of criminal influences ; for they are not so, necessarily, but simply as an exuberance of nature or of health, over 149 wMct the party affected has no control. It will have a good influence in every way, to let it be seen that it is regarded simply as an attack of illness, such as bilious fever, rheu- matism, neuralgia, and the like. In. this manner, the self-respect of the party is not wounded, and the way is opened for con- fidences and the interchange of affectionate sympathies, as in the case of other sicknesses, between parents and children, with the result that the means employed will be undertaken with a spirit and hopefulness which would not exist under other circumstances. It may be proper here to advise parents of the existence of books of a vile character, which are scattered broadcast over the land, xmder various names, but the general term, 'Physiology," is used to designate them. Under the pretense of explaining the physiolo- gy of the parts implicated, the passions and the juriosity are stimulated by illustrations and de- •icriptions, and plates which no person of pro- 13* 150 SLEEP. per self-respect -would ever be seen examining, and which can not possibly fail of having a corrupting and a degrading influence. The reading of such books is fraught with unmixed evil. The first design is to effect a sale of the book, the next is to mislead the reader, to work upon the fears, under the guise of " frankness," and "humanity," and when the mind is wrought up to a pitch of frenzied terror of im- possible things, to propose " a remedy efficient and certain in all cases, by reason of the fact that the writer has had a life-time's experience and success, his studies having led him to in- vestigations and remedies, in the prosecution of which a fortunate accident led to a series of discoveries of incalculable value, and that out of sympathy for the misfortunes of the young, this mode of living usefully has present- ed itself." Sometimes, a man constitutes himself a " So- ciety," under some other taking designation, "Benevolent," "Humanitarian," and the like, IMPOSITIONS. 151 and advertisements, carefully worded, contain- ing expressions of great cljarity and disinterest- edness, are scattered every where, carrying with them influences and results of a most de- plorable character. The young are lured by them, first to apply for a circular or a book, sent, sometimes, absolutely free of all cost, with the expectation, but too frequently realized, that the next thing wiU be an application for advice. The symptoms are inquired for, then comes a letter enlarging upon the " very dan- gerous character of the case, but that, possibly, by prompt and very close attention, the evil may be warded off, although it wiU necessarily be very expensive." Let it suffice to say, that city physicians are constantly applied to, anonymously, for advice. The general tenor of the letter is, after express- ing, in the most lively terms, the mortification atd self-abasement felt, with the strongest self- iccosatory confessions, to say that having ex- yi'jded ten, fifty, a hundred dollars, and some- 152 SLEEP. times several hiiudred, in taking medicines of some individual or society, they find that, if benefited at all, it was but transiently, and that their troubles have returned. But while in correspondence with their wily advisers, great care was taken by them to impress on the mind of their victim the disreputable nature of the ailment, to the following result, in cases not a few : Means have been devised by the victims to procure money in an unauthorized manner ; how many " tills " of employers have been invaded; how many parental treasuries have been surreptitiously depleted ; how many false representations of needs have been prefer- red to indulgent and confiding parents, may never be known ; but that these things have been done on an extensive scale, and that it has been the first step towards actual crime in many a youth, only ending in the penitentiary or the gallows, is certainly true; and that the number is multitudinous, can not be rea- sonably questioned for a moment. It could THE WILES OF DECEIVEES. 153 not be otlierwiae ; tlie youtli is alarmed, and sensitive as the young are to such develop- ments, it is not wonderful that their brains are literally racked with devices to procure the ways and means for meeting the remorseless demands of the "practitioners" named; and that those who have no means of making or earning money, should resort to subterfuges, and to untruthfol representations, or to conduct actually criminal, in order to raise the requisite amount, requires no special stretch of the imag- ination to conjecture. Hence, the judicious use of the suggestions of these pages may save, and will save many a youth from a fate worse than that of death itself. These pernicious books,, with a great show of frankness, give various formulae for making the requisite medicines to be taken ; but these are, for the most part, known to be inert. This is adroitly done, for the victim in all cases will cer- tainly try what can be done, in the hope of avoid- ing the necessity of a confession or exposure, or 154 SLEEP. the payment of a considerable fee. When, how- eyer, the means prescribed fail, the next impres* sion is that it must be a very aggravated and threatening case, and at once the way is pre- pared for a consultation and the subsequent de- mand for a high fee. Let it be distinctly remembered there is no absolute cure for the exhaustions in question short of marriage, old age, or death. There are some remedies which repress them while they are taken, and for a short time after, but the trouble returns, and with it the necessity for renewed apphcations for advice and reme- dies, and with them renewed extortions. No medicines should ever be used by the persons themselves, on their own judgment and responsibility ; nor should they be advised by any but the educated physician. Hence, there will be proposed in these pages only such remedial and moral means as can be employed with perfect safety and with an infaUible good effect, more or less decided, according to the SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS. 155 fidelity with whicli they are attended to, and ■ according to the force of character and will of the person employing them. Let it be remembered that these early morn- ing exhaustions often arise in debility, without any other cause, ^ swollen feet and ankles arise from debility from various causes, and do not exist of themselves as an evidence of the last stages of consumption, although it is a symptom which generally attends the last stages of that disease, but it is not a " sign" of it, for it exists in other cases of debilitating dis- ease when the lungs are not at all consumptive. The occurrences in question, when excessive, are of themselves simply a "sign" of debility,, but greatly aggravate it, and thus they react on one another. Debility produces them, they increase the debility, and in process of time a single occurrence so depresses mind and body, that for hours and even days afterward, the mind is utterly incapable of concentrating it- self properly on any business, while the body 156 SLEEP. is absolutely unfit for any ef&cient employment, except at a sacrifice of its well-being. But tbere is anotber enormity to wbich at- tention is specially invited. Tbe remedies em- ployed, wbich are repressive, are believed by many intelligent medical practitioners to be burtful if injudiciously used ; tbat is, used too largely, or too long ; burtful to tbe extent of a lifelong disablement; and it is easy to con- ceive tbat a young or inexperienced, or reck- less, or unprincipled practitioner may be tempt- ed, by a variety of selfisb considerations, or be led by actual incapacity, to employ tbese medi- cines to tbe burtful extent named. Nor is tbisi all. In tbe event of failure of success, men bave been found vile enougb to advise as tbe only means of cure, wben marriage was imprac- ticable, unlawful associations, wbicb is but tbe opening of tbe flood-gates of vice, leading to tbe ruin of all tbat is noble and virtuous and pure; and bow greedily tbe mind would lay bold of tbe excuse of tbe necessity of tbe UNLAWFUL INDULGENCES. 157 tMng, backed by tbe counsels of a medical adviser, all heedless of tlie utter selfishness of an act which brings a mere conjectural good to self, at the expense of an irreparable ruin to another I No one, it is repeated, can fail to see how willingly the mind would lay hold on such an apology as a satisfactory reason for greedily embracing the temptlag alternative. It was in this connection that one of the most eminent medical writers has expressed his. "regrets to be obliged to remark that some recent works which have issued from the medical press, con- tain much that is calculated to excite, rather than to repress 'the propensity, and that the advice sometimes given by practitioners to their patients is immoral as well as unscientific." And it may be said without exaggeration, that of all the rash and reckless and demented (for the time being) creatures in the imiverse, the greatest, the highest in the scale is the person who allows a single indulgence out of honor- able and legalized wedlock ; for one error in 14 158 SLEEP. this direction is but the opening of floodgatea as resistless as an Alpine avalanche ; it is the lighting up of desires as unsatisfiable and aa remorseless as the Norwegian Maelstrom. And not only so, a single error, committed in a much briefer time than is sufficient to express the sentiment, has befen follotved, in literally millions of cases, by the most revolting of hu- man maladies, which, when even cured as far as external indications are concerned, still bur- rows in the system, poisoning the whole blood, and liable at any time to break out again like the smothered fires of a hatch closed ship, to eat the flesh away, rottening even the bones, until life becomes a drawn-out torture. And in all cases when the system has been once im- pregnated with the virus, it never being eradi- cated, however perfect the health may seem to be, the effects are perpetuated to the offspring, to grow up with a worm at the root of life, a poison at the fountains of health, which sends out disease to every fiber of the system, cor HOERORS OF INFECTION. 159 rupting the blood and vitiating the whole body to such an extent, that it never knows an hour of pure health during its entire existence, although it may drag itself in weariness to the verge of three-score years and ten, literally years of sorrow and suffering I Such are some of the dangers to which the young are deliber- ately counseled to expose themselves, in the numberless cases where the medical adviser finds that all his vaunted remedies fail of even a temporary cure, and in recklessness and des- peration, he counsels the passing of the Eubi- con, with the results to the victim just de- scribed. And that under the circumstances, and with these views, which are true without exaggeration, it is the duty of every parent to know the position of his child in these regards, can not for one single moment be questioned by any rational mind. Sometimes mechanical devices are employ- ed, which, while they are grounds for greater 160 SLEEP. otapges, do but increase the mischief in the end, although their certain efficiency and their harmlessness are insisted upon with the most plausible arguments imaginable. " Eings " have been used to a great extent. Enlarge- ment always precedes an exhaustion, which occurs in a state of imsound slumber, early in the morning, when the sleep is nearly out and v^7 little suffices to waken up ; if the sleeper is wakened up, the thing is avoided. The ring interferes with the enlargement, and causes pain, and this pain wakens up. But, suppose the sleep to be so sound that there is no waking up, this mechanical interruption of the flow of the blood being still applied, there may be a rupture of important blood-vessels, of internal arteries, causing life-long and irre- parable injuries, if not death itself for any one knows that if the blood be too long arrested in its flow at any point ia the body, it must result in dangerous congestionfl, or in PERNICIOUS INSTRUMENTS. 161 depriving tlie part of its natural amount of nourishment, wliicli if continued, must result ia its disability or death. But the wise physiologist will see in an instant, that while its immediate e£fi.ciency is undoubted, its ultimate result can only be to increase the evil labored against — ^thus : during the night water always accumulates in the bladder, and with this, there is the double stimulus of heat and distention, occasioning an increased flow of blood to the parts, which of itself is a powerful excitant ; and this blood being detained by the ring, feeds and prolongs the excitement, intensifies it, and hence its inevitable effect is to aggravate the very trouble striven against. In process of time, however, the parts become accustomed to the presence of the ring, become callous to the waking-up pain which was occasioned by it, and it is powerless to waken up any more, hence it is utterly useless, but in the mean 14* 162 SLEEP. time its employment has generated a habit of increased flow of blood to the parts, and with it, an increase in the frequency of the debilita- tions, and the body is left helpless against its destroyer. In all these cases there is a want of vigorous general health, and the very first step, as well as one of the most indispensable, is the em- ployment of means for its improvement, for the very essence of the ailment is debility, which debility it increases, and thus they feed on one another, and grow in power while the body weakens and wilts away under the malign influence. The strictest personal cleanliness must be observed. The whole body should be scrubbed with a brush, soap and warm water, once a week at bed-time, with a cold instantaneous shower-bath im- mediately after, which shower-bath should be repeated every morning, whether in winter or summer, the very first thing after getting out EATING BEGULABLT. 163 of bed, the whole operation to be completed ■within five minutes ordinarily, and in winter, within two minutes, if practicable. Next to personal cleanliness, is the necessity of eating, regularly and temperately, plain, nourishing, well-cooked, unstimulating food, using absolutely nothing as a beverage or a drink, but cold water, and that not in quan- tities greater than an ordinary tea-cupful at meal-times, and none within an hour after eating; at other times, as much cold water may be drank as the appetite calls for. If a person is easily chiUed, or has not much stamina, it would be better to take, in place of a half-glass of cold water at meal-time, a tearcupful of hot milk and water, with or without sugar. Nothing whatever should be eaten between meals under any pretense whatever. Break- fast should be made of the drink above named, with cold or well-toasted bread and butter and baked apples, and nothing else, except, as an 164: SLEEP. occasional substitute, one or two soft-boiled eggs, or some fist, or a piece of well-broiled fresb meat of any kind. Dinner, take what- ever the appetite calls for, of plain food, without sauces or spices or condiments of any- kind, using as a dessert baked or stewed or ripe apples, or in their place — ^in their season, — ^melons, berries, oranges and the like. Sup- per, that is, the last meal of the day, should be taken not later than an hour after sun-down, and should consist of nothing but some cold bread and butter with a cup of hot nulk and water. An arrangement of this kind wiU seldom fail, within a week, of causing a vigor- ous appetite for breakfast and dinner, while by taking but little supper, the stomach is allowed to rest while the other part of the body is doing the same thing, and more undis- turbed and refreshing sleep is a natural con- sequence. To promote the restoration to more vigorous health still further, two or three hours in the OUT-DOOR ACTIVITIES. 165 forenoon and one or two in the afternoon ehould be spent in the open out-door air, in moderate bodily activities, in some- employment which involves muscular motion, and if com- bined with mental, interest of a pleasurable character, so much the better. Very little good need be anticipated from mere mechan- ical exercise, which involves no other interest than that of accomplishing a specified amount ; the mind should be engaged, not merely pleasurably, but in a manner which shall in- terest it, to the extent of calling out its power in some degree, and thus diverting it from the intention of the thing, as well as from the bodily conditions, which these exercises are intended to change or remove or favorably effect. Hence if it is at all possible, consider- ing what human nature is, the activities should be pecuniaxily remunerative, and if liberally so, it is that much the better. But to be more fall as to the means of improving the general health, which indeed is the safest and surest 166 SLEEP. way of removing a variety of bodily ailments, it may be well to treat in detail as to Eating, Drinking, Sleeping, Eegulating the Bow- els, and Attention to the Feet. EATING-. Before a man becomes hungry, watchful nature has calculated, in her way, how much nutriment the body needs, and provides as much of a liquid substance as will be neces- sary to prepare from the food which may be eaten that amount of sustenance which the system may require. When this is stored up, and aU is ready, the sensation of hunger com- mences, and increases with the steadily increas- ing amount of the digesting material just re- ferred to, and the very instant the first mouth- ful of food is swallowed, this " gastric juice " is poured out into the stomach through a thousand sluices ; but no more has been pre- pared than was necessary, for Nature does nothing in vain ; so that if a single mouthful SOUB STOMACH — HEABTBUEN. 1G7 more of food has beea swallowed than the untempted or unstimulated appetite would have called for, there is no gastric juice for its solution, and it remains but to firet and worry and irritate for hours together. If the amount eaten is much in excess, the stomach, as if in utter discouragement at the magnitude of its task, ceases its attempts at digestion, and forth- with commences the process of ejecting the un- natural load by means of nausea and vomiting in some cases ; in others, it remains for an hour or more like a weight, a hard roimd ball, or a lump of lead, an uneasy heaviness ; then it begins to " sour," that is, to decompose, to rot, and the disgusting gas or liquid comes up into the throat, causing more or less of a scalding sensation from the pit of the stomach to the throat ; this is called " heartburn." At length, the half-rotted mixture is forced out of the mouth by the outraged stomach with that horrible odor and taste with which every glutton is familiar. In some cases the stenchy mass is passed out of the stomach downwards, 168 SLEEP. causing, in its progress, a gush of liquid from all parts of tlie intestinal canal, to wash it, with a flood, out of the system ; this is the "Diarrhea" which surprises the gourmand at midnight or in the early morning hours, when a late or over-hearty ' meal has been eaten. When sufficient food has been taken for the amount of gastric juice supplied, hunger ceases, and every mouthful swallowed after that, no gastric juice having been prepared for its dissolution, remains without any healthful change, inflaming, and irritating, and exhaust- ing the stomach by its efforts to get rid of it, and this is the first step towards forming "dyspepsia," which becomes more and more deeply fixed by every repeated outrage, until at length it remains a life-time worry to the mind, filling it with horrible imaginings, and a wearing, wasting torture to the body, until it passes into the grave. The moral of the article is, that the man who "forces " his food, he who eats without an inclination, and he who strives by tonics, or ■WORK OP THE STOMACH. 169 bitters, or wine, or otHer alcoholic liquors, to " get up " an appetite, is a sinner against body and soul — a virtual suicide ! The stomach has two doors, one for the en- trance of the food, on the left side ; the other, for its exit, after it has been properly prepared for another process. As soon as the food is swallowed, it begins to go round and round the stomach so as to facilitate dissolution ; just as the melting of a number of small bits of ice is expedited by being stirred in a glass of water ; the food, like the ice, dissolving from without, inwards, until all is a liquid mass. Eminent physiologists have said, that as this liquid mass passes the door of exit, where there is a little movable muscle, called the Pyloric Valve, (a faithful watchman,) that which is fit for fiiture purposes gives a tap, as it were ; the valve flies open and it makes an honorable exit. Thus it goes on until the stomach is empty, provided no more food haa been taken than there was a suppfy of gastric 15 170 SLEEP juice for. If a mouttful too much has been taken, there is no gastric juice to dissolve it ; it remains hard and undigested; it is not fit to pass, and the janitor refuses to open the door ; and another and another circuit is made, with a steady refusal at each time, until the work is properly done. Boiled rice, roasted apples, cold raw cabbage cut up fine in vinegar, tripe prepared in vinegar, or souse, pass through in about an hour ; fried pork, boiled cabbage and the like, are kept dancing around for about five hours and a half. After, however, there has been a repeated refusal to pass, and it would appear that any longer detention was useless, as in the case of indigestible food, or a dime, or cent, or fruit- stone, the faithful watchman seems to be almost endowed with intelligence, as if saying : "Well, old fellow, you never will be of any account ; it is not worth while to be troubled with you aiiy longer ; pass on, and never show your fivce again." ■WEIGHT OR LOAD ON STOMACH. 171 "When food is thus mmatarally detained -ia the stomach, it produces wind, eructations, fullness, acidity, or a feeling often describeS as a "weight," or "load," or "heavy." But natuire is never cheated. Her regulations are never infringed with impunity; and although an indigestible article may be allowed to pass out of the stomach, it enters the bowels as an intruder, is an unwelcome stranger ; the parts are unused to it, like a crumb of bread which has gone the wrong way by passing into the lungs, and nature sets up a violent coughing to eject the intruder. As to the bowels, another plan is taken, but the object is the same — a speedy riddance. As soon as this unwelcome thing touches the lining of the bowels, nature becomes alarmed, and Tike as when a bit of sand is in .the eye, she throws out water, as with the intention of washing it out of the body ; hence the sudden diarrheas with which two-legged pigs are .sometimes surprised.. It was a desperate effort of nature 172 SLEEP. CO save the body, for if undigested food re mains too long, either in the stomach or bowels, fits, convulsions, epilepsies, apoplexies and death, are a very frequent result. Inference : Always eat slowly and in moderation of well-divided food. As a universal rule in health, and, with very rare exceptions, in disease, that is best to be eaten which the appetite craves or the taste relishes. Persons rarely err in the quality of the food eaten; nature's instincts are the wise regu- lators in this respect. The great source of mischief from eating are three: Quantity, Frequency, Eapidity; and from these come the horrible dyspepsias which make of human life a burden, a torture, a living death. Eapiditt. — ^By eating feat, the stomach, like a bottle being filled through a funnel, is full and overflowing before we know it. But the most-important reason is, the food is swallowed HOW OFTEN TO EAT. 173 before time has been aUo-wed to divide it in Bufficiently small pieces witli tlie teeth; for, like ice in a tumbler of water, the smaller the bits are, the sooner are they dissolved. It has been seen with the naked eye, that if solid food is cut up in pieces small as half a pea, it digests almost as soon, without being chewed at all, as if it had been well masticated. The best plan, therefore, is for all persons to com- minute their food; for even if it is well chewed, the comminution is of no injury, while it is of very great importance in case of hurry, forgetfulness, or bad teeth. Cheerful conversa- tion prevents rapid eating. Feequenct. — ^It requires about five hours for a common meal to be dissolved and pass out of the stomach, during which time this organ is incessantly at work, when it must have repose, as any other muscle or set of mus- cles, after such a length of effort. Hence per- sons should not eat within less than five hours' mterval. The heart itself is at rest more than 5* 174 SLEEP. one third of its time. The brain perishes without repose. Never force food on the stomach. All are tired when night comes; every muscle of the body is weary, and looks to the bed ; but . just as we lie down to rest every other part of the body, if we, by a hearty meal, give the stomach five hours' work, which, in its weak state, requires a much longer time to perform than at an earlier hour of the day, it is like imposing upon a servant a full day's labor just at the close of a hard day's work; hence the Tinwisdom of eating heartily late in the day or evening; and no wonder it has cost many a man his life. Al- ways breakfast before work or exercise. Ho laborers or active persons should eat an atom, later than sun-down, and then it should not be over half the mid-day meal. Persons of sedentary habifa or who are at all ailing, should take absolutely nothing for supper beyond a single piece of cold stale bread and DEESTKING AT MEALS. 175 butter, or a stip-biscuit, witb a single cup of warm driuk. Such a supper will always give better sleep and prepare for a heartier break- fast, with the advantage of having the exercise of the whole day to grind it up and extract its nutriment. Never eat without an inclina tion. Quantity. — It is variety which tempts to excess ; few will err as to quantity who will eat very slow. Take no more than a quarter of a pint of warm drink, with a piece of cold, stale bread and butter, one kind of meat, and one vegetable, or one kind of fruit. This is the only safe rule of general application, and allows all to eat as much as they want. Cold water at meals instantly arrests diges- tion, and so will much warm drink ; hence, a single tea-cup of drink, hot or cold, is sufficient for any meal. For half an hour after eating, sit erect, or walk in the open air. Avoid severe study or deep emotion, soon after eating. Do not sit 176 SLEEP. down to a meal under great grief or surprise, or mental excitement. DRINKING-. Man is the only animal that drinks without being thirsty, swallowing whole quarts of water when nature does not caU for it, with the alleged view of "washing out" the system. When persons are thirsty, that thirst should be fully assuaged with moderately cool water, drank (in summer time or under great bodily heat or fatigue) very leisurely, but not withia half an hour of eating a regular meal. Emi- nent physiologists agree that drinking at meals, dilutes the gastric juice, diminishes its solvent power, and retards digestion, especially, if what is drank is cold. Persons in vigorous health, and who work or exercise a great part of every day in the open air, may drink a glass of water, or a single cup of weak coffee or tea, at each meal, and live to a good old age. But it is very certain that sedentary persons and in- BAD EFFECTS OF lOE-WATEB. 177 valids can not go beyond that iabitually, with impunity. The wisdom of snch consists in drinking nothing at all at the regular meals be- yond a swallow or two at a time of some hot drink of a mild and nutritious character. Fee- ble persons will be benefited by hot drinks, be- cause they warm up the body, excite the circu- lation, and thus promote digestion, if taken while eating, and not exceeding a cupfaL Cold water ought never to be drank within half an hour of eating ; for the colder it is, the more instantly does it arrest digestion, not only by diluting the gastric juice, but by reducing its temperature, which is near one hundred de- grees. Ice-water is something over thirty-two degrees, and, when swallowed, mixes with the gastric juice, and lowers its temperature, not to be elevated until heat enough has been with- drawn from the general system ; and that draft must be made until the hundred degrees of warmth are attained ; but some persona have so *ittle vitality, that the body exhausts itself in 178 SLEEP, its instinctive efforts to help the stomacTi, from ■which its life and strength come ; and the per- son rises from the table with a cold chill run- ning down the- back or over the whole body. Sometimes, these drafts upon the body for warmth to the stomach are so sudden and great, that they can not be met, and instantane- ous death is the result. Many a person has dropped dead at the pump or at the spring; such a result is more certain if, in addition to the person being very warm at the time of drinking, there is also great bodily fatigue. A French general recently fell dead from drink- ing cold water on reaching the top of a moun- tain over-heated and exhausted in the effort of bringing up his battalions with promptitude. Under all circumstances of heat or fatigue, the glass of water should be grasped in the hand, held half a minute, then, taking not over two swallows, rest a quarter of a minute ; then, two swallows more, and so on, until the thirst is nearly assuaged. It wiU seldom happen that a ALCOHOLIC DRINKS. 179 person is inclined to take over half a dozen swallows tlins. No case is remembered in tlie practice of a quarter of a century, where malt liquors, wines, brandies, or any alcoholic drinks whatever, have ever had a permanent good effect in im- proving the digestion. Apparent advantages sometimes result, but they are transient or de- ceptive. If there is no appetite, it is because nature has provided no gastric juice ; and that is the product of nature, not of alcohol. If there is appetite, but no digestive power, liquor no more supplies that power than would the lash give strength to an exhausted donkey. If torture does arouse the sinking beast, it is only that it shall fall a little later into a still greater exhaustion from which there is' no recovery ; so with the use of liquor and tobacco as whetters of the appetite, when, at length, the desire for the accustomed stimulus ceases, and the man " sickens ;" there is no longer a relish for the dram and the chew, and life fades apace, either 180 SLEEP. in a stupor from whicli there is no awaking, or by wasting and uncontrollable diarrhea. SLEEPING. Inability to sleep is the first step toward madness, while sound and sufficient sleep im- parts a vigor to the mind, and a feeling of well- ness and activity to the body, which are be- yond price. To be able to go to sleep within a few minutes of reaching the pUlow, and to sleep soundly untU the morning breaks, and to do this for weeks and months together, is per- fectly delightful. How such a thing may be brought about, and kept up, as a general rule, is certainly well worth knowing, and wUl be appreciated, even by those who have lost but half a 'night's sleep. The reader can study out the reasons of the suggestions at his leisure. Both in city and country, the chamber should be on the second, third, or higher floor ; its windows should feoe the east or south, so as to have the drying and purifying influences SLEEriNG APAETMENTS. 181 of the blessed sun-light; there should be no curtains to the bed or windows, nor should there be any hanging garments or other woven fabrics, except the clothes worn during the day each article of which should be spread out by itself, for the purpose of thorough airing. There should be no carpet on the floor of a deeping-room, except a single strip by the side of the bed, to prevent a sudden shock by the warm foot coming in contact with a cold floor. Carpets collect dust and dirt and filth and dampness, and are the invention of laziness to save labor and hide unoleanness. Ordinarily, mattresses of shucks, chaff, straw, or curled hair are best to sleep upon. For old persons and those of feeble vitality, there is nothing better than a clean feather-bed. No one can sleep well if cold. Have as little cov- ering as possible from just above the knees upwards, but cover the legs and feet abundant- 3y, for by keeping them warm, the blood is 16 182 SLEEP. withdrawn from the brain, and to thai extent dreaming is prevented. There should be no standing fluid of any de- scription, nor a particle of food or vegetation or any decayable substance allowed to remain in a bed-room for a moment ; nor should any light be kept burning, except from necessity, as all these things corrupt the air which is breathed while sleeping. The entire fiimiture of a chamber should be the bed, two or three wooden chairs, a table, aad a bureau or chest of drawers. Every arti- cle of bed-clothiug should be thrown over a chair or table by itsel:^ and the mattress remain exposed, until the middle of the afternoon ; not later, lest the damps of the evening should im- pregnate them. From morning until afternoon of every sunshiny day, the windows of the chamber should be hoisted fully. The fire- place should be kept open, at least during the night, thus affording a draught from the crevices of doors and windows. As foul air is lightest NOXIOUS GASES IN CHAMBERS. 183 m warm ■weather, it is best that the sash should be let down at the top several inches, and the lower one elevated quite as much; by this means the pure and cool air from without enters and drives the heated, impure air up- wards and outwards. In a very cold room, without a good draught or ventilation, carbonic acid being generated by the sleeper, becomes heavy and falls to the floor; this gas has no nourishment for the lungs, and to breathe it wholly for two minutes is to die ; it is this which causes suffocation in descending some wells. In summer it goes to the ceiling, in winter to the floor ; hence it is more important that a sleeping room should have a very gentle current of air in winter than in summer. Never go to bed with cold or damp feet, else refreshing sleep is impossible; but spend the last five or ten minutes before bed-time, at least va firetime of year, in drying and heating the feet before the fire, with the stockings off. In- 184 SLEEP, dians and himters sleep with their feet towards the camp-fire. Different persons reqtdre different amounts of sleep, according to age, sex, and occupa- tion. Nature must make the appointment, and will always do it wisely and safely ; and there is only one method of doing it. Do not sleep a moment in the day, or if essen- tial do not exceed ten minutes, for this will refresh more than if you sleep an hour, .or longer, Gro to bed at a regular early hour, not later than ten, and get up as soon as you wake of yourself in the morning ; follow this up for a week or two, and if there is no ac- tual disease, nature will always arouse the sleeper as soon as enough sleep has been taken to repair the expenditures of the pre- ceding day, a little more or less in propor- tion to the amount of bodily and mental effort made the day -before. Commonly there «rill be but a few minutes' difference for weeks together. It is not absolutely neces- franklin's aib-bath. 185 Bary to get up and dress, but only to a-void a second nap. Sometimes it is advantageous to remain in bed until the feeling of tired- ness, with which most persons are familiar, has passed from the limbs. It is safest and best for all to take breakfast before going out of doors in the morning, whether in summer or winter, most especially in new, flat, or damp countries, as a preventive of chill and fever. If j&om any cause you get up during the night, throw open the bed-clothes, so as to give the bedding an airing, and also with the hands give the whole body a good rub- bing for a minute or two ; the effect wiU be an immediate feeling of refreshment, and a more speedy falling to sleep again. This was Franklin's remedy in case of restlessness at night. When it is remembered that one third of our whole time is spent in our chambers, and that only uncorrupted air can complete 16* 186 SLEEP. the process of digestion and assimilation and purify the blood, it is most apparent that the utmost pains should be taken to secure the breathing of a pure atmosphere during the hours ■ of sleep ; and that the most diligent attention in this regard is indispensable to high health. REG-ULATING- THE BOWELS. It is best that the bowels should act every morning after breakfast ; therefore, quietly remain in the house, and promptly attend to the first inclination. If the time passes, do not eat an atom until they do act ; at least not until breakfast next day, and eyen then, do not take any thing except a single cup of weak coffee or tea, and some cold bread and butter, or dry toast, or ship-biscuit. Meanwhile, arrange to walk or work moderately, for an hour or two, each fore- noon and afternoon, to the extent of keop- REGULATING THE BOWELS. 187 ing up a moisture on the skin, drinking as freely as desired as nmcTi cold water as will satisfy the thirst, taking special pains, as soon as the exercise is over, to go to a good fire or very warm room in win- ter, or if in summer, to a place entirely sheltered from any draught of air, so as to cool off very slowly indeed, and thus avoid taking cold or feeling a "soreness" all over next day. Eemember, that without a regular daily healthful action of the . bowels, it is impos- sible to maintain health, or to regain it, if lost. The coarser the food, the more freely will the bowels act, such as com (Indian) bread eaten hot; hominy; whes^ten grits; bread made from coarse flour, or "shorts;" Graham bread ; boiled turnips, or stirabout. If the bowels act oftener than twice a day, live for a short time on boiled rice, ferina, starch, or boiled milk. In more ag- gravated cases, keep as quiet as possible on 188 SLEEP. a bed, take nothing but rice, parolied brown like coffee, then boiled and eaten in the usual way; meanwhile drink nothing what ever, but eat to your fullest desire bits of ice swallowed nearly whole, or swallow ice-cream before entirely melted in the mouth; if necessary, wear a bandage of thick woolen flannel, a foot or more broad, bound tightly around the abdomen ; this is especially necessary if the patient has to be on the feet much. All locomotion should be avoided when the bowels are thin, watery, or weakening. The habitual use of pills, or drops, or any kind of medicine whateyer, for the regulation of the bowels, is a sure means of ultimately undermining the health, in almost all cases laying the foundation for some of the most distressing of chronicy maladies ; hence all the pains possible should be taken to keep them regu- lated by natural agencies, such as- the coarse foods and exercises above named. COLD FEET EEMEDIED. 189 ATTENTION TO THE FEET. It is utterly impossible to get well or keep well, unless the feet are kept dry and warm aU the time. If they are for the most part cold, there is cough, or sore throat, or hoarseness, or sick headache, or some other annoyance. If cold and dry, the feet should be soaked in hot water for ten minutes every night, and when wiped and dried, rub into them well ten or fifteen drops of sweet oil; do this patiently with the hands, rub- bing the oil into the soles of the feet particularly. On getting up in the morning, dip both feet at once into water, as cold as the air of the room, half-ankle deep, for a minute in summer; half a minute or less in win- ter, rubbing one foot with the other, then wipe dry, and if convenient, hold them to 190 SLEEP the fire, rubbing them with the hand until perfectly dry and ■warm in every part. If the feet are damp and cold, attend only to the morning washings, but always at night remove the stocldngs and hold the feet to the fire, rubbing them with the hands for fifteen minutes, and get immediate- ly into bed. Under any circumstances, as often as the feet are cold enough to attract attention, draw off the stockings and hold them to the fire; if the feet are much inclined to dampness, put on a pair of dry stockings, leaving the damp ones before the fire to be ready for another change. Some persons' feet are more comfortable, even in winter, in cotton, others in woolen stockings. Each must be guided by his own feelings. Sometimes two pair of thin stock- ings keep the feet warmer than one pair which is thicker than both. The thin pair may be of the same or of different mate- DRY AND WARM TEET. 191 rials, and that wliicli is best next tlie foot should be determined by the feelings of the person. Sometimes the feet are rendered more comfortable by basting half an inch thick- ness of curled hair on a piece of thick cloth, slipping this into the stocking, with the hair next the skin, to be removed at night and placed before the fire to be per- fectly dried by morning. Persons who walk a great deal during the day, should, on coming home for the night, remove their shoes and stockings, hold the feet to the fire until perfectiy dry, put on a dry pair, and wear slippers for the re- mainder of the evening. Boots and gaiters keep the feet damp, cold, and unclean, by preventing the escape of that insensible perspiration which is al- ways arising firom a healthy foot, and con- densing it; hence the old-fashioned low shoe is best for health. 192 SLEEP. But coming to more direct agencies for pre- venting morning debilitations, and recapitulat- ing somewliat in reference to tlie procurement of sound sleep, in view of its primary import- ance as a remedial means, as an aid in making it sound and connected, it being known tbat the exhaustions occur in the unsound sleep of the later part of the morning, often during the " second nap," as it is called, it may be added that persons who sleep in the daytime, and tlius render the sleep of night less deep, are more troubled with these things. By going to sleep at a regular early hour, say not later tban ten o'clock, by not sleeping a moment in tbe day- time, and by being regularly waked up at the end of seven hours, which is about as much as persons usually require, the sleep would, gener- ally, in a week be sound, deep, connected, and refreshing, up to the last moment of waking ; and tbus, by removing the chance of unsound sleep, the occurrence would be broken up with- out further effort, in cases not particularly ag- SECOND NAPS. 193 gravaled. Th.e aid of an alarm-clock may be necessary sometimes to waken up persons, but within a week or two, nature loves regularity so mucli she would waken up the body within a few minutes of the time, if only the habit were persistently followed of getting up at the very ;^rst moment of waking, or at least, by a strong exercise of the will, avoiding a second nap ; for it is this, by the unsoundness of the sleep, which gives rise to dreams, that precipi- tates the trouble, in a very great degree. Pains should be taken to keep the mind en- gaged during the day in the important affairs of life, and to avoid exciting subjects of thought and feeling at the close of the day. As urinary accumulations during the night are sources of unhealthfiil stimulation, the bladder should be emptied the very last thing on going to bed ; and if the person could be waked up about two o'clock in the morning, .or every third hour, to do the same thing, it would very 17 194 SLEEP. greatly promote the object ia view. This is ao importaat suggestion. The bed-chamber should be large and well ventilated, and every thing done to promote coolness of the body; a hard bed, with a hair or straw mattress, is indispensable, with as little covering on the upper portion of the body as consistent with comfortable warmth, while from the middle of the thighs downwards, there should be an abundance of covering, so that by keeping the feet quite warm, the blood will be diverted thereto, and thus be productive of important results. If these things do not avail, it is recommended to sleep on the floor, with nothing under the person but a " comfortable," or a common blanket and sheet doubled. When these things also fail, there remains but one of two safe alternatives, either marriage or the consultation of a physician of known ability and of high character; but the latter aid can only benefit to the extent of a temporary expo- SAFEGUARD OF MARRIAGE. 195 dient, and skould be regarded as a means of gaining time for a better preparation for mar- riage, which, after all, is the great purifier, the divinely-appointed means for happifjdng hu- manity, and for perpetuating the race in health and vigor and prosperity, and which every pru- dent and wise parent should use all practicable means for encouraging at an early age, not later than twenty-five ; it is the honorable safe- guard against many ills, and one which every affectionate and considerate parent should en- deavor to throw around the young as a matter of high duty, imposed by the very nature of things. Tha,t all the pains named should be taken by parents for the correction of the troubles in ■question, it ought to be a sufficient, an over- whelming argument, that mental aberration in some form is a frequent result of a neglect of the same, either lunacy or the more terrible condition of being a hopeless, driveling idiot. On the seventeenth day of July, eighteen hun- 196 SLEEP. dred and sixty, a man died in the hospital in Dublin, Ireland, which was founded by Dean Swift, (himself crazed in later years, and with great certainty, as a result in one way or an- other of not having married in early life,) at the age of one hundred and six years, having been an inmate of the institution since May the twenty-eighth, eighteen hundred and two, a period of fifty-eight years. It is literally terri- ble for a parent to contemplate the possibility of his child, so loved now, spending more than half a century in the dreary walls of an asylum, behind grates and bars of iron, in cold, cheer- less, and dreary apartments, never enlivened in all that time by one single smile of parent, brother, friend I And how often in the mean while to be neglected, to be maltreated, to be brutalized over by hired officials, upon whose hearts pure pity never made an impress, who can say ? After all, one of the most efficient aids in breaking up the occurrences in question is force FORCE OF WILL. 197 of will, an iron determination to compel the mind to subjects and objects whicli are of so much interest as to direct the greater flow of the nervous energies to the brain, or to engage in severe manual labor. Really great students and hard workers in mechanics, handicrafts, and fields are not much troubled in this direc- tion ; those most suffer who have idle time on their hands, or whose employments permit sev- eral hours of leisure, sufficient to allow nervous iafluences to be directed to unmeet subjects. Mere manipular occupations are not the best, such as writing, or other exercises, which can be performed while the mind can run riot in other directions. Let it be remembered that in any successful treatiijent this force of will, strength of character, mental diversion wiU be found of very great advantage. And when the serious nature of the ailment is taken into con- sideration, and the large bearings it has upon tlie happiness and well-being of those who are ander its influence, all means should be resorted 17* 198 SLEEP. to which will have even a slight influence in breaking up the evil. Sleeping on the back increases the trouble ; hence whatever means are used to promote sleeping on the side, should be adopted, which, indeed, ought to be done, for the benefits to be derived in other directions. It is believed that no one has nightmare who sleeps on the side. If one falls asleep on the right side, it favors the passage of the food from the stomach, which there opens into the lower bowels, repre- sented by the greater ease with which water is removed from a bottle by holding it upside down, than if, when held in its natural position, it is drawn upwards. On this principle the ex- pedient of attaching a ball or block of wood to the back has been adopted by some. To compel the exhaustive use of the means named, no medicine is advised. In the rare cases where drugs are necessary, consult an honorable and educated physician. As to roomy apartments, it is well to record some NEW PLANS FOR HOUSES. 199 suggestions as to the propriety of introdudng d-welling-houses ia the larger cities of the United States on the European system, in reference to which J. E. Hamilton, of New- York, has said that "The very great difficulty experienced by families of moderate means, in attempting to obtain economical and convenient residences, easy of access, in the city of New- York, is felt and acknowledged by so large and respectable a portion of the community, that I hope the importance of the subject wUl be a sufficient apology for my venturing to intrude upon your valuable space. " After devoting long and serious attention to this matter, I have prepared a plan which I take the liberty of submitting to your inspec- tion, and which, I think, will be found capable of supplying, to some extent, what has been so long desired. I claim no especial novelty for my scheme ; nor should it be considered in the light of an experiment, for it is simply an adap- tation of the well-known and convenient system »f living in what are called ^ flats,' so common among families of the best standing in Paris, 200 SLEEP. Edinburgh, and most of the large cities of Eu- rope. " You -will observe that although there is but one general entrance and grand central stair- case to my building, the inmates have each a private entrance-door and vestibule from the common landings on each floor, and are conse- quently as much cut off from all communication with each other as if they really inhabited houses under separate roofe. The main entrance and staircase, which are intended to be as pri- vate and well-kept as those of any private man- sion, (and there is nothing in the exterior to dis- tinguish it from that of any first-class private residence,) are, nevertheless, to those who enter, nothing more than a continuation of the side- walk. On arriving at their destination, be it on the first or fourth floor, visitors will come to the private vestibule entrance of a gentleman's house, and will have to ring the bell before gaining admission, precisely as they would have to do in the street. This is what forms the es- sential difference between such a building as I propose, and associated houses of any descrip- tion hitherto erected in New- York — at any rate, to my knowledge. By my plan there can be HAMILTON'S HOUSE PLAN. 201 no intrusion whatever upon one's privacy, no unpleasant and inevitable commingling of fam- ilies, any more than among people living next door to each other on the same block. " If you examine the plans, you will find that, upon an ordinary double lot of fifty feet by one hundred feet, I give to each dwelling or flat, of which there are eight in my building, (two to each floor,) the following accommodation : A large front parlor, four good bed-rooms, dining- room with china-closet, kitchen, and kitchen pantry, bath-room and two water-closets, a wide covered piazza in the rear, abundance of closets and every other household convenience, and my rooms are all thoroughly ventilated, and lit by direct lights. In the rear I have provided a staircase inclosed by brick walls, not only for thorough security in case of fire, but giving ac- cess from each dwelling to a separate laundry and coal-cellar provided for each in the base- ment, and having direct access to the back- yards. In the basement are also rooms for the janitor and his family, and two large double offices which would rent well to physicians and others in any good locality. The kitchen de- partment is so arranged that fuel can be brought 202 SLEEP. up by a lift from below, and all kitcben refusft descend to one common receptacle (to be daily removed by the janitor) without the necessity of any one going down a single step. The building is calculated to be thoroughly supplied with all the usual modern improvements of our best dwellings. " After a careful calculation of the cost of such an edifice, including the ground, I am prepared to prove that with rentals varying from five hundred dollars for the first to three hundred dollars for the fourth floor, such a building would yield, if erected in one of our best neighborhoods, a profit of at least ten per cent upon the outlay. I shall be glad if, through the instrumentality of the press, the attention of some of our builders and capitalists can be seriously and practically directed to this import- ant question. I think it can clearly be shown that whoever undertakes to supply the demand to which I have alluded, will speedily find his account in it among hundreds of our citizens of the highest respectability, who are at this mo- ment undergoing all sorts of annoyances and inconvenience in vain attempts to obtain pri- vate, economical, and suitable homes for their %miliea." GRISCOJI'S VENTILATION, 203 In the same direction the author of that ex- cellent treatise on the " Uses and Abuses of Air" has communicated to the editors of the Scientijio American an improved method of ven- tilation, and which has been introduced into the dwelling of one of the prominent citizens of New- York, in reference to which the editors remark : " This plan for ventilating houses, suggested and put in execution by Dr. J. H. Griscom, of New- York, received the sanction of the Third National Quarantine and Sanitary Convention, held in this city. It pertains to the chemical method, the motive power of the air being heat, but requiring no extra expenditure of fuel, the heat used for the purpose being only the waste heat of the fixrnace by which the house is warmed. The arrangement consists ill the construction of independent ventilating flues in the walls of the house, in proximity to the hot-air tubes, so that the two may be con- nected together by means of a lateral or branch tube, by which a current of hot air may, at any desired, moment, be transmitted from the hot air 204 SLEEP. tube to the ventilating flue. By this means, the ventilating flues, which terminate in the open air like an ordinary chimney, will be warmed by the hot air from the furnace, when the ordi- nary hot-air register is closed, as at night in a dwelling, or in a school -house after school hours. " If properly constructed of brick or smooth stone, the walls of the flue will, after a current of hot air has passed through it a short time, become sufficiently heated to rarefy the air within, thus giving the flue a good ventilating power, even after the current of hot air has been withdrawn. For example, if the hot-air register of a parlor be closed at ten o'clock at night, and the heat, instead of being thrown back into the furnace, is allowed to pass through the lateral tube into the ventilating flue, and so continue till six the next morning, it is evident that, during those eight hours, the interior of the ventilating flue must become thoroughly heated, so that the next day, when the current of hot air is restored to the parlor, the heated sides of the ventilating flue will continue to rarefy the air within them for many hours, and perhaps ey^n days afterwards. VENTILATING EEGISTERS. 205 " There being no danger of a reaction of the air of the flue through the ventilating register, (as is the case when ventilating openings are made in ordinary fire-flues,) connections with the apartment to be ventilated may be made at any point, and even carried to the opposite side of the house, between the beams of the ceiling, to ventilate distant apartments. Dr. Griscom's method has the advantage of being applicable to all edifices warmed by hot air furnaces of any description, which, in general, are those most needing ventilation. This arrangement may be introduced into many houses already erected, by connecting the hot-air tubes with such of the ordinary chimney -flues as are not used with fire. " One of the principal advantages appertain- ing to this plan, is the capability of having a large number of ventilating- flues put in connec- tion with the furnace. In fact, the number may correspond with the number of hot-air registers, and thus any desirable amount and extent of ventilation be obtained." Some have gone farther in their benevo- lences than to advocate roomy and weU- 18 206 SLEEP. ventilated sleeping apartments for their fel- low men. The interests of the noble horse are thus pleaded for by a recent wjiter : "Most stables are built low 'because they are warmer.' But such people forget that warmth is obtained at a sacrifice of the health of the animal and pure air. Shut a man up in a tight, small box. The air may be warmed, but it win soon lay him out dead and cold if he continues to breathe it. If stables are tight, they should have high ceilings ; if they are not tight, but open to the admission of cold cur- rents of air from all directions, they are equally faulty. A stable should be carefully ventilated, and one of the cheapest of modes is to build a high one." The whole subject finds a powerful il lustration, in one direction at least, in the discoveries which the celebrated traveler, Doctor Elrapf, has recently made in the in- terior of Africa, where he has found a na- tion of people of whose existence the civil- ized world never heard, until the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine or sixty. SLEEPING IN PtJEE AIK 207 showing that with social habits of the most degraded and brutalizing character, " dis- eases are never known among them; they die only of old age, or through the assaults of their enemies." The only redeeming cir- cumstance, the only great influence antag- onistic of unheard-of degradations as to social habits, and which can at all account for the fact even in part, that " sickness is unknown, " is in the declaration that they have neither houses nor tents, have no cov- ering but the trees and the sky. To make it more satisfactory, the exact words of the traveler are given : " To Hie south of Kaffa and Susa, there is a very sultry and humid country, with many bamboo woods, inhabited by the race called Dokos, who are no bigger than boys of ten years old; that is, only four feet high. They have a dark, olive-colored complexion, and live in a completely savage state, like the beasts ; aaving neither houses, temples, nor holy trees, like the Gallas, yet possessing something like 208 SLEEP. an idea of a higlier being called Yer, to whom in moments of wretcliedness and anxiety they pray — not in in an erect posture, but reversed, with the head on the ground and the feet sup- ported upright against a tree or stone. In prayer they say : ' Yea, if thou really dost exist, why dost thou allow us to be slain? We do not ask thee for food and clothing, for we live on serpents, ants, and mice. Thou hast made us, why dost thou permit us to be trodden under foot?' The Dokos have no chief, no laws, no weapons ; they do not hunt, nor till the ground, but live solely on fruits, roots, mice, serpents, ants, honey, and the like, climbing trees and gathering the fruits like monkeys, and both sexes go completely naked. They have thick, protruding lips, flat noses, and small eyes ; the hair is not woolly, and is worn by the women over the shoulders. The nails on the hands and feet are allowed to grow like the talons of vultures, and are used in digging ants, and in tearing to pieces the serpents, which they de- vour raw, for they are unacquainted with fire. The spine of the snake is the only omameni worn round the neck, but they pierce the ears with a sharp-pointed piece of wood. A SINGITLAE RACE. 209 " Tlie Dokos multiply very rapidly, but have no regular marriages, the intercourse of the sexes leading to no selected home, each in per- fect independence going whither fancy leads. The mother nurses her child only for a short time, accustoming it as soon as possible to the eating of ants and serpents ; and as soon as the child can help itself, the mother lets it depart whither it pleases. ' Although these people live in thick woods, and conceal themselves amongst the trees, yet they become the prey of the slave- hunters of Susa, Ka£Ea, Dumbaro and KuUa," for whole regions of their woods are encircled by the hunters, so that the Dokos can not easily escape. When the slave-hunters come in sight of the poor creature, they hold up clothes of bright colors, singing and dancing, upon which the Dokos allow themselves to be captured without resistance, knowing from experience such resistance is fruitless, and can lead only to their destruction. In this way thousands can be captured by a small band of hunters ; and once captured they become quite docile. In slavery the Dokos retain their predilection for feeding on mice, serpents and ants, although often on that account punished by their masters, 18* 210 SLEEP who in other respects are attached to them, as they are docile and obedient, have few wants, and enjoy good health, for which reasons they are never sold as slaves beyond Enarea, As diseases are unknown among them, they die only of old age, or through the assaults of their OLD AND YOUNG- SLEEPING TOGETHER. As to the ill effects to the young, from sleep- ing with the old, a medical writer says : " A habit which is considerably prevalent in almost every family of allowing children to sleep with older persons, has ruined the nerv- ous vivacity and physical energy of many a promising child. Every parent who loves his child, and wishes to preserve to him a sound nervous system, with which to buffet success- fully the cares, sorrows, and labors of life, must see to it that his nervous vitality is not ab- sorbed by some diseased or aged relative. " Children, compared with adults, are elec- trically' in a positive condition. The rapid changes which are going on in their little bodies, abundantly generate and as extensively work CHILDREN SLEEPIJSTG WITH ADULTS. 211 up vital nervo-electric fluids. But wlieu, by contact for long nights with elder and negative persons, the vitalizing electricity of their tender organizations is absorbed, they soon pine, grow pale, languid, and dull, while their bed com- panions feel a corresponding invigoration. It was sought in the olden time to invigorate King David, the Psalmist, by causing a young and vigorous and healthy person to sleep with hinj. Although it failed of the desired effect, it proved that there was a popular impression that health- ful influences were absorbed by one party. Be that as it may, it is undeniable that healthful influences are lost, and to a fatal extent some- times. A woman was prostrated with incura- ble consumption. Her infant occupied the same bed with her almost constantly day and night. The mother lingered for months on the verge of the grave — ^her demise being hourly expected. Still she lingered on, daily disprov- ing the predictions of her medical attendants. The child, meanwhile, pined without any appa- rent disease. Its once fat little cheeks fell away with singular rapidity till every bone in ■ts face was visible. Finally it had imparted to the mother its last spark of vitality, and simultaneously both died. 212 SLEEP. Eecent medico-cliemical investigations, in a German city, have proved that the green color- ing matter used in the manufacture of curtains and paper hangings, contains poisonous sub- stances in sufficient quantities to cause illness. Several physicians testified that patients sleep- ing in rooms hung with decorations containing much dark green, speedily recovered their health upon being removed to apartments not so decorated. And chemical analysis soon succeeded in ascertaining the presence of nox- ious matter. The general argument of these pages is to show that sleeping-rooms should be large, should be supplied with a pure atmosphere, that this should be constantly renewed, and that as sleeping with others m the same room and in the same bed is an important source of impurity to the air of a chamber, arrangements should be made by all who are so fortunate as to possess the means, to have a separate room ENGLISH AND P BENCH VENTILATION. 213 and a separate bed for every member of the housebold ; for there are strong reasons for be- lieving that every year there are more cases of dangerous and fatal diseases gradually engen- dered by the habit of Sleeping in small, nnven- tilated rooms, and by crowding persons in the same bed and room, than have occurred from a cholera atmosphere during any year since its first appearance in this country. Very many persons sleep in eight-by-ten rooms, that is, in rooms the length and breadth of which multi- plied together, and this again by ten for the hight of the chamber, would make just eight hundred cubic feet, while the cubic space for each bed, according to the English apportion- ment for hospitals, is twenty-one hundred feet. " To give the air of a room the highest degree of freshness," the French hospitals contract for a complete renewal of the air of a room every hour, whUe the English assert that double that amount, or over four thousand feet an hour, is required. Yet there are multitudes in the city 214 SLEEP. of New- York wlio sleep with closed doors and windows, in rooms which do not contain a thou- sand cubic feet of space, and that thousand feet is to last all night, or at least eight hours of it, except with such scanty renewals as may be ob- tained through the crevices at the windows and doors, not an eighth of an inch in thickness. But when it is known that in many instances a man and wife and infant sleep habitually in rooms which do not net a thousand cubic feet of space, it is no marvel that multitudes prema- turely perish in cities ; nor is it wonderful that infant children wilt away like flowers without water, and that five thousand of them die in the city of New- York alone, during the hun- dred days which include the middle of July of any year. Another fact is suggestive, that among the fifty thousand persons who sleep nightly in the lodging-houses of London, expressly arranged on the improved principles of space and ventila- tion already referred to, it has been proven tha,t WALL-PAFEB POISOK. 215 not one single case of fever has been engender- ed in two years. Let every person of intelli- gence improve the lessons of tliis fact without an hotir's delay. Nothing short of " line upon line" will avail to impress these great practical truths on the popular mind ; hence the reiteration of kindred facts bearing on the general subject of the im- pure air of sleeping-rooms, and the disastrous effects connected with them. Using wall-paper having a green color, especially if fiizzy — called velvety — and not glazed, is immediately de- structive of health, and even of 'life, if persisted in. As proof, H. Fulland, near Tipton, England, moved into a new house in eighteen hundred and fifty-nine ; in a short time all his children became curiously affected, although they had enjoyed good health up to the day of removaL They -were worse at night than during the day; they were exceedingly restless ; a singular twitching or jerking of the muscles, especially those of the face, with a decline of the general 216 SLEEP. healthj indicated tlie working of some insidious agency. The medical man had them promptly removed to another room, when they began at once to improve, and soon recovered their health. They were then returned to their for- mer room, when there was an immediate re-oc- currence of the former symptoms. This sug- gested that the cause of the symptoms was in the room itself. There was a green-colored paper on the wall, from a small piece of which was scraped fuzz enough to contain, on analy- sis, enough arsenic to poison a man. There was a very handsome house near one of the best provincial towns in England which could never keep its tenants. At last it stood empty and became worthless, because a detest- able fever seized upon every family that lived in it. A ready-witted observer promised the owner to find out the cause. He traced the mischief to one room, and presently conjectured what was the matter there. He let a slip of glass into the wall, and found it next day PAPEEING ON PAPER. 217 dimmed with fetid condensed vapor. He tore down a strip of paper, and found abundant cause for any amount of fever. For genera- tions the walls had been papered .afresh, with- out the removal of any thing underneath. And there was the putrid size and fermenting old paper, inches deep 1 A thorough clearance, scraping, and cleaning, put an end to the fever, and restored the value of the house. In another house, more deadly effects still were traced to a wotkman who, having been employed to paper a room, and finding a con- siderable hollow in the wall, filled it up with a bucket of paste and remnants of paper, and then covered it over. The result was, destruc- tive decomposition took place, of the paper, the paste, and the various coloring matters, throw- ing into the room the most deadly gases, which were at times of so much power that sensitive persons were attacked with various symptoms of iUness, within ten or fifteen minutes after eu' tering the room. 19 218 SLEEP. Two children of a manufaclurer of " air- balls" of colored India-rubber liave been de- clared by a coroner's jury to have been " acci- dentally poisoned by the continuous inhalatioria of particles of deleterious powder used in the coloring of air-balls." The father deposed that he used ultra-marine blue, Chinese red, and rose-pink, adding: "I did use Brunswick green, but desisted when another maker told me he had poisoned his finger with it." The balls would burst occasionally during the pro- cess of inflation, and the whole powder would fly about the room like smoke. Sometimes the children would pick up a ball after it had burst, and the father had seen the powder about their mouths. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently says, in reference to the poisonous effects of the inhala- tion of arsenic : "We know, ourselyes, of the case of a. young and beautiful lady of this city, whose health was shattered for years, and whose life was se- WALL-PAPER POISOJSr. 219 riously jeopardized from habitually sleeping in a room covered with paper colored green by arsenia. Her early symptoms were merely a slight dryness about the throat and fauces, with some diarrhea. These gradually increased, and resisted all treatment. Dropsy supervened, and from being a beautiful girl, she became an ob- ject so bloated and repulsive in appearance, as to be painful to look at. Her physiciaii sus- pected slow poisoning, but the most careful analysis of her food could detect nothing, and her life was despaired of At last, however, he bethought him of the possibility of the air she breathed being the vehicle of the poison. A small portion of the wall-paper was taken to his laboratory, and, being subjected to analysis, was found to contain arsenic. The lady was removed to another part of the house, and her recovery, protracted through many months, dated from the day of the change." It is a well-known fact that one or more of the European governments have prohibited the manufacture of the common Lucifer matches, in consequence of the terrible eating sorea which form on the jaws and other portions of 220 SLEEP. the persons of the gu-ls who pass their time in rooms where there is a constant smell of brim stone. These are but a sample of multitudes of cases of authentic record, showing the dan gerous and fatal effects of breathing habit- ually an impure atmosphere, and that as one third of existence is spent in sleeping- chambers, the atmosphere of which is spe- cially corrupted by two or three persons sleeping in the same small unventUated room at the same time, strenuous efforts should be promptly inaugurated by the more intelligent classes of society to abate a social custom which exercises such a wide influ- ence for evil on the health and happiness of the people. In reference to the fact that the more crowded the habitations of a locality are, the more diseaae there is, and vice versa, Parliamentary returns show that of twenty- eight hundred infants annually sent to vari* VITALITY OF COUNTET AIE. 221 ous hospitals in cities and towns to be take a care of, twenty-four out of every twenty -five died. A law was immediately passed that they should be sent to the country thereafter, when it was found that only nine out of twenty-five died the first year; that is, instead of twenty-six hundred and ninety dying, there are only four hun- dred and fifty,, a difference of twenty-two hundred and forty, showing in a striking degree the susceptibility of infants to the ill-effects of a contaminated air, and the value of causing them to sleep where the atmosphere can not be tainted with the breath which comes all loaded with im- purities from the lungs of others. This simple unvarnished statement of the fact, which is indisputable, ought to impress the mind of every parent deeply with the im- portance and the duty of using all practicable means for securing to their offepring the ha* 19* 222 SLEEP. bitual breathing of the purest air possible ; not only in tlie daytime, but also during the night, when the system is less capable of resisting injurious influences of any kind, by reason of the inaction of a state of sleep, and quite as much from the bodily debilities caused by the labors and exer- cises of the day, being careful, however, to avoid a general, but radical and mischievous error, that warm air is necessarily impure. Warmth is as essential to health as pure air, and how best to secure both, should be the constant effort of all who are wise for themselves, and for those whose health and lives they are the providential custodians. To die childless, after having had children, must be one of the most crushing of all calamities of the heart ; yet, in multitudes of cases, the sufferers are the immediate authors of their own sorrows, by reason of their un- pardonable ignorance or more criminal neg SLEEPING APARTMENTS. 223 lect, in tlie direction, among otlierg, of im- proper regulations as to the sleeping and breatliing of their children. A very considerable portion, at least one third, of our time is spent in our sleeping- rooms, and it is well worthy of considera- tion how to make such arrangements as will exclude the greatest number of sources of atmospheric contamination ; the greatest abundance of air and its most plentiful re- newal and as a single sleeper will taint more than one half the air of a large-sized chamber, only one person should be allotted to each, when practicable. The chamber should- be the highest, the airiest, the sun- niest, and the cleanest room in every family dwelling; and yet the smallest, the most cluttered up, and the most out-of-the-way apartments are selected too frequently for dormitories. "Almost any place will do to sleep in," is the tacit language of perhaps three fourths of the people; hence, many 224 SLEEP. sleep habitually in garrets, attics, closets, under tlie steps, under the counters, any where. Hufeland, the great German physi- ologist, says that : " As we spend a considera- ble portion of our lives in the bed-chamber, its healthiness or unhealthiness can not fail to have a very important influence on our well-being." In hospitals of very moderate liberality, an apartment is allowed to each invalid equal to ten feet each way, or one thousand cubic feet in all; according to this distribu- tion, the chamber of a man, wife, and child should be at least sixteen feet long, fifteen broad, and twelve high, which would give less than a thousand feet for each. A hard- working man requires fully this much, to enable him to derive from sleep that re- novation and vigor which will fit him to discharge the duties of the succeeding day with comfort to himself and with fidelity to his employer, hence it has been most perti- FETOE OF CROWDED ROOMS. 225 nently observed that " small bed-rooms are no less a curse to the laborer, than they are to the farmer, the foreman, the landlord, and the nation." It is well said in the Scientific American : " If the impure air of the Black Hole of Cal- cutta could, out of one hundred and forty-six Englishmen, kill, in six hours, no less than seventy-nine, leaving in the morning no more than sixty-seven survivors in the whole, the pemioiousness of bad ventilation can not be too much warned against. If you wish to preserve your health, and the health of others, ventilate your large rooms, and never live in small ones." The following, from Dickens' Household Words, will be read with interest : "People have often said that no difference can be detected in the analyzation of pure and impure air. This is one of the vulgar errors difficult to dislodge from the ordinary brain. The fact is, that the condensed air of a crowded room gives a deposit which, if allowed to remain a few days, forms a solid, thick, glutinous mass, having a strong odor of animal matter. If ex- 226 SLEEP. amined by the microscope, it is seen to undergo a remarkable change. First of all it is convert- ed into a vegetable growth, and this is followed by the production of multitudes of animalcules, a decisive proof that it must contain certain organic matter, otherwise it could not nourish organic beings. This was the result arrived at by Dr. Angus Smith, in his beautiful experi- ments on the air and waters of towns, wherein he showed how the lungs and skin gave out organic matter, which is in itself a deadly poison, producing headache, sickness, disease, or epi- demic, according to its strength. Why, if a few drops of the liquid matter obtained by the con- densation of the air of a foul locality, introduced into the vein of a dog, can produce death by the phenomenon of typhus fever, what incalcu- lable evils must not it produce on those human beings who breathe it again, rendered fouler and less capable of sustaining life with every breath drawn ! Such contamination of the air, and consequent hot-bed of fever and epidemic, it is easily within the power of man to remove. Ventilation and cleanliness will do all, so far as the abolition of this evil goes ; and ventilation and cleanliness are not miracles to be prayed TEWEMENT- HOUSE SYSTEM. 227 for, but certain results of common obedience to tbe laws of Grod." It was announced, at a meeting of tbe New- York Sanitary Society, tbat only one fourtb of tbe population lived in bouses wbicb contained but one family ; it is tberefore almost literally a city of tenement-bouses: "Tbere are single tenement -bouses wbicb contain one bundred and twenty rooms, about tbe size of a state-room, and in a single pest- bouse of tbis description about four bundred buman beings are immured in an atmospbere of efluvia, disease, and indecency. In sucb stupendous sties, ventilation and cleanliness are as likely to be found as in tbe Black Hole in Calcutta. On a single block, covering an area of four bundred feet square, nearly twice as many families are found as on tbe wbole extent of tbe Fiftb Avenue ! It is also found tbat New- York, witb twenty-one tbousand families more tban Pbiladelpbia, bas twenty-tbree tbousand less dwellings tban tbe Quaker City. Truly, tbese are astounding facts to every Cbristian and every pbilantbropist among us. Wbo can bring 228 SLEEP. any clean thing out of sncli immeasurable un- ■cleanness? Do you wonder that fraud and peculation abound, when the majority of the electors in New- York issue from the tenement- house ? Do you wonder that streets are filthy, children are degraded, property insecure, and Sabbath-breaking has to be kept within the limits of open heathenism only by the strong arm of the police ?" From such statements, the conviction presses itself upon us, that crowding and crime grow together as to communities ; for where there are "ninety -six families in a single house, men, women, and children sleeping, like pigs or sheep, together, without air or ventilation, without light, with no protection, and no privacy, all breathing the same putrid effluvia," there must be moral and physical contaminations at the very thought of which the heart of humanity sinks and sickens. As with communities, so with families : crowding degrades. There is significance in the emphatic enuncia tion of a popular writer, that " it is one of the VENLILATION AND HOUSE-W ARMING. 229 moral duties of every married woman, always ta appear well dressed ia tlie presence of her hus- band." Nothing can so much aid in this regard as a separate chamber, and if this were mutual in the married relation, it would add incalculably to that personal self-respect, that dignity of de- meanor, and that courteousness of bearing, the most sedulous cultivation of which adds so incalculably to the amenities of domestic life. VENTILATION AND HOUSE WARMING-. For the double purpose of making this vol- ume practical on the general subject of ventila- tion, and to show that the popular mind is waking up to the importance of the subject, the subjoined articles ^e copied. "A Me- chanic," in Buffalo, New- York, writes, on the conjoined subjects of House-warming and Ven- tilation : " Those who have made expenments for the Durpose of determining the quantity of pure ait 20 230 SLEEP. required per minute for each individual, vary in their conclusions. They publish from three to ten cubic feet, but when physiological facts in relation to the size of lungs, health of persons, and various circumstances are considered, we concede the accuracy of either amount. " "We learn by science that the laws of nature do not long permit the enjoyment of health where pure air is not ; and also when health is lost there can be no possible recovery of it without the aid of pure air. When we breathe, although the air in the lungs is on one side of the membrane and the blood on the other, a re- ciprocal action takes place between them. The blood receives through the membrane oxygen from the air, and at the same time the air re- ceives from the blood carbonic acid gas and watery vapor. The amount of oxygen and carbonic acid gas thus exchanged are said to be equal — that is, pure air taken into the lungs is expelled with about eighty-five per cent car- bonic acid gas and an equal amount of oxygen has been taken from it by the blood. "It appears that a middle-sized man, aged about thirty-eight years, and whose pulse is seventy on an average, gives off three hundred CARBONIC ACID OF EXPIBATION. 231 and two cubic inclies of carbonic acid gas from his lungs in eleven minutes, and supposing the production uniform for twenty-four hours, the total quantity in that period would be thirty nine thousand five hundred and thirty-four cubic inches, (agreeing almost exactly with Dr. Thompson's estimate,) weighing eighteen thou- sand six hundred and eighty-three grains, the carbonic acid in which is five thousand three hundred and sixty-three grains, or rather more than eleven ounces Troy. The oxygen con- sumed in the same time will be equal in vol- ume to the carbonic acid gas. See respiration under Physiology in the Encychpmdia Bri- tannica. "It has been shown by experiment that the pure air once breathed contaias eighty-five per cent of carbonic acid, and that the same air by continued respirations would not take more than ten per cent. Hence the necessity in the preservation of health of breathing air but once as it enters and departs from a room. Proper ventilation permits the air to pass away after having been once breathed, for in respira- tion the air expelled from the lungs being warmed ascends and is not where it may be re- 232 SLEEP. ceived by tlieir next expansion. But if by ii> sufficient ventilation air is breathed more than once, it gives less oxygen to tbe blood and takes less carbonic acid and watery vapor from it than is necessary for the preservation of health. The efficacious action of the blood ceases because of the deleterious presence of carbonic acid in the blood and in the air. Car- bonic acid gas has a little more specific gravity than atmospheric air, but the difference is so slight that when in a current of air it is carried upward, or where there is no current, it. tends downward. " Because of the bad ventilation,*children in school may dread their task. For want of pure air their digestion is impeded. They then feel as if a heavy burden was upon them. If they try to learn they never succeed. If they succeed in committing a paragraph to memory, it is soon forgotten. Being ignorant of them- selves and the causes of their maladies, they judge themselves incapacitated for intellectual pursuits. " It is from the same cause, very frequently, that religious congregations have many mem- bers who spend in church an hour of sleepy IMPUEE AIR OF CHUBCHES. 233 thoughtlessness, and return home without being able to tell the points of the speaker's discourse, though they had been where one of the most instructive and interesting sermons was preach- ed. It is doubtless because of bad ventilation that the power of the advocate of the Gospel in the pulpit is much less than it otherwise would be. " Houses of worship are mostly so construct- ed that the impure air is driven, by opening the door upon the preacher. He, in the act of speaking, inhales it more injuriously than others. As a victim he may be marked for an early death. The sympathy and defense which he would have if a wild beast of the forest should assail him in the pulpit does not appear to defend him from the, consequences of bad ventUation, which fact is a proof of the absence of knowledge in relation to the subject." VENTILATION OF KITCHENS. A correspondent of the Ohio Farmer says : " There is always more or less steam and grease-smoke caused by cooking, and their re- .moval is always desirable without resorting to open doors and windows. 20* 234 SLEEP. " In eighteen hundred and fifty-six I put a cook- stove into my kitchen, which is fourteen by sixteen feet, and placed a ventilator over it, in the shape of an inverted funnel, to the upper end of which was attached an eight-inch pipe, that entered the flue above the stove-pipe. My stove and ventilator still remain there, and we are never troubled with smoke or steam — all is instantly carried away. "This ventilator is of my own planning, and made of sheet iron. The eight inch pipe has a circular elbow, connecting it with the flue, and both it and the stove pipe are below the ceiling. The flue is twelve by sixteen inches inside, and is therefore capable of carrying off a good deal of smoke and air. The rim, or widest part of the ventUator, is thirty inches in diameter, and is suspended four feet above the top of the stove. There is a damper in the ventilator pipe, that enables me to shut it entirely, if I desire to start the fire quick, by increasing the draft. It soon becomes necessary to open it, however, as the draft in my chimney is 'too great, and burns the wood too fast. Many peo- ple have seen it, and think it worth ten dollars a year to any kitchen. A hole can be made KITCHEN VENTILATION. 235 easily iu tlie flue, or tlie pipe may be carried through the ceiling, and enter the flue above, especially if the kitchen is one story, and an open garret above it. More room is obtained by the latter method. It will also do equally well if the pipe is carried through the roof or side of the house. It is not like a stove-pipe, and there is no danger from fire. It is easily and cheaply made, and may be obtained from any tin-plate or sheet-iron store." MANAG-ING- WINDOWS FOR AIR. " There is always a draught through key- ' holes, window- crevices, because as external air is colder than the air in the room we occupy, it rushes through the window-crevices to supply the deficiency caused by the escape of wind up the chimney. If you open the lower sash of a window, there is more draught than if you opeu the upper sash. The reason of this is because if the lower sash be opened, cold air wiU rush into the room and cause a great draught inward ; but if the upper sash be opened the heated air will rush out, and of course there will be less draught inward. A room is better ventilated £36 SLEEP. by opening the upper sast, because tte hot ventilated air, whicli always ascends upwards towards the ceiling, can escape more easily. The wind dries damp linen, because dry wind, like a sponge, imbibes the particles of vapor from the surface of the linen as fast as they are formed. " The hottest place in a church or chapel is the gallery, because the heated air of the build- ing ascends, and all the cold air which can enter through the doors and windows keeps to the floor till it has become heated. Special atten- tion should be given to the ventilation of sleep- ing-rooms ; for pure air, and an abundance of it, is more necessary when we are sleeping than when we are awake. Sleeping-rooms should be large, high and dry, more especially in warm latitudes, and in situations where the windows have to be kept closed at night on account of malaria." VENTILATION OF SHOPS. "Few things," says a foreign writer, "are more insidiously undermining the constitution and vital stamina of many 'young people' than the want of shop ventilation, particularly in the evening, when the gas is lighted. VENTILATION OF SHOPS, 237 " There are many trades, the occupation in which is very light, and requires little or no exertion. Stationers, fancy wool, top-shops, and the like, nearly all keep their doors closed 'because it is so cold;' the result is, that the burning gas vitiates the air in the shop; and the assistants inhaling this, the circulation of the blood is lo-wered, and the outward cold is felt all the more. Again, there are some shops the contents of which naturally yield emanations of an unhealthy kind when a free current of air is excluded. Who, for instance, can go into a shoe-shop, the doors of which are kept closed, without at once being conscious of the unplea- sant odor of old and new leather ? The same may be said of a ready-made clothing depot ; the peculiar odor of the cloth and fustian, the burnt gas, and the confined breath of the people serv- ing therein, make it exceeding disagreeable to a stranger on entering out of the fresh air. If a remark be made by a purchaser that the shop 'smells close,' the assistant is almost sure to reply that ' they don't . notice it' What, how- ever, they do notice, is headache, languor, loss of appetite, ennui, debility, pallor of the face, blotchy skin, redness of the nose, and white face, 238 SLEEP. All unlieeded warnings to ventilate the dwelling- place, wMcL., if not attended to, "produce worse results. "Many drapers' shops are badly .ventilated ; some, where they drive a good trade, have been enlarged by the addition of neighboring houses, all the fireplaces have been removed, and but one or two entrances are left to the whole build- ing. There are, on the other hand, many trades where the door is always open ; the result is that all engaged in it are healthy, and never complaiu of being cold. Look at the butcher- boy, blooming and healthy; furniture-dealers, tavern-keepers, and many other occupations are, as a general rule, healthy, because of the free ventilation of the shops or places of trade. " The nose is the gate to the lungs, and what- ever is iadicative of unpleasantness is unhealth- ful, and should be shut out. Instead of closing the doors to keep the shop warm, it is better, if the cold is severe, to wear warmer under-cloth- ing — half gloves, thick stockings, warm jackets, and woolly neckerchiefe. In winter, dress ac- cordingly in warm clothes, and plenty of them. Arising from well-known causes, cold air, par- ticularly fresh air, warms the person that BKEATHING DUST. 289 breathes it more than warm air. It is proverb- ial that persons sitting quietly in a room ' feel a draught' from every cranny. 'The key -hole blows enough to turn a mill;' though they ' creep into the fire,' and roast themselves, they have always one side cold ; yet a little exertion in fresh open air would put them into a glow. " As gas bums, and people breathe, water is produced and exhaled ; if this steam has been condensed on the inside of windows, you may be sure the shop wants ventilation. Dust of every kind should also be avoided with scrupu- lous care. Every morning when the shop is dusted, doors and skylights should always be wide open, so as to clear away the dust as it flies about. It avails but little to dust without getting rid of it out of the premises ; to make a dust with a brush in one place for it to settle in another, is labor in vain. Persons who take a morning or evening draught of dust are sure to be troubled with air-tube complaints. This, then, is another reason for ventilatuag the shop. "Those observations apply not only to the tradesman's shop, but also to the workshop or factory. The fearful decadence of the health of such towns as Manchester, Oldham and Shef- 240 SLEEP. field, which are in truth but congregations of workshops, is notorious ; the pale, wan faces of the dwellers there too truly tell the want of pure, clean, fresh air. "Passing now from the private shop to pub- lic institutions, we are compelled to admit the same radical fault — ^the want of that element which is ' the breath of life.' "In the churches, schools, and assemblies, people who go there suffer more or less from this evil. It is proverbial how persons, young and old, suffer from colds, bronchitis, and influ- enza, all of which are said to be ' caught ' when they return from some pubUo place of assembly. The question naturally arises, how is this? The answer is, that it is caused by the sudden change which the body undergoes in passing from a heated, impure air to that of the natural temperature, containing also its proper propor- tion of elements. Man requires for his health one gallon of air every minute of his life ; the individuals of a church congregation are rarely, if ever, supplied with a quarter of that quantity. Only at the cathedrals is the air space in pro- portion to the worshipers. A man of large lungs inhales about twenty-five cubic inches of VITIATED AIR OF CROWDED ROOMS. 2-11 air at each respiration ; he breathes eleven times a minute, and thus requires nine and a half cubic feet of air every hour. Now when there are a thousand persons under one roof (some of the metropolitan churches and chapels contain twenty-five hundred persons) for a cotiple of hours, it is evident that twenty thousand cubic feet of air are required to supply that which is necessary for existence to those thousand per- sons in a pure atmosphere, so that, of course, a much larger quantity than that is required in order that a current can be established to remove the effete matter of exhalation. " The evils of vitiated air are also more to be guarded against, because persons can live in it without being aware of its danger, so far as their sensations are concerned. "When we enter a crowded assembly on a cold day, the air is, at first, repulsive and oppressive, but these sensa- tions gradually disappear, and then we breathe freely and are unconscious of the quality of the air. Science, however, reveals the fact that the system sinks in action to meet the conditions of the impure air, but it does so at the expense of having the vital functions gradually depressed, and when this is continued disease follows. No 21 242 SLEEP. disease can be thoroughly cured whea there is a want of ventilation. It is related that illness continued in a family until a pane of glass was accidentally broken, and then it ceased; the window not being repaired, a plentiful supply of fresh^air was admitted." BURYING- UNDER CHURCHES. " The practice of building sepulchral vaults under the churches was fraught with the great- est evil to the health of those who went into the edifice for sacred purposes. But, with few exceptions, it is now interdicted by the legisla- ture ; still a great deal has to be done. Nearly all the churches in the empire require some artificial means of ventilation to render them physically fit receptacles for the body during a prolonged service. The Sunday-schools, also, as a general rule, are very ill-ventilated, and in the second hour the lessons are far worse ren- dered than in the first, solely arising from a semi-lethargic coma that comes over the pupils breathing a carbonic air, which has already done duty, and been inhaled by others several times. However it is to be regretted, it is yet trne that people will sometimes sleep during BUEYING UNDER CHUBCHES. 2-43 the sermon. Notv, the minister must not be twitted with this, for with the oratory of a Jer- emy Taylor or a TOlotson, people could not be kept awake in an atmosphere charged with carbonic gas, the emanations of a thousand listeners. The church-wardens should ventilate the churches, and see that the congregations have sufficient air for breathing; if people go to sleep, the church-wardens are more to blame than the preacher." VENTILATION AS INFLUENCING- HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. In a public lecture on this subject. Dr. E. Y. Eobins, an indefatigable worker and an able and scientific writer on subjects allied to venti- lation and general hygiene, said that air was the prime necessary of life ; that we could live more days without food than we could minutes without air. The purpose of our breathing was, first, to supply the blood with oxygen, which is the life-sustaining principle of the air, and second, to free the blood from carbonic acid and other impirrities. The air which we breathe ia found, on expiration, to have lost a large part oi its oxygen, and to be impregnated with car- 244 SLEEP. bonic acid gas — that substance which often proves fatal to persons who descend into wells, and which is the active agent of death in cases of suicide by burning charcoal. It produces death whether retained in the blood or inhaled into the lungs — the poisoning process in both cases being precisely the same. To produce death by that agent, it was by no means necessary that it should be breathed in a pure state. Dr. Carpenter had ascertained that air containing five or six per cent of car- bonic acid gas would produce immediate death, and that less than one half that quantity would soon prove fatal; and Dr. T. Herbert Barker had ascertained by experiments with this sub- stance, that an animal in an atmosphere con- taining only two per cent of carbonic acid would die in about two hours. Now the air which we exhale from the lungs contains, ac- cording to standard authorities, about five per cent of carbonic acid, and hence if exactly the same air were reinhaled it would quickly prove fatal. It is a substance that is constantly ac- cumulating in the blood, and if it is not as con- stantly removed it wOl speedily produce death. The process of breathing is but the instinctive VENTILATION AOT) LONGEVITY. 245 effort of nature to free herself from the presence of this poison. But air which has once been in the lungs, will no longer perform this office, being already saturated with carbonic acid. Hence the necessity of inhaliilg fresh air at every breath. The importance of this was illustrated by Dr. Southwood Smith, who said : " Stop the respiration of an animal, or confine it to air which has already been respired, and carbon accumulates in the venous blood and mixes with the arterial blood. In half a minute the blood flowing in the arteries is evidently darker; in three quarters of a minute it is of a dusky hue, and in a minute and a half it is quite black. Every particle of arterial blood now disappears, and tbe whole mass becomes venous, sensibility is abolished, the animal falls down, and in three, or at most in four minutes, the heart entirely ceases its action, and can never again be excited." Now, if effects are proportioned to their causes, and if an atmos- phere impregnated with five per cent — or one twentieth part of its volume — of carbonic acid, will thus produce death in a few minutes, what must be the probable effect of breathing, for twenty or forty years, even the much minuter 21" 246 SLEEP. proportions which must be present in every in- habited room where there is not a constant in- gress and egress of air ? It must lower the standard of health and shorten the duration of life. But not only is the air in a close room thus constantly being impregnated with car- bonic acid gas to the amount of about twenty- eight cubic inches per minute for each adult man occupying such room, but there is also, ac- cording to the best authorities, constantly being discharged by the lungs and pores of the skin, an equal amount, by weight — that is, about three or three and a half pounds in twenty-four hours — of effete, decaying animal substance, in the form of insensible vapor, which we often see condensed in drops upon the windows of crowded rooms and railroad-cars. Those drops, if collected and evaporated, leave a thick, putrid mass of animal matter. The breathing of these exhalations is believed to be quite as efficient in producing disease as carbonic acid itself. But there is still a third deterioration produced in the air by respiration, and that is, the loss of its oxygen. Oxygen is the vital and life-sup- porting principle of the air, and it is found that, when the air enters the lungs, the blood absorbs AIR OF CLOSE BOOMS. 247 about forty pei cent of the oxygen which it contains. It is upon this we live ; and the air that is exhaled being deficient by almost one half in this vital element, of course can no longer support life. And as we inhale about five hundred cubic inches of air every minute, we of course deprive that quantity of air of forty per cent of its oxygen each iniaute. The Creator has provided for the constant and com- plete removal of these poisonous exhalations by causing the expired air to rise, by its increased warmth and consequent levity, quickly above our heads and beyond the reach of a second in- halation, and by sweeping it away by the winds; but by our impervious ceilings and tight walls, we obstruct the operation of this beneficent law, and prevent these poisonous exhalations from escaping. Hence the air of a close room, though occupied but by a single person, becomes, from the very first moment of occupancy, im- pregnated with these impurities, which accu- mulate more and more, the longer it is occupied without ventilation, and the more it is crowded. It would certainly be difficult to over-estimate the importance to life and health of the purity of the air we breathe, and it would also be diffi- 248 SLEEP. cult to determine to what period of duratioJi human life might be prolonged, did we and had our ancestors always breathed a perfectly pure atmosphere. A most remarkable and convinc- ing illustration of the effects of the quality of the air we breathe upon health, is to be found in the experience of the armies of England and Prance during the late Russian war. England, out of a total force of ninety -three thousand nine hundred and fifty nine men engaged in the campaign in the Crimea, lost thirty-three thou- sand six hundred and forty-five, of which num- ber only only two thousand and fifty-eight were killed in action, and one thousand seven hun- dred and sixty-one died of wounds, while no less than sixteen thousand two hundred and ninety-eight died of disease at the seat of war, and about thirteen thousand were sent home on account of sickness, many of whom, no doubt, afterwards died. To every one taken to the hospitals on account of wounds, twelve were taken there on account of disease. The chief destroyer was typhus fever. M. Boudens, Sur- geon-in-Chief of the French army, in a letter written home during the war, says of this disease: "It is engendered by crowding and VENTILATION OF SCHOOL-ROOMS. 249 ■want, either in hospitals, prisons, or on board of vessels. The disease may indeed be calle.d forth and removed at will." And he adds: "The first remedy is pure air and powerful ventilation." The great 'mortality in the Eng- lish army was during the early period of the "war. After the Sanitary Commissioners ar- rived and commenced their operations by secur- ing greater ventilation, the sickness was staid, and finally disappeared. The great panacea was fi-esh air. In the French army, where no sanitary reforms were introduced," the great mortality continued and increased, thus showing clearly that the changes made by the Sanitary Commissioners in the English army were the sole causes of the decrease of mortality where they labored. Eecurring again to the condition of our buildings here, the lecturer said : In our school-rooms the matter is still worse ; while in our railroad-cars we have actually less breath- ing room than the wretched prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta — ^they having had about forty cubic feet per man, while in our cars we have only an allowance of about thirty cubic feet. In addition to this, the lighting of our rooms in the evening is a source of great con- 250 SLEEP. tamination to the air — eacli gas-burner being estimated to generate as much carbonic acid gas as the respiration of four persons, or more than one hundred cubic inches per minute. Every gas-burner should have a ventilating tube to carry off the products of combustion, and con- vey them entirely out of the room, as is the case in the Houses of Parliament, and many other public and private buildings in England. In conclusion, he stated his belief, that by due attention to sewerage and ventilation, the mor- tality of this city would be decreased ten thou- sand every year. The lecture, which occupied about an hour in reading, was listened to with great satisfaction by all present. When the lecture was concluded. Dr. Harris stated that the next lecture would be delivered on Monday evening. " In answer to a call. Dr. Halliday referred to recent visits he had made to the houses in this city in which a number of families lived to gether. He said that the Italian residents here, especially, were in the habit of living several families together, in one comparatively small room. He also mentioned that in a single block he found forty-five families, not a single one of EICIIARDS ON VENTILATION. 251 whom had a child living. "When lie asked for their children, the answer generally was : ' God has taken them away to heaven.' This terrible infant mortality was caused by want of cleanli- ness and ventilation in their residences." The best, the ablest, and most successful weekly publication of its kind in the world, is the New- York Scientific American. One of its special correspondents, E. M. Eichards, writes on the same important subject of ventilation : " Many persons have remarked the languor and sleepiness that are apt to creep over them after sitting for an hour or so in a crowded church. Many persons refer this to other than the real cause — to dullness of the discourse, bodily derangement, etc. — while really, in most cases, it is solely to be attributed to a deficiency of vital air. On first commencing the religious services, the supply is generally sufficient ; but before the close, it becomes totally inadequate. Many sick stomachs and bilious headaches are thus inflicted on devout but physiologically ig- aorant worshipers. " Our schools are little better than 'mephitic 252 SLEEP. dens,' in which the poor children are almost poisoned, and their brains stupified, by the im- purities they are obliged to take into their sys- tems through their lungs. Under these circum- stances it is equally impossible for the pupils to attead as well to their studies, and for the mas- ters to exhibit as much tact or patience in im- parting knowledge, as they would if they were placed under more' favorable circumstances. So keen is the writer's remembrance of the miseries he endured from this cause, during his school- boy days, and so deep his conviction of the last- ing injury inflicted thereby, that, if compelled to choose between the two evils, he would pre- fer having his children to remain untaught all their lives than subject them to the same blood- corrupting process which he underwent. " The railroad-car, the ship, the steamboat, all give evidence of the presence of the same demon — ^foul air. A night's ride in some of our trains is enough to develop consumption in tbose pre- disposed to that disease. The climax of hor- lors, however, is reached in the crowded steam- ship, where, to an abundance of carbonic acid, are added stinking bilge-water, sea-sick passen- Qfcrs, fames of cookery, oil and rancid tallow FOUL AIR OF CARS AND SHIPS. 253 from tlie maoMnery, and all other abominations only to be found on ship-board. There ig no use in multiplying examples ; they are to be found on all sides, if we only look for them. " The following is a good test of the salubrity of any apartment : Let a healthy person, whose sense of smeU is unimpaired, take a brisk walk in the open air, then come at once into the room, and if there is any close or other unpleas- ant smell, the atmosphere of that room is more or less hurtful. How many of our bed-cham bers could pass that ordeal in the early morn- ing, after being slept in during the night ? " Having glanced at the prevalence of bad air and the evil consequences that always follow its habitual inhalation, the means whereby we may protect ourselves from it are now to be consid- ered. The theory of the whole thing is simple enough : the vitiated air must be removed as fast as produced, and pure air introduced (with- out intermixture) to supply its place. The practice, however, requires some little care. It may be here stated that winter is the season in which people suffer most from defective ventUar tion, as the external cold makes them carefully close all the apertures in their rooms ; while, on 22 254 SLEEP. the contrary, in tlie summer, tlie heat obliges them to open them all. But ventilation is more easily effected during cold weather. "We must be careful not to confound pure air with cold, or warm air -mih-foul; this is a very common mis- take, and a very dangerous one, too ; for warm air may be quite pure, and cold air just the reverse. " To obtain proper, reliable ventilation, it will not do to trust to the doors, windows, or fire- places (should these latter exist) of our apart- ments ; the first are for ingress and egress, the second to transmit light, and the last to pass the products of combustion from the fire into the opeu air. No doubt, in the absence of any better means, the rooms may be kept in a toler- ably wholesome condition by the free use of doors and windows, but not in such a perfect, pleasant, and economical manner as when proper apparatus is used to secure this result. As before stated, the breath exhaled from the lungs, being heated, rises rapidly to the highest portion of the room, where, if means for its exit are provided, it will at once (in most con- ditions of the atmosphere) pass out into the open air ; but if, as ia the case in most build- BAD AIR OF ROOMS. 255 ings, public or private, there is no foul air- escape near the ceiling, the heated portion of air under consideration remains a short time suspended aloft; then, as 'it becomes cooler, it descends lower and lower, till at last it mingles with the air near the level of the mouths of the occupants of the apartment. Should there be an open fire-place, the foul air, having descend- ed from the ceiling, generally escapes in great part up the chimney ; having first come below the level of the mouth, even of a seated person. This fact is especially to be noted, as showing that an open fireplace very indififerently sup- plies the place of a regular foul air-escape. Some- of it may alsof in certain states of the ex- ternal atmosphere, pass out at the crevices over the tops of the windows and the top of the door, supposing them to be closed, as they gen- erally are in winter ; but if they are open, of course the case is not so bad. Now, to supply the place of this out-passing vitiated air, fresh air usually comes in through any cracks or openings that it can find at or near the level of the floor ; and in cold weather, if there is a fire burning in the apartment, the external air will pour in at any opening it can find, high or low. 256 SLEEP. It is evident that, under these circumstances, the in-coming fresh and out-going foul air be- come more or less intermingled, so that it is impossible for the inmates to breathe any but a partially impure element. Opening the win- dows in winter, though preferable to being poisoned with noxious gases, is objectionable, as it causes sudden drafts of very cold air, and thus may injure invalids, besides being unpleas- ant to those in robust health ; and, moreover, it only somewhat remedies the evil. In cases where there are no fire-places, if it were possi- ble to construct rooms perfectly air-tight, (and the best mechanics always leave their work the freest from flaws and cracks,) there could be no in-coming or out-going draft in a chamber of this kind ; in a very little time it would be im- possible to exist, so rapidly would the noxious gases accumulate. It thus appears that, for the ability to remain in such a room without abso- lute and immediate danger to life, we have to thank the bad joints, crevices, and holes left about windows and doors by the defective work of the house-carpenter. Certainly, we of the nineteenth century have not much reason to boast of our advances in the art of house-build- VITIATED ATMOSPHERE. 257 ing wlien we thus construct our dwellings. It is not many centuries since there were no chim- neys to the abodes of the great and wealthy ; a huge fire was kindled in the middle of the large room where the baron and his family lived, the smoke and soot from which fire was allowed to make its escape in the best way it could through an aperture contrived in the roof. The discom- forts of an apartment thus warmed can hardly be over-rated. " We may, perhaps, laugh at the rude habits and the little knowledge of ' household science ' that could tolerate such a state of things ; quite forgetting that we are just as far behind, in not providing for the exit of the poisonous products of respiration. If we have improved on our forefathers in one respect, we have gone back in another ; for the aforementioned opening in the rooij though inferior to the modern chimney for passing the smoke, provided a much better outlet for the other exhalations of the spacious hall below." The PMIadelpMa Bulletin remarks, in the same direction : " Human nature is skeptical concerning that 22* 258 SLEEP. wliicli it can not see. If every body could see foul air, if it was as palpable as foul water, men would no more breathe it as tbey do, than they now drink the water of a green and stagnated pool. It is odd how slowly a plain truth works its way when it has tbe disadvantage of being new. Even architects, who ought to understand their business, will build houses, public halls, and church.es, without an intentional crevice for ventilation. "We remember that an old gentle- man in one of our boroughs was the laughing- stock of the town because he ventilated his par- lor. And in great rooms, built for the purpose of accommodating thousands, there wiU some- times be little or no provision for discharging the foul air which is poisoning the people. " But the greatest imposition that we know of, in this regard, is the condition of the cars on the great railway lines in the winter. Imposi- tion, we say, because while the going to a lec- ture or concert in a public hall is voluntary, it is often a necessity of travel. Two large stoves, heated red hot with anthracite coal, are placed in a space of say fifteen feet wide and ten feet high. This space contains about eighty people, «nd ia closely shut up. The stoves use up BAD AIR OF EAIL-CAES. 259 oxygen witli great rapidity, and what is left ia breathed over and over again by the eighty people, who are giving out from their lungs, constantly, a gas utterly unfit to be breathed. Is it not incredible that upon roads conducted with the propriety, good sense, and acuteness, with which some of our good lines are managed, there is not wit enough to cut a few holes near the top of the car, to let out the foul air ? Gen- tlemen, presidents, superintendents, engineers, and conductors, pray have mercy on passengers I We plead for the people with headaches, with nausea, and with a stifling sensation which forces them to sit in a draught with a car going twenty-five miles an hour, and the thermometer twenty degrees below freezing-point, at the risk of their life — or else endure slow poison." SUNLIG-HT AS A VENTILATOR. But it must be remembered that the ventila- tion of no apartment is perfect without the aid of the blessed sunlight. " Sir James "Wylie, late physician to the Em- peror of Eussia, attentively studied the effects of 260 SLEEP. light as a curative agent in the hospitals of St. Petersburg ; and he discovered that the number of patients who were cured in rooms properly lighted was four times greater than of those confined in dark rooms. This led to a complete reform in lighting the hospitals of Eussia, and with the most beneficial results. In all cities visited by the cholera, it was universally found that the greatest number of deaths took place in narrow streets, and on the sides of those having a northern exposure, where the salutary beams of the sun were excluded. The inhab- itants of the southern slopes of mountains are better developed and more healthy than those who live on the northern sides; while those who dwell in secluded valleys are generally subject to peculiar diseases and deformities of person. These different results are due to the agency of light, without a full supply of which plants and animals maintain but a sickly and feeble existence. Eminent physicians have ob- served that partially deformed children have been restored by exposure to the sun and the open air. -As scrofula is most prevalent among the children of the poor, this is attributed by many persons to their living in dark and con VALUE OF SUNLIGHT. 261 fined Houses ; sucli diseases being most common among those residing in underground tenements. " The health statistics of all civilized coun- tries have improved greatly during the past century. This may be justly regarded as due to the superior construction of houses, by ad- mitting more light into them. The old- fashioned houses were built with narrow, dwarfish windows, and as glass, until within recent years, was very dear, its application to windows was proportionally limited. Dwellings of the present day are generally built with windows of four times the dimensions of those belonging to the olden times ; and the streets of our cities (upon which houses depend so much for their light) are made much wider than those of a past age. Light is now more valued, for its influence is better understood than was the case fifty or one hundred years ago; and the most gratifying results have fol- lowed. But we are not at the end of city im- provements yet ; and it is felt, in almost all our cities, that if the streets (even the broadest of them) were twice their present width, a general benefit would be the result." " The following %ct," says a good authority, 262 SLEEP. " has been established by careful observation . That where sunlight penetrates all the rooms of a dwelling, the inmates are less liable to sickness, than in a house where the apartments lose its health-invigorating influences. Base- ment-rooms are the nurseries of indisposition. It is a gross mistake to compel human beings to reside partially under ground. There is a de- fective condition of the air in such rooms, con- nected with dampness, besides the decomposing paint on the walls, and the escape of noxious gases from pipes and drains. It is strange that builders persist in doing violence to humanity, by still erecting houses with basements." In continuation of the same subject, that beautiful and lovable character, Florence Nightingale, observes of THE MANIA FOR DARK ROOMS. American women have a strange mania for dark rooms, but hear what Florence Nightin- gale, in her Notes on Nursing, says on the sub- ject : "A dark house is almost always an un- healthy house, always an ill-aired house. Want of light stops growth, and promotes scrofula, DARK EOOMS MISCHIEVOUS. 263 rickets, etc., among tlie cMldren. People lose their health in a dark house, and if they get ill, they can not get well again in it. Three out of many ' negligences and ignorances ' in manag- ing the health of houses generally, I will here mention as specimens. First, that the female head in charge of any building does not think it necessary to visit every hole and corner of it every day. How can she expect those who are under her to be more careful to maintain her house in a healthy condition than she who is in charge of it ? Second, that it is not considered essential to air, to sun, and to clean rooms while uninhabited ; which is simply ignoring the first elementary notion of sanitary things, and lay- ing the ground ready for all kinds of diseases. Third, that the window, and one window, is considered enough to air a room. Don't imagine that if you who are in charge don't look to all those things yourself, those under you will be more careful than you are. It ap pears as if the part of the mistress was to com- plain of her servants, and to accept their excuse — not to show them how there need be neither complaints made nor excuses." 264 SLEEP. A SUNNY "WRITER IN A 'PLEA FOR THE LITTLE ONES." "Let the warm weather come! Let your children amuse themselves out of doors. Don't keep them shut up like house-plants, until they become as pale and as thin as ghosts. Strip off the finery, put on coarse garments, and turn them out to play in the sand — ^to make ' mud- cakes' — ^to daub their faces with any thing of an ' earthy nature,' which will have a ten dency to make them look as though they had entered into a co-partnership with dirt. Keep them in the house, and they will soon look like, and be of about as much value as a potato which grows in the cellar — ^pale, puny, sickly, sentimental wrecks of humanity. Turn them out, we say, boys and girls, and let them run, snuff the pure air, and be happy. Who cares if they do get tanned? Leather must be tanned before it is fit for use, and boys and girls must undergo a hardening process, before they are qualified to engage in the arduous duties of active life. Let the sun come into our dwellings, and let our chambers be on the Bunny side of the house. All know that a THE BLESSED SUNSHINE. 265 aortli liglit is cold, searcMng, and unsenti- mental, and tries botli complexion and the' heart; it reveals gray hairs, and the first faint footprints of the bird of ill-omen in the comers of the eyes with appalling distinctness. The flowers of the carpet are duller, for it has not a tint to lend ; except the light of early morning, nothing is less complimentary than a northern aspect. " But a room that the sun is not permitted to look into at all, should be without a door ; it is unfit for human occupancy. Even the flowers will grow pale, and be frightened to death in it. The primary object of a window is not for the sons of men. to look out, but for the sun to look in. " Pleasant sunshine not only brightens a man's buttons, but his heart; it makes his spirit as cheerful as the landscape. He can not live and be happy — he can not be happy with- out it. " White is not beauty, any more than a melan- choly blue is the ' color of virtue,' and yet the insane dodging of the sun has its origin in some such optical, delusion. We catch school-girls eating chalk and drinking vinegar to render 2a 266 SLEEP. themselves pale and interesting. Next to an inky skin, they dread a rich brown cheek, and , a brow that the sun has pressed as pure a kiss upon as the mellifluous lips of Israel could give. "More windows in the sunny side of our dwell- ings, more living in the open air ; less fear of an unclouded and parasoUess sun, and more bold, free exercise, would kindle a true, coun- try, milkmaid-glow upon cheeks as chalky as the cliflfs of Dover, and let a little sunshine into the shady comers of many a heart. Light, daylight, was not made merely to see by and warm by, but to grow bright and glad in ; and that beam of a clear, autumn morning has failed to reach its destination that has not shone into the spirit, and burnished the thought, as it has brightened the eye." OUT-DOOR LIFE. "Just as that poetry is the freshest which the out-door life has the most nourished, so I believe that there is no surer sign of the rich vitality which finds its raciest joys in sources the most innocent, than the. childlike taste for that same out-door life. Whether you take from fortune the palace or the cottage, add to AVERAGE OF OUT AND IN-DOOE LIFE. 26.7 your chambers a hall in the courts of Nature. Let the earth but give you room to stand on ; well, look up. Is it nothing to have for your roof-tree — heaven? Breathe fresh air if you wish to live long. In New-England, farmers, who. pass their days out of doors, live to an average of sixty-four years. The average age of persons who have in-door occupation is, in Massachusetts and Ehode Island — Shoemakers, forty-three; tailors, forty -two and a half; drug- gists, jewelers and teachers, from thirty -niae to forty ; machinists, thirty-eight and one quarter ; printers thirty-six and a half. Fresh air, there- fore, almost doubles a man's life, whUe it more than doubles his capacity for enjoyment." IN-DOOR LIFE. " Sitting-rooms, school-rooms, sleeping-rooms — every place occupied by human beings, should be well ventilated. In a school-room, for ex- ample, thirty feet square and eight feet high, there are seven thousand and two hundred cubic feet of air. Such a room will seat sixty pupils, and allowing seven cubic feet of air per minute to each person — ^the least allowed by any phy- siologist — all will be vitiated in less than 268 SLEEP. eighteen minutes. And as all the blood in the human system traverses the whole breath- ing surface of the lungs in about two and a half minutes, every one who breathes such an impure atmosphere for two and a half mi- nutes, has every particle of his blood acted on by the vitiated air, making it less vital, less capable of repairing waste, and of carrying on the functions of life. And the longer such air is breathed, the more impure does it be- come, and the more corrupt the blood, and the more surely does it lay the foundation for disease and death." TOWN AND COUNTRY AIR. The relative difference between the out and indoor air of any locality, in favor of the greater purity of the former, is not more decided than what exists between the air of the country and that of the city, which may in large part be regarded as one of the reasons for the greater healthfulness of those who live in the country. That coun- try air is the purer, is curiously shown by BAD AIR ANALYZED. 269 an Englisli gentleman wto for several years has devoted Ms attention to tlie condition of tlie air of towns, and communicates to the London At}i,enae.um tlie result of some of his experiments for ascertaining the amoimt of organic matter contained in the air of vari- ous localities. The process by which this is accomplished consists in finding how much of a solution of permanganate of soda will be decomposed by the amount of air. The process occupies about half an hour. There is as much difference between the back streets of a town and the air of a hilly district in the North of Lancashire as from one to twenty-two. In other words, there was found in the air of a close court twentjr. two times more matter capable of decomposing the solution, than there was found in a free, hilly district. 23* 270 SLEEP. GAS-LIGHTS IN SICK-ROOMS. There is a cause of impurity in the atmos- phere of our dwellings where coal-gas is burn- ed, which demands attention, especially as many persons sleep with a small jet of gas burning all night, and it should be particularly noted in the sick-chamber, both for the sake of the watchers and the invalid. When gas IS first generated from soft coal, it is combined with many deleterious ingredients. Investigation and experiment have by degrees found out the means of purifying it of its most objectionable and offensive combinations; but the best means of chemical purification yet found out, stm leave some Sulphurous com- pounds, which, when burned, yield sulphurous gas. Experiments prove that in burning one hundred cubic feet of London gas, seven and a half grains of sulphur are yielded in summer, and ten in winter, having pernicioiis eflfects on the human economy, as well as tarnishing the SEA-SHORE AND MOUNTAIN AIR. 271 pictures, gilding, and furniture. It is scarcely doubted tliat means will be found, in the prose- cution of chemical experiments, which will still further purify the gases burned in our dwellings. Not only is there a marked difference be- tween the out and in-door air of any locality, and between the air of the town and that of the country, but also between the air of differ- ent localities in the country ; and the instincts of the people in all climes seem to have led them to the most healthful places. For exam- ple, it is every where known that the hill country and the sea-shore are healthful above all other localities ; hence they are places of general resort during warm weather, and when epidemics prevail. It has lately been ascer- tained, that an unfamiliar constituent of the atmosphere is found in greater abundance on the mountains and the sea -shore than else- where. This constituent is called "Ozone," which means an "odor," from the fact that 272 SLEEP. where it is found in abundance a smell ia perceptible, similar to that noticed at tbe "Anode," or positive surface in electrical operations. Very little is known, certainly, of its nature or properties, beyond tbe fact that it seems to abound in peculiarly healthful situations. RELATIONS OF AIR,.— AIR AND LIFE. Prof B. G. Dalton shows that "the oxy- gen of the air is the great agent for renewing the blood,' eliminating impurities, warming the body, and giving a healthy tone to all the vital powers. A full supply of pure air, then, is as essential to life and health as an adequate amount of unadulterated food. If stringent laws are made against manufacturing or selling unwholesome bread, which may be consumed two or three times a day, still more should health-officers and legislators make provision Against impure air, which is drawn into the very life-blood eighteen times a minute. The extent, constancy, causes, and consequences of OXYGEN CONSUMED IN BREATHING, 273 this poisoning process, should be well under- stood by all. " The air becomes unfit for use in two ways — by the abstraction of oxygen, and by the intro- duction of deadly elements. From many and careful experiments it is found that each inspir- ation takes from the air about thirty-fire per cent of oxygen, or seven per cent of the whole air, which lessens its natural quantity one and one third cubic feet in a minute, and during the same time one cubic foot is vitiated by exhaled carbonic acid. For the combustion of five pounds of Lehigh coal in an hour, six hundred feet of air must be withdrawn from a room, or ten feet per minute. This is safe, if air is copiously supplied ; if not, oxygen is dimin- ished, and foul gases are driven into the room, corrupting the air as in respiration. In the process of lighting, every cubic foot of coal-gas consumed takes from the air about two and a half feet of oxygen, and produces two feet of carbonic acid. A burner consuming one cubic foot per hour, -would spoil a hundred for breath- mg in the same time, or one and two thirds feet per minute. Add to these agencies the exhalations from the skin, polluting two or 274 SLEEP. three feet per minute, and we have before ua the startling fact that a single person in a close room, with a furnace and light, renders six or eight feet of air unfit for use every minute. How appalling, therefore, in crowded halls, over-heated, brilliantly illuminated, and badly ventilated, must be the consequences to the unthinking multitude who draw in the seeds of death at every breath 1 " The results, in general, are, nature's supplies are cut o£^ the vital powers famish, and poisons are introduced to obstruct the feeble action which remains. The recuperative powers of the body are thus weakened, and the noble framework of man becomes the peculiar soil of contagious and chronic • affections. Cholera works its way most mortally among the inmates of filthy and unventilated apartments. The air, corrupted by marsh or typhoid miasma, induces the various types of fevers. A ' truly scrofa- lous disease' is supposed to be caused by a vitiated air. And ' consumption is,' too often, but ' scrofula localized in the lungs,' originating in impure air. Blanketing and curtaining in- Gmts from the life-giving breezes of heaven are a more efficient cause of their mortality than CONNECTION OF AIB AND THOUGHT. 275 parental vices or destitution. The per centage of deaths in New- York is greater than in Phila- delphia, because there, are more underground, crowded apartments, whose inmates are poisoned by noxious gases, and from which deadly efflu- via ascends to loftier habitations. " The results of vitiated air on the mind are as palpable and awful as on the body. If the brain, the organ of thought, is supplied with unvitalized blood, the order and activity of the mind's thoughts can not be sustained. Hence all school and study rooms should be amply supplied with pure air. Bad air ' takes off the chariot- wheels ' of thought, pinions the wings of imagination, bewilders reason, dissipates memory, makes a general wreck of the intel- lect, and distracts all the passions and instincts of man's nature." " Few persons," says another writer, " imagine that their lungs are inseparable from their thoughts. Not that the pulmonary structures and functions occupy the heart of thoughts ; but that as a man inspires the physical atmosphere,