X.

X.

SELECTED READINGS

TO ILLUSTRATE AND SUPPLEMENT THE TEXT.

Arranged in order of the subjects to which they refer.

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh, and consider."

LORD BACON.

"He who learns the rules of wisdom without conforming to them in his life, is like a man who labored in his fields but did not sow."

SAADI. SELECTED READINGS.

The figures indicate the pages in the text upon which the corresponding subjects will be found.

THE SKELETON.

MAN, AS COMPARED WITH OTHER VERTEBRATE ANIMALS (p. 3).—Man, the lord of the animal kingdom, is constructed after the same type as the cat that purrs at his feet, the ox that he eats, the horse that bears his burden, the bird that sings in his cage, the snake that crawls across his pathway, the toad that hides in his garden, and the fish that swims in his aquarium. All these are but modifications of one creative thought, showing how the Almighty Worker delights in repeating the same chord, with infinite variations. There are marked physical peculiarities, however, which distinguish man from the other mammals. Thus, the position of the spinal opening in the middle third of the base of the skull, thereby balancing the head and admitting an upright posture; the sigmoid S-curve of the vertebral column; the ability of opposing the well-developed thumb to the fingers; the shortened foot, the sole resting flat on the ground; the size and position of the great toe; the length of the arms, reaching halfway from the hip to the knees; the relatively great development of the brain; the freedom of the anterior extremities from use in locomotion, and the consequent erect and biped position. In addition, man is the only mammal that truly walks; that is endowed with the power of speech; and that is cosmopolitan, readily adapting himself to extremes of heat and cold, and making his home in all parts of the globe.—STEELE'S Popular Zoology.

FIG. 68.

[Illustration: Skeleton of Orang, Chimpanzee, and Man.]

UNION OF FRACTURES (p. 8).—In the course of a week after a fracture, there is a soft yet firm substance, something between ligament and cartilage in consistence, which surrounds the broken extremities of the bone, and adheres to it above and below. The neighboring muscles and tendons are closely attached to its surface, and the fractured extremities of the bone lie, as it were, loose in a cavity in the center, with a small quantity of vascular albumen, resembling a semitransparent jelly.

Here, then, is a kind of splint which nature contrives, and which is nearly completed within a week from the date of the accident. We call this new formation the callus. This process goes on, the surrounding substance becoming thicker and of still firmer consistence. In the course of a few days more, the thin jelly which lay in contact with the broken ends of the bone has disappeared, and its place is supplied by a callus continuous with that which formed the original capsule. This is the termination of the first stage of curative progress. The broken ends of the bones are now completely imbedded in a mass of vascular organized substance or callus, something between gristle and cartilage in consistence; and as yet there are no traces of bony matter in it. At this time, if you remove the adventitious substance, you will find the broken ends of bone retaining exactly their original figure and presenting the same appearance as immediately after the fracture took place.

At the end of about three weeks, if you make a section of the callus, minute specks of earthy matter are visible, deposited in it here and there, and at the same time some of the callus, appears to disappear on the outside, so that the neighboring muscles and tendons no longer adhere to it. The specks of bone become larger and more numerous until they extend into each other; and thus by degrees the whole of the callus is converted into bone. Even at this period, however, there is not absolute bony union, for although the whole of the callus has become bone, it is not yet identified with the old bone, and you might still pick it off with a penknife, leaving the broken extremities not materially altered from what they were immediately after the injury. This may be regarded as the end of the second stage of the process by which a fracture is repaired. Now a third series of changes begins to take place. The broken extremities of the bones become intimately united by bony matter passing from one to the other. The mass of new bone on the outside, formed by the ossification of the callus, being no longer wanted, is absorbed; by degrees the whole of it disappears, and the bone is left having the same dimensions which it had before the occurrence of the accident.

The process of union is completed in young persons sooner than in those advanced in life; in the upper extremities sooner than in the lower; and in smaller animals more speedily than in man. In human subjects a broken arm or forearm will be healed in from six to eight weeks, while a leg or thigh will occupy nine or ten weeks.—SIR B. C. BRODIE.

FIG. 69.

[Illustration: FIG. 69. a. Monkey's Hand and Foot. b. Human Hand and Foot.]

THE HAND AND THE FOOT (p. 2l).—Man Compared with the Ape.— The peculiar prehensible power possessed by the hand of man is chiefly dependent upon the size and power of the thumb, which is more developed in him than it is in the highest apes. The thumb of the human hand can be brought into exact opposition to the extremities of all the fingers, whether singly or in combination; while in those quadrumana which most nearly approach man, the thumb is so short, and the fingers so much elongated, that their tips can scarcely be brought into opposition; and the thumb and the fingers are so weak that they can never be opposed to each other with any degree of force. Hence, though well suited to cling round bodies of a certain size, such as the small branches of trees, the anterior extremities of the quadrumana can neither seize very minute objects with such precision nor support large ones with such firmness as are essential to the dexterous performance of a variety of operations for which the hand of man is admirably adapted.

The human foot is, in proportion to the size of the whole body, larger, broader, and stronger than that of any other mammal, save the kangaroo. The surface of the astragalus (ankle bone) which articulates with the tibia, looks almost vertically upward, and hardly at all inward, when the sole is flat upon the ground; and the lateral facets are more nearly at right angles to this surface than in any ape. The plane of the foot is directed at right angles to that of the leg; and its sole is concave, so that the weight of the body falls on the summit of an arch, of which the os calcis (heel bone) and the metatarsal bones form the two points of support. This arched form of the foot, and the contact of the whole plantar surface with the ground, are particularly noticeable in man, most of the apes having the os calcis small, straight, and more or less raised from the ground, while they touch, when standing erect, with the outer side only of the foot. The function of the hallux, or great toe, moreover, is strikingly contrasted in man and the ape; for, while in the latter it is nearly as opposable as the thumb, and can be used to almost the same extent as an instrument of prehension, it chiefly serves in the former to extend the basis of support, and to advance the body in progression.—DR. W. B. CARPENTER.

FIG. 70.

[Illustration: The Leg in standing.]

The Natural Flexibility of the Toes, and How it is Destroyed.—We often admire the suppleness of the fingers by means of which we can perform such a variety of acts with swiftness and delicacy. Did it ever occur to you that the toes, which in most feet seem incapable of a free and graceful motion, even when they are not stiffened and absolutely deformed by the compression of the modern shoe, are also provided by Nature with a considerable degree of flexibility? The phalanges of the toes, though more feebly developed, have really the same movements among themselves as those of the fingers, and, in case of necessity, their powers can be strengthened and educated to a surprising degree. There are well-known instances of persons who, born without hands, or having lost them by accident, have successfully supplied the deficiency by a cultivated use of their feet. Some of these have distinguished themselves in the world of art. Who that has been so fortunate as to visit the Picture Gallery in Antwerp on some fine morning when the armless artist, M. Felu, was working at his easel, can forget the wonderful dexterity with which he wielded his brushes, mixed the oils on his palette, and shaded the colors on his canvas, all with his agile feet? The writer well remembers the ease and grace with which, at the close of a pleasant interview, this cultured man put the tip of his foot into his coat pocket, drew out a visiting card, wrote his name and address upon it, and presented it to her between his toes!

Contrast this intelligent adaptation of a delicate physical mechanism with the barbarous treatment it too commonly receives. The Chinese are at least consistent. They cripple and distort the feet of their highborn daughters until they crush out all the power and gracefulness of nature in the artificial formation of what they term a "golden lily"; but they never expect these golden-lilied women to make their withered feet useful. With us, on the contrary, every girl would like to walk well, to display in her general movements something of the "poetry of motion"; yet the absurd and arbitrary fashion of our foot gear not only makes an elastic step one of the rarest of accomplishments, but renders oftentimes the simple act of walking a painful burden. The calluses, corns, bunions, ingrowing nails, and repulsive deformities that are caused by and hidden under the narrow- toed, high-heeled instruments of torture we often wear for fashion's sake are uncomfortable suggestions that our practices are not greatly in advance of those of our Celestial sisters. Dowie, a sensible Scotch shoemaker, satirizes the shape of a fashionable boot as suited only to "the foot of a goose with the great toe in the middle." The error which may have led to the adoption of this conventional shape appears to lie in a misconception of the natural formation of the foot, and of the relation of the two feet to each other. It is true, that when the toes are covered with their soft parts, the second toe appears a little longer than the first, and this appearance, emphasized and exaggerated, is perhaps responsible for a practical assumption that Nature intended an even-sided, tapering foot. On the contrary, the natural foot gradually expands in breadth from the instep to the toes and, in the skeleton itself, the great toe is the longest.

"There is no law of beauty," says Dr. Ellis, "which makes it necessary to reduce the foot to even-sided symmetry. An architect required to provide more space on one than on the other side of a building would not seek to conceal or even to minimize the difference; he would seek rather to accentuate it, and give the two sides of the structure distinctive features….Moreover, the sense of symmetry is, or ought to be, satisfied by the exact correspondence of the two feet, which, taken jointly, may be described as the two halves of an unequally expanded dome."—E. B. S.

THE MUSCLES.

ATTACHMENT OF THE MUSCLES TO THE BONES (p. 30).—One of the two bones to which a muscle is attached is usually less mobile than the other, so that when the muscle shortens, the latter is drawn down against the former. In such a case, the point of attachment of the muscle to the less mobile bone is called its origin, while the point to which it is fixed on the more mobile bone is called its attachment….A muscle is not always extended between two contiguous bones. Occasionally, passing over one bone it attaches itself to the next. This is the case with several muscles which, originating from the pelvic bone, pass across the upper thigh bone, and attach themselves to the lower thigh bone. In such cases the muscle is capable of two different movements: it can either stretch the knee, previously bent, so that the upper and the lower thigh bones are in a straight line; or it can raise the whole extended leg yet higher, and bring it nearer to the pelvis. But the points of origin and of attachment of muscles may exchange offices. When both legs stand firmly on the ground, the above-mentioned muscles are unable to raise the thigh; instead, on shortening, they draw down the pelvis, which now presents the more mobile point, and thus bend forward the whole upper part of the body.

One important consequence of the attachment of the muscles to the bones is the extension thus effected. If the limb of a dead body is placed in the position which it ordinarily occupied during life, and if one end of a muscle is then separated from its point of attachment, it draws itself back, and becomes shorter. The same thing happens during life, as is observable in the operation of cutting the tendons, as practiced by surgeons to cure curvatures. The result being the same during life and after death this phenomenon is evidently due to the action of elasticity. It thus appears that the muscles are stretched by reason of their attachment to the skeleton, and that, on account of their elasticity, they are continually striving to shorten. Now, when several muscles are attached to one bone in such a way that they pull in opposite directions, the bone must assume a position in which the tension of all the muscles is balanced, and all these tensions must combine to press together the socketed parts with a certain force, thus evidently contributing to the strength of the socket connection….This balanced position of all the limbs, which thus depends on the elasticity of the muscles, may be observed during sleep, for then all active muscular action ceases. It will be observed that the limbs are then generally slightly bent, so that they form very obtuse angles to each other.

Not all muscles are, however, extended between bones. The tendons of some pass into soft structures, such as the muscles of the face. In this case, also, the different muscles exercise a mutual power of extension, though it is but slight, and they thus effect a definite balanced position of the soft parts, as may be observed in the position of the mouth opening in the face.—ROSENTHAL, Muscles and Nerves.

MUSCULAR FIBERS (p. 3l).—The anatomical composition of flesh is very similar in every kind of creature, whether it be the muscle of the ox or of the fly; that is to say, there are certain tubes which are filled with minute parts or elements, and the adhesion of the tubes together makes up the substance of the flesh. These tubes may be represented grossly by imagining the finger of a glove, to be called the sarcolemma, or muscle- fiber pouch, and this to be so small as not to be apparent to the naked eye, but filled with nuclei and the juices peculiar to each animal. Hundreds of such fingers attached together would represent a bundle of muscular fibers. The tubes are of fine tissue, but are tolerably permanent; whilst the contents are in direct communication with the circulating blood and pursue an incessant course of chemical change and physical renewal.—EDWARD SMITH, Foods.

FIG. 71.

[Illustration: Smooth Muscle Fibers (300 times enlarged).]

THE SMOOTH MUSCLE FIBERS consist of long, spindle-shaped cells, the ends of which are frequently spirally twisted, and in the center of which exists a long, rod-shaped kernel or nucleus. Unlike striated muscle, they do not form separate muscular masses, but occur scattered, or arranged in more or less dense layers or strata, in almost all organs. [Footnote: An instance of a considerable accumulation of smooth, muscle fibers is afforded by the muscle pouch of birds, which, with the exception of the outer and inner skin coverings, consists solely of these fibers collected in extensive layers.] Arranged in regular order, they very frequently form widely extending membranes, especially in such tube-shaped structures as the blood vessels, the intestine, etc., the walls of which are composed of these smooth muscle fibers. In such cases they are usually arranged in two layers, one of which consists of ring-shaped fibers surrounding the tube, while the other consists of fibers arranged parallel to the tube. When, therefore, these muscle fibers contract, they are able both to reduce the circumference and to shorten the length of the walls of the tube in which they occur. This is of great importance in the case of the smaller arteries, in which the smooth muscle fibers, arranged in the form of a ring, are able greatly to contract, or even entirely to close the vessels, thus regulating the current of blood through the capillaries. In other cases, as in the intestine, they serve to set the contents of the tubes in motion. In the latter cases the contraction does not take place simultaneously throughout the length of the tube; but, commencing at one point, it continually propagates itself along fresh lengths of the tube, so that the contents are slowly driven forward.

As a rule, such parts as are provided only with smooth muscle fibers are not voluntarily movable, while striated muscle fibers are subject to the will. The latter have, therefore, been also distinguished as voluntary, the former as involuntary muscles. The heart, however, exhibits an exception, for, though it is provided with striated muscle fibers, the will has no direct influence upon it, its motions being exerted and regulated independently of the will. Moreover, the muscle fibers of the heart are peculiar in that they are destitute of sarcolemma, the naked muscle fibers directly touching each other. This is so far interesting that direct irritations, if applied to some point of the heart, are transferred to all the other muscle fibers. In addition to this, the muscle fibers of the heart are branched, but such branched fibers occur also in other places; for example, in the tongue of the frog, where they are branched like a tree. Smooth muscle fibers being, therefore, not subject to the will, are caused to contract, either by local irritation, such as the pressure of the matter contained within the tubes, or by the nervous system. The contractions of striated muscle fibers are effected, in the natural course of organic life, only by the influence of the nerves.—ROSENTHAL.

OVEREXERTION AND PERSONAL IMPRUDENCE (p. 40).—Among children there is little danger of overexertion. When a little child reaches the point of healthy fatigue, he usually collapses into rest and sleep. But with youth comes the spirit of ambition and emulation. A lad, for instance, is determined to win a race, to throw his opponent in a football scramble, to lift a heavier weight than his strength will warrant; or a girl is stimulated by the passion she may possess for piano playing, painting, dancing, or tennis. The moment of exhaustion comes, but the end is not accomplished, and the will goads on the weary muscles, perhaps to one supreme effort which terminates in a sharp and sudden illness, perhaps to days and weeks of continued and incessant application, during which the whole system is undermined. Thus is laid the foundation for a feeble and suffering maturity.

To elderly people, overexertion has peculiar dangers, dependent largely upon the changes which gradually take place in the tissues of the body. The walls of the blood vessels become less and less elastic, and more and more brittle, as life advances, until at last they are ready to give way from any severe or unusual pressure. We constantly see old people hastening their death by personal imprudence. An old gentleman running to catch the morning train; an old farmer hastening to turn the strayed sheep out of a cornfield; the old sportsman having a last run with the hounds; the last pull at the oars; the last attempt of old age to play at vigorous manhood.

A prominent American physician has said that between the ages of forty and fifty every wise man will have ceased to run to "catch" trains or street cars; and that between fifty and sixty he will have permanently discarded haste of all kinds. Equal precautions should be observed by both young and old, but especially by those advanced in life, in regard to extremes of heat, cold, or storm. William Cullen Bryant, by exposing himself to a scorching sun and refusing to permit a friend to protect him with an umbrella while delivering an address in Central Park, received injuries to his system that carried him to his grave. Ralph Waldo Emerson, by standing in a chilling wind, contracted a cold and died. George Dawson, by going thoughtlessly into a freezing atmosphere from the sweltering rooms of a crowded reception, took cold which resulted in pneumonia and death. Matthew Arnold, for years a sufferer from heart difficulty, in a single instance neglected the advice of his physician not to indulge in any violent exercise, made repeated attempts and finally succeeded in jumping a fence, and in a few hours was a dead man. Roscoe Conkling braved the most terrible blizzard ever known in the east and sacrificed his life. And yet, these were all men of exceptional prudence. Probably no other five persons in the world of like surroundings and vocations were more careful of their health. In an unguarded moment their prudence left them, and they paid the terrible penalty.—Compiled.

EFFECTS OF INSUFFICIENT OUTDOOR EXERCISE UPON THE YOUNG (p. 41).—Children deprived of adequate outdoor exercise are always delicate, pale, and tender; or, in a figurative sense, they are like the sprig of vegetation in a dark, dank hole,—bleached and spindling….An inactive indoor life is one of the most effectual ways of weakening the young body. It renders the growth unnaturally soft and tender, and thus susceptible to harm from the slightest causes. It hinders the garnering of strength necessary for a long life, and gives to the germs of disease a resistless power over an organization so weak and deficient….Measles, scarlet fever, and diphtheria find among such a congenial soil, and run riot among the elements of the body held together by so frail a thread….Such children are always at the mercy of the weather. Colds and coughs are standard disorders in winter, headaches and habitual languor in summer….The scapegoat for this result is the climate: if that was only better, mothers are sure their children's health would also be better. No, it would not be better: no earthly climate is good enough to preserve health and strength under such unnatural training….Children of the laboring classes, often dirty and imperfectly clad, seldom have colds, simply for the reason that, for the greater part of the day, they have the freedom of the streets. It is not the dirt, it is not the rags, but the life-giving force of an active outdoor life that renders such children so strong and healthy. —BLACK, Ten Laws of Health.

POPULAR MODES OF OUTDOOR EXERCISE (p. 42).—Walking.—Every person has his own particular step, caused by the conformity, shape, and length of his bones, and the height of his body. Such a thing, then, as a regulation step is unnatural, and any attempt at equalizing the step of individuals of different heights must result in a loss of power.

The moment, also, that walking comes to be uphill, fatigue is sensibly increased. The center of gravity of the body is changed, and the muscular force necessary to provide for the change causes the fixing of the diaphragm, and a rigid condition of many muscles. Respiration is interfered with, owing to the fixing of the diaphragm, and the heart becomes affected thereby. A person with a sensitive or diseased heart can, during a walk, tell when the slightest rise in the ground occurs. We make climbing more exhausting from the habit we have of suspending the breath. Let the reader hold his breath and run up twenty-four steps of a stair, and then perform the same act breathing freely and deeply. It will be found that by the first act marked breathlessness will be induced, whereas by the latter the effect is much less. This management of the breath constitutes the difference between the beginner and the experienced athlete. The enormous increase of the quantity of air consumed during exercise will at once bring home a number of lessons. One is, that exercise is best taken in the open air, and not in gymnasia; another, that free play to act for the regions of the chest and abdomen must be given. On no account must a tight belt be worn around the soft-walled abdomen. If a belt is preferred to braces, let it be applied below the top of the haunch bone, where the bones can resist the pressure.

Whatever may be the pastimes indulged in by young men, walking should never be neglected. The oarsman will become "stale" unless the method of exercise is varied; the gymnast will develop the upper part of his body, while his lower extremities will remain spindleshanks. So with all other forms of exercise; success, in any form of game, sport, or gymnastic training, can not be attained unless walking be freely taken.

Skating is simply an exaggerated swinging walk, with this difference, that the foot on which one rests is not stationary, but moves along at a rapid rate. The benefit to the circulation, respiration, and digestion is even greater in skating than in walking. The dangers from skating are:

1. The giving way of the ice. Great caution should be used in regard to the safety of a frozen pond or river.

2. Taking cold from becoming overheated, and from subsequent inactive exposure. Physiological knowledge will teach people that, when they begin to skate, outer wraps should be laid aside, and again put on when skating is finished.

3. Sprains, especially of the ankle, and other minor accidents arising from falls. Ankle boots with strong uppers should be worn during skating. Those who have weak ankles ought to wear skates with ankle straps and buckles, acme skates being relegated to those who are not afraid of going "over their foot."

Rowing.—The muscles employed in rowing may be summed up under two heads—those that are used in the forward swing, and those used in the backward. In the forward swing all the joints of the lower extremity, the hip, knee, and ankle, are flexed; the shoulder is brought forward; the elbow is straightened; and the wrist is first extended and then flexed, in feathering the oar. The body is bent forward by the muscles in front of the abdomen and spinal column. In the backward movement the reverse takes place; the lower extremity, the hip, knee, and ankle are straightened; the shoulder is pulled back; the elbow is flexed; and the wrist is held straight. The body is bent backward by the muscles at the lower part of the back, and by those of the spine in general. It will be seen that the enormous number of joints put into use, and the varying positions employed, call into play nearly every muscle of the limbs and trunk. Rowing gives more work to the muscles of the back than any other kind of exercise. This is of the first importance to both men and women, but especially to women. The chief work of the muscles of the back is to support the body in the erect position, and the better they are developed the better will the carriage be, and the less likelihood of stooping shoulders, contracted chests, and the like. Now, the work of the muscles in supporting the body is largely relegated in women to the stays, and, in consequence, the muscles undergo wasting and fatty degeneration, in fact, atrophy; so that when the stays are left off, the muscles are unfit to support the body. Rowing exercises these muscles condemned to waste, and imparts a natural carriage to the girl's frame. In rowing, as in horseback riding, the clothing should be loose, stays left off, and flannels worn next the skin. The dress itself should be of woolen, and there should always be in the boat a large wrap to use when one stops rowing. The following practical rules should be observed by rowers:

1. Never row after a full meal.

2. Stop when fatigue comes on.

3. Allow the breath to escape while the oar is in the water. A novice usually holds his breath at each stroke, and pulls so rapidly that in a few minutes he becomes breathless, and is forced to stop. Not only is this uncomfortable, but it is dangerous. In the case of both young and old, it may give rise to an abdominal rupture (hernia), dilation of the cavities of the heart, rupture of a heart valve, varicose veins, etc. Instead of fixing the diaphragm and holding the breath during the time of pulling, as novices are apt to do, do exactly the opposite. Let the diaphragm go loose, and allow the breath to escape.

4. Change the clothing from the skin outward as soon as the day's rowing is finished.

5. Before retiring for the night, have a warm bath, temperature 92° Fahr. This is a specific against the aches and muscular stiffness which often follow a long pull on the water.

Swimming.—A word of warning is necessary in regard to those learning to swim in rivers. Boys at school, when they take to river bathing, often carry it to a dangerous extent. They get into the water, and now in, now out on the bank, sometimes remain for hours. This may take place day after day, and if the weather continues warm and the holidays last long enough, the boy may reduce himself to the lowest ebb of feebleness, and possibly develop the seeds of latent disease. He may even die from the effects of this prolonged immersion and madcap exposure.

The muscular exertion undergone during swimming, especially by those who swim only occasionally, is very great. The experienced swimmer conserves his strength, as do proficients at all feats, but the occasional swimmer, like the occasional rower, puts forth treble the energy required, and soon becomes exhausted. In the first place, it is a new act for the muscles to perform; they are taken off from the beaten tracks, and are grouped together in new associations; hence they lack adjustment and adaptation. Again, as in other feats for which one is untrained, the heart and lungs do not work in time. Ease and speed in swimming depend upon the attainment of harmony in the working of the muscles, heart, and lungs.

Diving is an accomplishment attached to swimming, which involves many dangers, and is well-nigh useless. The customary dive off a springboard into the shallow water of a swimming bath is dangerous in the extreme. The only place where diving should be attempted is into deep water, at least fifteen or twenty feet, where there is no danger of striking the bottom.

Lawn Tennis.—Of all modern inventions in the way of games, lawn tennis is the best.

The dangers attendant on lawn tennis are:—

1. Overexertion, causing rupture and deranged circulation, especially in the case of those with weak hearts, or those who, being out of condition, or too fat, suddenly engage in the game too long or too violently.

2. Rupture of the tendon of Achilles, from taking a sudden bound. In such an accident the subject falls down, with a sensation as if struck with a club on the leg.

3. Rupture of one of the heads of the biceps in the arm. Here the arm drops helplessly, and a muscular knob rises up on the inner and upper part of the arm.

4. The tennis arm. This trouble arises from the method of manipulating the bat. The pain is felt over the upper end of the radius.

Many of the strains, ruptured tendons, and torn muscles in tennis players are caused by the want of heels to tennis shoes. As, ordinarily, we walk on heels which vary from half an inch to an inch, there must be a considerable extra strain thrown on the muscles of the calf of the leg, when the heels are left off. Especially during a sudden spring is this apparent, when to rise from off the heels on to the toes requires a greatly increased force. Tennis shoes should therefore have fairly deep, broad heels.

Horseback Riding is a mixed exercise, partly active and partly passive, the lower parts of the body being in some measure employed, while the upper parts in easy cantering are almost wholly relaxed. It is peculiarly suited to dyspeptics, from its direct action upon the abdominal viscera, the contents of which are stimulated by the continued agitation and succussion, consequent on the motion in riding.

Bicycling and Tricycling.—While strongly recommending bicycling and tricycling to both men and women in health, those suffering from heart or lung affections, ruptures, scrofula, joint disease, or like maladies, should not indulge in them without medical sanction. For abdominal complaints, such as dyspepsia, congestion of the liver, constipation, and the like, the exercise is excellent.

Baseball is an essentially American game, which brings into play nearly all the muscles of the body. Its chief danger lies in being hit by the hard, forcibly pitched ball, and, for weak persons, in the violence of the exercise.

Football is a rough-and-tumble game, suited only to that class of boys and men, who, brimming over with animal life, take small heed of the accidents liable to occur.

Light and Heavy Gymnastics.—For wet weather, and when outdoor exercise is not practicable, gymnastics are most advisable. Boys and girls, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, often shoot up and become tall and lanky; they want filling out, and are troubled with growing pains. Even men, when tall and thin, are seldom very erect, their muscles are too weak; and there is only one way of overcoming this weakness—by exercising them. Nothing more is wanted than a pair of very light Indian clubs, a pair of light wooden dumb bells, a long wooden rod, and a pair of wooden rings,—the last for combined exercises. Indeed, a systematic motion of the body itself, without any extra artificial resistance, is quite sufficient for the purposes of physical education. In nearly all our large cities are found gymnasia, provided with competent instructors, and every facility for both light and heavy gymnastics. Exercise in a gymnasium is open to the objection of being too brief and too severe, and of simply causing an increase of muscular development. Besides, it is generally unequal in its results, being better adapted to the cultivation of strength in the upper extremities and portion of the body than in the lower. Nevertheless, during inclement weather, or with persons in whom the muscles of the arms and chest are defective, moderate gymnastic exercise is far better than no exercise.—Compiled. (Mostly from "The Influence of Exercise" in The Book of Health.)

THE SKIN.

THE HAIR (p. 52).—Baldness, and its Causes.—Various reasons are assigned for the baldness which is so prevalent among comparatively young men in our country. One writer says: "The premature baldness and grayness of the Americans as a people is in great measure owing to the nonobservance of hygienic rules, and to excess of mental and physical labor in a climate foreign to the race." Others attribute it to the close unventilated hats commonly worn by men. Dr. Nichols, in the Popular Science News, gives his opinion thus:

"In our view, it is largely due to modern methods of treatment of the hair and scalp. The erroneous idea prevails, that the skin which holds the hair follicles and the delicate secretory organs of the scalp must be kept as 'clean,' so to speak, as the face or hands; consequently young men patronize barbers or hairdressers, and once or twice a week they have what is called a 'shampoo' operation performed. This consists in a thorough scouring of the hair and scalp with dilute ammonia, water, and soap, so that a heavy 'lather' is produced, and the glandular secretions, which are the natural protection of the hair, and promotive of its growth, are saponified and removed. No act could be more directly destructive of a healthy growth of hair than this….Women do not shampoo or wash the hair as often as the other sex, and consequently they are in a large degree exempt from baldness in middle life. It is true, however, that many women in cities make frequent visits to the hairdressers, and subject their tresses to the 'scouring' process. If this becomes common, it will not be long before baldness will overtake the young mothers as well as the fathers, and the time will be hastened when even children will have no hair to destroy with ammonia or other caustic cosmetics.

"The advice we have to offer to young men and maidens is,—let your hair alone; keep at a safe distance from hair-dressing rooms and drug shops, where are sold oils, alkaline substances, alcoholic mixtures, etc., for use upon the hair. They are all pernicious, and will do you harm. The head and hair may be washed occasionally with soft, tepid water, without soap of any kind. As a rule, the only appliances needed in the care of the hair are good combs and brushes: and they should not be used harshly, so as to wound the scalp. Avoid all 'electric' and wire-made brushes. No electricity can be stored in a hairbrush: if it could be, it is not needed."

Sudden Blanching of the Hair from Violent Emotions.—The color of the hair depends mainly upon the presence of pigment granules, which range in tint from a light yellow to an intense black. A recent investigator has succeeded in extracting the coloring matter of the hair, and has found that all the different shades are produced by the mixture of three primary colors—red, yellow, and black. "In the pure golden yellow hair there is only the yellow pigment; in red hair the red pigment is mixed with more or less yellow, producing the various shades of red and orange; in dark hair the black is always mixed with yellow and red, but the latter are overpowered by the black; and it seems that even the blackest hair, such as that of the negro, contains as much red pigment as the very reddest hair." Hence, "if in the negro the black pigment had not been developed, the hair of all negroes would be a fiery red."—DR. C. H. LEONARD. The Hair: Its Diseases and Treatment.

The gradual disappearance of this pigment causes the gray or white hair of old age. This natural change in color does not necessarily denote loss of vitality in the hair, as it often continues to grow as vigorously as before it began to whiten. Cases of sudden blanching of the hair from extreme grief or terror are often quoted,—those of Sir Thomas More and of Marie Antoinette being well-known instances in point. An interesting circumstance has been discovered with regard to such cases, namely, that the change of color is not dependent upon the disappearance of the pigment of the hair, which always takes place slowly, but upon the sudden development in its interior of a number of air bubbles, that hide and destroy the effect of the pigment, which itself remains unaltered. Dr. Landois mentions the case of a German printer whom he attended, at a hospital, in the summer of 1865.

This man had long been intemperate in his habits, in consequence of which he was seized with delirium tremens. The delirium, as is usual in such cases, was of an extremely terrifying nature, and lasted four days. On the evening of the fourth day the hair was unaltered, but on the morning of the fifth the delirium had disappeared, and his hair, which previously was fair, had become gray. It was examined with the microscope, when it was found that the pigment was still present, but that the central streak of each was filled with air bubbles.

How this superabundance of air finds its way into the hair in these cases of sudden blanching, physiologists have not yet been able satisfactorily to explain.—In this connection, however, it may be observed that air bubbles exist, more or less, in all hair, mingled with the pigment granules.

The feathers of birds owe their bright colors to an oily secretion corresponding to the pigment in hair, and microscopical observation has revealed the fact that when these colors fade the oily secretion disappears, and is replaced by air. That extreme terror may blanch feathers as well as hair is shown in the case of a poor little starling, which upon being rescued from the claws of a cat became suddenly white.

THE NAILS (p. 54).—The nails are mere modifications of the scarfskin, their horny appearance and feeling being due to the fact that the scales or plates of which they are composed are much harder and more closely packed. The root of the nail lies embedded, to the extent of about the twelfth part of an inch, in a fold of the sensitive skin, and, as may be observed from an inspection of the part, the scarfskin is not exactly continuous with the nail, but projects a little above it, forming a narrow margin.

The nail, like the scarfskin, rests upon, and is intimately connected with, a structure almost identical with the sensitive skin; this is, however, thrown into ridges, which run parallel to one another, except at the back part, where they radiate from the center of the root. On examining the surface of the nail, a semicircular whitish portion is detected near its root; its color is dependent upon the fact that the ridges there contain fewer blood vessels, and therefore less blood, and on account of its half-moon shape it is called the lunula.

The nail is constantly increasing in length, owing to the formation of new cells at the root, which push it forward, while the increase in its thickness is due to the secretion of new cells from the sensitive layer beneath, so that the farther the nail grows from the root, the thicker it becomes. Its nutrition, and consequently its growth, suffers in disease, the portion growing during disease being thinner than that growing in health; and accordingly a transverse groove is seen upon the nail, corresponding to the time of an illness. It will thus be seen that by a mere examination of the nail we can astonish our friends by telling them when they have been ill; and it has been estimated that the nail of the thumb grows from its root to its free extremity in five months, that of the great toe in twenty months, so that a transverse groove in the middle of the former indicates an illness about two and a half months before, and in the middle of the latter, about ten months.

The culture of the nails, which when perfect constitute so great a beauty, is of much importance; but the tendency is to injure them by too much attention. The scissors should never be used except to pare the free edges when they have become ragged or too long, and the folds of scarfskin which overlap the roots should not, as a rule, be touched, unless they be frayed, when the torn edges may be snipped off, so as to prevent their being torn further, which may cause much pain, and even inflammation. The upper surfaces of the nails should on no account be touched with the knife, as is so often done, the nailbrush being amply sufficient to keep them clean, without impairing their smooth and polished surfaces.—HINTON.

BATHS AND BATHING (p. 65).—Physical Cleanliness Promotes Moral Purity.—The old adage that cleanliness is next to godliness, must have had its origin in the feeling of moral elevation which generally accompanies scrupulous bodily purity. Frequent bathing promotes purity of mind and morals. The man who is accustomed to be physically clean shrinks instinctively from contact with all uncleanliness. Personal neatness, when grown into a habit, draws after it so many excellences, that it may well be called a social virtue. Without it, refined intercourse would be impossible; for its neglect not only indicates a want of proper self- respect, but a disrespect of the feelings of others which argues a low tone of the moral sense. All nations, as they advance in civilization and refinement of manners, pay increased attention to the purity of the person.

What, then, shall we say of people who, after all that has been said and written upon the subject, seldom or never bathe, who allow the pores of the skin to get blocked up with a combination of dust and perspired matter, which is as effectual in its way as plaster to the walls of a building? Could they but once be tempted to taste the delights which arise from a perfectly clean and well-acting skin: the cheerfulness, nay, the feeling of moral as well as physical elevation, which accompanies the sense of that cleanliness, they would soon esteem the little time and trouble spent in the bath, and in the proper care of the surface of the body, as time and labor very well spent—DR. STRANGE.

The feet, particularly, should receive daily attention, if it be no more than a vigorous rubbing with a wet cloth, followed by a dry one. After a long walk, also, nothing is more refreshing, especially in summer, than a generous footbath in cool or tepid water, followed by an entire change in shoes and stockings. This is really a necessary precaution, if the feet have become wet from the dampness of the ground; and if the walk has heated the body so that the stockings are moist with perspiration, it is not only an act of prudence, but an instinct of personal neatness.

Ancient Greek and Roman Baths.—From the earliest historic times the necessity for frequent and thorough ablution has been recognized by artificial provisions for this purpose. The Greeks had "steaming baths" and "fragrant anointing oils," as far back as Homer's time, a thousand years before Christ, but the Romans surpassed all preceding and subsequent nations by their magnificent and luxuriously equipped Thermæ, in which a bath cost less than a cent, and was often free. A full Roman bath included hot air, dry rubbing, hot, tepid, and cold water immersions, scraping with bronze instruments, and anointing with precious perfumes.

The Modern Russian and Turkish baths are the nearest approaches we have to the Roman bath. These are found in nearly all our larger cities.

The Turkish Bath is conducted in a modified form in this country, generally with hot air instead of steam. Its frequent use not only tends to keep the body in a state of perfect cleanliness, but it imparts a clear, fresh color to the complexion which is hardly attained by other means.

"Its most important effect," says a writer in the Popular Science Monthly, "is the stimulation of the emunctory action of the skin. By this means we are enabled to wash as it were the solid and fluid tissues, and especially the blood and skin, by passing water through them from within outward to the surface of the body. Hence, in practice, one of the most essential requisites is copious draughts of water during the sweating."

During the operation of a Turkish bath, the novice is often astonished at the amount of effete matter eliminated from the pores of the skin. "A surprising quantity of scarfskin, which no washing could remove, peels off, especially if a glove of camel's-hair or goat's-hair be used, as they are in the East, where also the soles of the feet are scraped with pumice. The deposit of this skin of only a week's date, when collected, is often as large as one's fist. Much more solid matter is contained in the perspiration of those who take the bath for the first time, or after a long interval. Nothing escapes through the skin, save what is noxious if retained. This bath should never be used in case of advanced lung diseases, great debility, acute inflammations, or persons who labor under any form of heart disease; but I think its influence is directly curative in rheumatic, gouty, and scrofulous affections, some skin diseases, and the earlier stages of feverish colds and ague. It is said to have calming effects in the treatment of insanity, and the use of it was suggested from the heavy smell the skin of persons thus afflicted often has."—MAPOTHER'S Lectures on Public Health.

A somewhat heroic bath, used in Siberia to drive away a threatened fever, consists of a thorough parboiling, within an inch or two of a steaming furnace, after which the subject is "drubbed and flogged for about half an hour with a bundle of birch twigs, leaf and all." A douche of cold water is then dashed over the exhausted bather, when he is ready to be put into bed.

Sea Bathing.—Before the age of seven years, and after fifty-five, sea baths should be used with the greatest caution. All persons unaccustomed to sea bathing should begin with a warm or tepid bath, in doors, proceeding by degrees to the cold indoor bath, and then to the open sea.

The sea bath should be taken, if possible, when the sun is shining, when the water has been warmed by contact with the heated sands, and never during the digestion of the principal meal, or late in the evening. Immediately on plunging into the water, which need not, except in persons of full habit, cover the head, brisk motion of some kind should be used. Those who can swim should do so; those who can not, should make as much exertion of the limbs as possible, or rub the body with their hands. The delicate, and particularly those who are recovering from illness, should remove from the bath as soon as the glow arrives; or, if that be not felt at all, then after one plunge.

Danger in Bathing when Overheated.—It is unwise to bathe when copious perspiration has continued for an hour or more, unless the heat of the weather be excessive, or the sweating has been induced by loading with clothes, rather than by exertion. When much perspiration has been produced by muscular exercise, it is unsafe to bathe, because the body is so fatigued and exhausted, that the reaction can not be insured, and the effect may be to congest the internal organs, and notably the nerve centers. The latter gives cramp. If the weather be chilly, or there be a cold wind, so that the body may be rapidly cooled at the surface while undressing, it is not safe to bathe. Under such conditions, the further chill of immersion in cold water will take place at the precise moment at which the reaction consequent upon the chill of exposure by undressing ought to take place, and this second chill will not only delay or altogether prevent the reaction, but will convert the bath from a mere stimulant to a depressant, ending in the abstraction of a large amount of animal heat and congestion of the internal organs and nerve centers. The aim must be to avoid two chills, and to make sure that the body is in such a condition as to secure a quick reaction on emerging from the water, without relying too much on the possible effect of friction by rubbing. The actual temperature of the water does not affect the question so much as its relative temperature in comparison with that of the surrounding air. It ought to be much lower than that of the air. These maxims receive a striking reenforcement from the case of a young soldier who a few days ago plunged into the river near Manchester, England, after having heated himself by rowing. He was immediately taken with cramps, and was drowned. When taken out, his body was found "twisted," and the vessels of his head showed every evidence of congestion.—Popular Science Monthly, September, 1883.

Bather's Cramp.—Cramp is a painful and tonic muscular spasm. It may occur in any part of the body, but it is especially apt to take place in the lower extremities, and in its milder forms it is limited to a single muscle. The pain is severe, and the contracted muscles are hard and exquisitely tender. In a few minutes the spasm and pain cease, leaving a local sensation of fatigue and soreness. When cramp affects only one extremity, no swimmer or bather endowed with average presence of mind need drown; but when cramp seizes the whole of the voluntary muscular system, as it probably does in the worst cases, nothing in the absence of prompt and efficient extraneous assistance can save the individual from drowning. [Footnote: Even this is often unavailable, as in the case of the Cornell University postgraduate drowned in Hall Creek, Ithaca, June 10, 1888. In this instance the day was hot and oppressive, and the victim sank soon after entering the water. "His companions at once hastened to his relief, and recovered his body in a few minutes. Professor Wilder, of the University, was hurriedly summoned, and every possible method was resorted to in order to induce respiration, but the vital spark had fled. An attack of cramps is supposed to have been the cause of drowning."] Prolongation of muscular exertion, as in continued swimming, and forcible and sudden muscular exertion, as in swimming with very vigorous and rapid strokes, are efficient and frequent causes of cramp. These muscular conditions, however, usually give rise only to the slighter and more localized forms. Serious cramp is a peril which menaces most persons with highly developed muscles. Its most powerful and most avoidable cause is the sudden immersion of the body, when its surface is highly heated, in water of a relatively low temperature.—Popular Science News.

Protection of the Ear in Sea Bathing.—Special attention should be paid by bathers to the exclusion of salt water from the mouth and ears. Many cases of inflammation of the ear, followed by severe and lasting trouble, even to deafness, are chargeable to the neglect of this precaution. Incoming waves should never be received in the face or the ears, and the sea water which enters the ears when floating or diving should be wiped out by soft cotton; indeed, the best plan is to plug the openings of the ears with cotton, which is to be kept there during the bath.—Science.

How one who Knows not how to Swim can Escape Drowning.—It is well for every one to learn the art of swimming, yet it is a knowledge possessed by comparatively few people. Mr. Henry MacCormac, a writer in Nature, gives some common sense instructions that, if heeded, may be of great service to those persons who, not knowing how to swim, may find themselves accidentally precipitated into the water. We condense from his article, adding some directions, as follows:

In order to escape drowning, it is necessary only to do as the brute does, namely, to walk or tread the water. The brute has no advantage over man in regard to his relative weight, and yet the man perishes while the brute survives. The ignorance of so simple a possibility as that of treading water strikes me as one of the most singular things in the history of man. Perhaps something is to be ascribed to the vague meaning which is attached to the word Swim. The dog is wholly incapable of swimming as a man swims, but nothing is more certain than that a man, without previous training or instruction, can swim just as a dog swims, and that by so doing without fear or hesitancy, he will be just as safe as is the dog. The brute thus circumstanced continues to go on all fours, as if he were on land, keeping his head well out of the water. So with the man who wishes to save his life and can not otherwise swim. He must strike alternately, with hand and foot,—one, two, one, two,—without hurry or precipitation, exactly as the brute does. Whether he be provided with paw or hoof, the beast swims with perfect ease and buoyancy. So, too, can the human being, if he will, with the further immense advantage of having a paddle-formed hand, and of being able, when tired, to rest himself by floating, an act of which the animal has no conception. The printed direction should be pasted up in all boathouses, on every boat, at every bathing place, and in every school: Tread water when you find yourself out of your depth. This is all that need be said, unless, indeed, we add: Float when you are tired. To float, one needs only to turn upon his back, keeping—as always when in the water—the mouth and chin well up and the lungs full of air.—Every one of us, of whatever age and however encumbered with clothing, may tread water, even in a breaking sea, with as much facility as a fourfooted animal. The position of the water treader is, really, very much safer and better than the sprawling attitude of the ordinary swimmer. But the chief advantage lies in the fact that we can tread water without preliminary teaching, whereas, though we recommend all to learn how to swim, it involves time and pains, entails considerable fatigue, and is, after all, very seldom adequately acquired.

HINTS ON CLOTHING (p. 67).—Advantages of Woolen Fabrics.—Wool is more irritating than cotton, on account of the stiffness of the hairs with which it bristles; but the excitation it produces becomes a therapeutic means whenever the skin needs a stimulant.

The use of wool is particularly desirable in some countries and under some conditions of life. Professor Brocchi, a writer well known for his investigations in malaria, attributes the good health and vigor of the ancient Romans to their habit of wearing coarse woolen clothes; when they began to disuse them, and to wear lighter goods and silks, they became less vigorous and less able to resist the morbid influence of bad air. It was at about the time the women began to dress in notably fine tissues that the insalubrity of the Roman air began first to be complained of. "In the English army and navy," says Dr. Balestra, "the soldiers of garrisons in unhealthy places are obliged constantly to wear wool next to the skin, and to cover themselves with sufficient clothing, for protection against paludine fevers, dysentery, cholera, and other diseases." According to Patissier, similar measures have been found effectual in preserving the health of workmen employed on dikes, canals, and ditches, in marshy lands; while, previous to the employment of these precautions, mortality from fevers was considerable among them.

Dr. Balestra has proved by direct experiments in marshy regions that thick and hairy woolen garments arrest in their down a portion of the germs borne in by the air, which thus reaches the skin filtered and purified. The ancient Romans wore ample over-garments over their tunics, and never put them away. It is no less important to be well covered during the night; and precautions of this kind should be recommended to all who live in a swampy country. We are sometimes astonished when we see the natives of particularly warm countries enveloped in woolen, as the Arab in his burnoose, or the Spanish peasant in his tobacco-colored cloak. Such materials protect both against the rays of the sun and against the coolness of the night, and are excellent regulators of heat. It is dangerously imprudent to travel in southern countries without provision of warm clothing.—Revue des Deux Mondes.

Weight is not Warmth.—While speaking of the warmth of clothing for inclement weather, it would be incorrect not to speak of weight in relation to warmth. Many persons mistake weight for warmth, and thus feeble people are actually borne down and weakened by the excess of heavy clothing which is piled on them. Good woolen or fur fabrics retain the heat, and yet are light. When fabrics intended for sustaining warmth are made up of cotton, the mistake of accepting weight for warmth is made. The same errors are often made in respect to bed coverings, and with the same results.

Poisonously Dyed Clothing.—The introduction of wearing apparel, socks, stockings, and flannels which have been made, by new processes of dyeing, to assume a rich red or yellow color, has led to a local disease of the skin, attended, in rare cases, with slight constitutional symptoms. This disease is due to the dyestuffs. The chief poisonous dyes are the red and yellow coralline, substances derived from that series of chemical bodies which have been obtained of late years from coal tar, and commonly known as the aniline series.

The coloring principle is extremely active as a local poison. It induces on the skin a reddish, slightly raised eruption of minute round pimples which stud the reddened surface, and which, if the irritation be severe and long-continued, pass into vesicles discharging a thin watery ichor and producing a superficial sore. The disease is readily curable if the cause of it be removed, and, as a general rule, it is purely local in character. I have, however, once seen it pass beyond the local stage. A young gentleman consulted me for what he considered was a rapidly developed attack of erysipelas on the chest and back. He was, indeed, covered with an intensely red rash, and he was affected with nervous symptoms, with faintness and depression of pulse, of a singular and severe kind. I traced both the local eruption and the general malady to the effect of the organic dye in a red woolen chest and back "comforter." On removing the "comforter" all the symptoms ceased. Similar and even fatal cases have been known from the wearing of highly colored hose.

Uncleanliness of Dress.—Uncleanly attire creates conditions favorable to disease. Clothing worn too long at a time becomes saturated with the excretions and exhalations of the body, and, by preventing the free transpiration from the surface of the skin, induces oppression of the physical powers and mental inactivity. This observation will be accepted by most persons as true in respect to underclothing; it is equally true in regard to those outer garments which are often worn, unremittingly, until the linings, torn and soiled, are unfit altogether for contact with the cleaner garments beneath them. Health will not be clothed in dirty raiment. They who wear such raiment suffer from trains of minor complaints; from oppression, dullness, headache, nausea, which, though trifling in themselves, taken one by one, when put together greatly reduce that standard of perfect health by which the value of life is correctly and effectively maintained.—RICHARDSON.

RESPIRATION.

THE VOCAL ORGANS.—Musical Tones in Speaking (p. 76).—Voice is divided into singing and speaking voice. One differs from the other almost as much as noises do from musical sounds. In speaking, the sounds are too short to be easily appreciable, and are not separated by fixed and regular intervals, like those of singing; they are linked together, generally by insensible transitions; they are not united by the fixed relations of the gamut, and can only be noted with difficulty. That it is the short duration of speaking sounds which distinguished them from those of singing, is proved by this, that if we prolong the intonation of a syllable, or utter it like a note, the musical sound becomes evident. So, if we pronounce all the syllables of a phrase in the same tone, the speaking voice closely resembles psalm singing. Every one must have noticed this in hearing schoolboys recite or read in a monotone, and the analogy is complete when the last two or three syllables are pronounced in a different tone. Spoken voice is, moreover, always a chant more or less marked, according to the individual and the sentiment which the words express….It is related of Gretry, that he amused himself by noting as exactly as possible the "Bonjour, monsieur!" (Good day, sir!) of the persons who visited him; and these words expressed by their intonation, in fact, the most opposite sentiments, in spite of the constant identity of the literal sense.

Speech without a Tongue.—De Jussieu relates that he saw a girl fifteen years old, in Lisbon, who was born without a tongue, and yet who spoke so distinctly as not to excite in the minds of those who listened to her the least suspicion of the absence of that organ.

The Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1742) contain an account of a woman who had not the slightest vestige of a tongue, but who could, notwithstanding, drink, eat, and speak as well and as distinctly as any one, and even articulate the words in singing. Other instances have been known where individuals, after losing a portion of the tongue by accident or disease, have again been able to speak after a longer or shorter period.—LE PILEUR.

Stimulants and the Voice.—"The Drinker's Throat" is a recognized pathological condition, and the Germans have a popular phrase, "He drinks his throat away." Isambert has pointed out the directly local irritant effect of both alcohol and tobacco on the throat, and also the mode by which these agents, on absorption into the system, re-manifest their presence by predisposing to local pharyngeal inflammations. Dr. Krishaber affirms: "It is generally admitted that alcoholic beverages and tobacco irritate the mucous membrane of the throat, directly affect the voice, and leave on it ineffaceable traces. We hold with equal certainty that tea and coffee, although not directly affecting the voice, do so indirectly by acting on the nervous system, and through it the vocal organs, as well as by, some general nervous derangement not very pronounced, but great enough to deprive the singer of the full powers and capabilities of his voice."

Dr. Mackenzie says: "The influence of the general health upon the voice is very marked. Alcohol and tobacco should never be used. The hoarse tones of the confirmed votary of Bacchus are due to chronic inflammation of the lining membrane of the larynx; the originally smooth surface being roughened and thickened by the irritation of alcohol, the vocal cords have less freedom of movement, and their vibrations are blurred, or rather muffled, by the unevenness of their contiguous edges."

A young American lady of marked musical gifts once asked Adelina Patti's advice upon preparing for the stage. She found the great singer wrapped in furs, although the weather was not severe. After hearing her visitor, Patti replied: "Are you willing to give up everything for your art? If you wish to succeed, you must learn to eat moderately, take no stimulants—not even tea or coffee—keep as regular hours as possible consistent with your public appearance, and even deny yourself the luxury of friends. When you hear of a great vocalist giving extravagant wine suppers, you may be sure that the singer herself takes nothing. To be a successful artiste you must be married, soul and body, to your art." Like the young man to whom Christ spake, the young woman "went away sorrowful," and, balancing the terms, concluded to forego the contest.

ABDOMINAL RESPIRATION (p. 8l).—It has often been stated that the respiration of woman differs from that of man, in being limited almost entirely to the chest. In order to investigate this subject scientifically, Dr. Mays, of Philadelphia, devised an ingenious instrument for examining the respiration of the native Indian girls in the Lincoln Institution. The girls had not yet been subjected to the restrictions of civilized dress. He says:

"In all, I examined the movements of eighty-two chests, and in each case took an abdominal and a costal tracing. The girls were partly pure and partly mixed with white blood, and their ages ranged from between ten and twenty years. Thus there were thirty-three full-blooded Indians, five one fourth, thirty-five one half, and two three fourths white. Seventy- five showed a decided abdominal type of breathing, three a costal type, and three in which both were about even. Those who showed the costal type, or a divergence from the abdominal type, came from the more civilized tribes, like the Mohawks and Chippewas, and were either one half or three fourths white; while in no single instance did a full-blooded Indian girl possess this type of breathing.

"From these observations it obviously follows that, so far as the Indian is concerned, the abdominal is the original type of respiration in both male and female, and that the costal type in the civilized female is developed through the constricting influence of dress around the abdomen. While these tracings were taken an incident occurred which demonstrated that abdominal constriction could modify the movements of the thorax during respiration. At my first visit to the institution I obtained an exceptional costal type of respiration from a full-blooded Indian girl. At my next visit I concluded to repeat this observation, and found that, contrary to my instructions concerning loose clothing, etc., this girl at my first visit had worn three tight belts around her abdomen. After these were removed she gave the abdominal type of breathing, which is characteristic of nearly all the Indian girls."

To us these facts are invaluable. It shows the faulty construction of modern female dress, which restricts the motion of abdominal respiration. It explains why, as experience has taught us, it is necessary to restore this abdominal rhythm, by proper movements, in order permanently to cure the affections of the lower portion of the trunk. It demonstrates conclusively that woman's dress, to be injurious, needs only to interfere with the proper motion of respiration, even though it exercises not the slightest compression.—Health Record.

THE GERM THEORY OF DISEASE (p. 86).—What are Disease Germs?— Microscopical investigation has revealed throughout Nature, in the air, in water—especially when it contains organic matter, and even within the bodies of persons and animals, myriads of infinitesimal active organisms which live, multiply, and die in endless succession. These have been named bacteria (bacterium, a rod, so called from the general rod shape first observed), and also microbes (microbe, a small living object). Some investigators apply the latter term as a general one, limiting the former to such microbes as are believed to be special disease producers. The "Germ Theory" teaches that the seeds or spores of bacteria, floating in the air we breathe or in the water we drink, are taken into our bodies where, under conditions favorable to their growth, they develop, multiply, and, each after its own species, produce distinctive evil results.—Thus, according to this theory, there are special varieties of microbes that cause, respectively, diphtheria, erysipelas, scarlatina, cholera, etc.—One of the most common microbes in nature is the bacterium of putrefaction, found everywhere in decaying organic matter. [Footnote: This is the microbe found in impure water. If we take half a glass of spring or river water, and leave it uncovered for a few days, we shall observe upon it a thin coating of what appears to be a fine dust. Place, now, a drop of this dusty water under a cover glass, and examine it under a microscope with a magnifying power of about five hundred diameters. The revelation is astonishing. "The whole field of the microscope is in motion; hundreds of bacteria, resembling minute transparent worms, are swimming in every direction with an undulatory motion like that of an eel or snake. Some are detached, others united in pairs, others in chains or chaplets or cylindrical rods….All these forms represent the different transformations of Bacterium termo, or the microbe of putrefaction. Those which are dead appear as small, rigid, and immovable rods."—TROUESSART.]

By the species of microbes called ferments all fermented liquors are artificially produced (see p. 132); these also cause the "rising" of bread.—These wonderful little existences are thus made to perform an important part in the economy of Nature. "Nourished at the expense of putrefying organic matter, they reduce its complex constituents into soluble mineral substances, which they return to the soil to serve afresh for the nourishment of similar plants. Thus they clear the surface of the earth from dead bodies and fecal matter, and from all the useless substances which are the refuse of life; and thus they unite animals and plants in an endless chain."—TROUESSART.

How Disease Germs Grow.—Experiments having shown that no life is known to spring from inanimate matter, we may reasonably suppose that just as wheat does not grow except from seed, so no disease occurs without some disease germ to produce it. Then, again, we may logically assume that each disease is due to the development of a particular kind of germ. If we plant smallpox germs, we do not reap a crop of scarlatina or measles; but, just as wheat springs from wheat, each disease has its own distinctive germs. Each comes from a parent stock, and has existed somewhere previously….Under ordinary circumstances, these germs, though nearly always present, are comparatively few in number, and in an extremely dry and indurated state. Hence, they may frequently enter our bodies without meeting with the conditions essential to their growth; for experiments have shown that it is very difficult to moisten them, and till they are moistened, they do not begin to develop. In a healthy system they remain inactive. But anything tending to weaken or impair the bodily organs, furnishes favorable conditions, and thus epidemics almost always originate and are most fatal in those quarters of our great cities where dirt, squalor, and foul air render sound health almost an impossibility…. Having once got a beginning, epidemics rapidly spread. The germs are then sent into the air in great numbers, and in a moist state; and the probabilities of their entering, and of their establishing themselves even in healthy bodies, are vastly increased….Climate and the weather have also much influence on the vitality of these germs. Cold is a preventive against some diseases, heat against others. Tyndall found that sunlight greatly retarded and sometimes entirely prevented putrefaction; while dirt is always favorable to the growth and development of germs. Sunshine and cleanliness are undoubtedly the best and cheapest preventives against disease.—"Disease Germs" Chambers's Journal.

You know the exquisitely truthful figures employed in the New Testament regarding leaven. A particle hid in three measures of meal leavens it all. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. In a similar manner a particle of contagium spreads through the human body, and may be so multiplied as to strike down whole populations. Consider the effect produced upon the system by a microscopic quantity of the virus of smallpox. That virus is to all intents and purposes a seed. It is sown as leaven is sown, it grows and multiplies as leaven grows and multiplies, and it always reproduces itself….Contagia are living things, which demand certain elements of life, just as inexorably as trees, or wheat, or barley; and it is not difficult to see that a crop of a given parasite may so far use up a constituent existing in small quantities in the body, but essential in the growth of the parasite, as to render the body unfit for the production of a second crop. The soil is exhausted; and until the lost constituent is restored, the body is protected from any further attack from the same disorder. To exhaust a soil, however, a parasite less vigorous and destructive than the really virulent one may suffice; and if, after having, by means of a feebler organism, exhausted the soil without fatal result, the most highly virulent parasite be introduced into the system, it will prove powerless. This, in the language of the germ theory, is the whole secret of vaccination.—TYNDALL.

Disease Germs Contained in Atmospheric Dust.—Take the extracted juice of beef or mutton, so prepared as to be perfectly transparent, and entirely free from the living germs of bacteria. Into the clear liquid let fall the tiniest drop of an infusion charged with the bacteria of putrefaction. Twenty-four hours subsequently, the clear extract will be found muddy throughout, the turbidity being due to swarms of bacteria generated by the drop with which the infusion was inoculated. At the same time the infusion will have passed from a state of sweetness to a state of putridity. Let a drop similar to that which has produced this effect fall into an open wound: the juices of the living body nourish the bacteria as the beef or mutton juice nourished them, and you have putrefaction produced within the system. The air, as I have said, is laden with floating matter which, when it falls upon the wound, acts substantially like the drop….A few years ago I was bathing in an Alpine stream, and, returning to my clothes from the cascade which had been my shower bath, I slipped upon a block of granite, the sharp crystals of which stamped themselves into my naked shin. The wound was an awkward one, but, being in vigorous health at the time, I hoped for a speedy recovery. Dipping a clean pocket handkerchief into the stream, I wrapped it round the wound, limped home, and remained for four or five days quietly in bed. There was no pain, and at the end of this time I thought myself quite fit to quit my room. The wound, when uncovered, was found perfectly clean, uninflamed, and entirely free from pus. Placing over it a bit of gold beater's skin, I walked about all day. Toward evening, itching and heat were felt; a large accumulation of pus followed, and I was forced to go to bed again. The water bandage was restored, but it was powerless to check the action now set up; arnica was applied, but it made matters worse. The inflammation increased alarmingly, until finally I was ignobly carried on men's shoulders down the mountain, and transported to Geneva, where, thanks to the kindness of friends, I was immediately placed in the best medical hands. On the morning after my arrival in Geneva, Dr. Gautier discovered an abscess in my instep, at a distance of five inches from the wound. The two were connected by a channel, or sinus, as it is technically called, through which he was able to empty the abscess without the application of the lance.

By what agency was that channel formed—what was it that thus tore asunder the sound tissue of my instep, and kept me for six weeks a prisoner in bed? In the very room where the water dressing had been removed from my wound and the gold beater's skin applied to it, I opened this year a number of tubes, containing perfectly clear and sweet infusions of fish, flesh, and vegetable. These hermetically sealed infusions had been exposed for weeks, both to the sun of the Alps and to the warmth of a kitchen, without showing the slightest turbidity or signs of life. But two days after they were opened, the greater number of them swarmed with the bacteria of putrefaction, the germs of which had been contracted from the dust-laden air of the room. And, had the pus from my abscess been examined, my memory of its appearance leads me to infer that it would have been found equally swarming with these bacteria—that it was their germs which got into my incautiously opened wound. They were the subtile workers that burrowed down my shin, dug the abscess in my instep, and produced effects which might well have proved fatal to me.—TYNDALL.

Disease Germs Carried in Soiled Clothing (p. 89).—The conveyance of cholera germs by bodies of men moving along the lines of human communication, without necessarily affecting the individuals who transport them, is now easy to understand; for it is well established that clothes or linen soiled by cholera patients may not only impart the germs with which they are contaminated to those who handle them when fresh, but that, after having been dried and packed, they may infect persons at any distance who incautiously unfold them. Thus, while the nurses of cholera patients may, with proper precautions, enjoy an absolute immunity from attack, the disease germs may be introduced into new localities without any ostensible indication of their presence. It is obvious that the only security against such introduction consists in the destruction or thorough disinfection of every scrap of clothing or linen which has been about the person of a cholera patient.—DR. CARPENTER.

I have known scarlet fever to be carried by the clothing of a nurse into a healthy family, and communicate the disease to every member of the family. I have known cholera to be communicated by the clothes of the affected person to the women engaged in washing the clothes. I have known smallpox conveyed by clothes that had been made in a room where the tailor had by his side sufferers from the terrible malady. I have seen the new cloth, out of which was to come the riding habit for some innocent child to rejoice in as she first wore it, undergo the preliminary duty of forming part of the bed clothing of another child stricken down with fever. Lastly, I have known scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, and cholera, communicated by clothing contaminated in the laundry.—DR. RICHARDSON.

THE SANITARY HOME (see p. 94).—1. The Site.—First and foremost of all the things you are to consider, is the healthfulness of a situation. The brightest house and cheeriest outlook in nature will be made somber by the constant presence of a doctor, and the wandering around of an unseen, but ever felt, specter in the shape of miasm….Malaria-malus, bad; aria, air—means, in its common definition, simply bad air. Miasma is its synonym,—infecting effluvia floating in the air. Because, as everybody knows, certain places have always chills and fever associated with them, and other places have not, it follows that between such places there is some fact of difference; this fact is the presence of miasm, a cause of disease, having a signification associative with the locality….

Vegetation, heat, and moisture: these are the three active agents in the production of miasma, to which a fourth is to be added, in the influence of non-drainage, either by the way of the atmosphere or running water. The strongest example of a malarious locality one might make would be in suggesting a marshy valley in a tropical climate, so overrun with fixed water as to destroy a prolific vegetation, yet not covering it enough to protect the garbage from the putrefying influences of the sun; this valley, in turn, so environed with hills as to shut off a circulation of air….Ground newly broken is not unapt to generate miasm. This results from the sudden exposure of long-buried vegetable matter to the influences of moisture and heat….It may readily be conceived that malarious situations exist where the miasm is not sufficient in quantity to produce the effects of intermittent or bilious fever, yet where there is quite enough of it to keep a man feeling good for nothing,—he is not sick, but he is never well. I know of one country seat of this kind, where forty thousand dollars would not pay for the improvements put upon it, and where, I am free to declare, I would not think of living, even if, as an inducement, a free gift were made to me of the place….Besides miasm, there are other atmospheric associations to be considered. I recall this moment a distillery, where attempt was made to get clear of the mash by throwing it into a running stream, with the anticipation of its being carried to the river, but where, on the contrary, it became a stagnant putrescent mass, impregnating the air for miles with its unendurable odor, and inducing such a typhoid tendency that half the countryside were down with fever….There are, again, situations where the filth and debris of sewage exercise a poisoning influence on the surrounding atmosphere. This has its principal application to the neighborhood of cities and towns drained into adjoining streams. London and the Thames furnish a notable illustration. A cove, attractive as it is, may prove a receptacle for the accumulation of dead fish and other offal, which shall make untenable the charming cottage upon the bank. A deep cove has rarely healthy surroundings, the circulation of its water being too sluggish to insure freshness and vitality. Water, like blood, to be healthy, must be in a state of continuous movement.

A nonobservant man, purchasing a beautiful stream, may be completely disappointed by finding that the opacity of its water depends upon a factory, of which he had never so much as heard; he may not let his children bathe in it, for he may well fear for them the fate of the fish he so plentifully finds lying dead upon the shore. A poisoned rural stream is as sad a sight as it has grown to be a common one. Always, before buying water, know what there is up stream, or what there is likely to be.

Never buy a country house without seeing to it that the foundation stands upon a higher level than some channel which may drain it, and this, by the way, is not to consider alone the dry summer day on which you go first to visit the place; you are to think of the winter and spring. Look to it that no excess of water shall be able to drown you out; some places, which in dry weather are glorious, are, in winter and spring, ankle deep in slush and mire, and everything about them is as wet as a soaked board. Open the front door of such a house, and a chill strikes you instantly. A fire must be kept the year round, or otherwise you live in the moisture of a vault. Places there are of this class where the question of the water from the kitchen pump comes to absorb the attention of the whole household.

No shade is an abomination. A bilious fever fattens in the sun as does miasm in a marshy valley. Too much shade, on the contrary, and too near the house, is equally of ill import; it keeps things damp, and dampness is a breeder of pestilence. An atmosphere confined about a house by too dense foliage is, like the air of an unventilated room, not fit for practical purposes. The sporadic poisons have an intimate relationship with dampness; miasm lives in it as does a snail in his shell. Besides this, it shuts out the cool breath of the summer nights, and makes restless swelterers where even a blanket might be enjoyed.—DR. JOHN DARBY, Odd Hours of a Physician.

2. The House.—So construct the dwelling from foundation to roof that no dampness can result. Give to the cellar dry walls, a cement floor, and windows enough to insure constant currents of air. Insist upon such a system of immediate and perfect sewerage as shall render contamination impossible. If "modern improvements" are afforded, see that the plumbing embraces the latest and most scientific sanitary inventions. Do not economize on this point; health, perhaps life, depends upon the perfect working of the various traps. Having employed the most skilled and intelligent plumbers, overlook their work so that you may fully understand the principle applied.

Provide for ample ventilation in every apartment, above and below. Let the sleeping rooms be above stairs, and furnished with appliances for moderate warmth in winter. Treat yourself and your family to as many fireplaces as possible. Indulge in a spacious piazza, so placed that it will not cut off the light from the family sitting room, and, if you can, include a balcony or two, large enough to hold a chair and a table, or a workbasket. Remember that a house is for convenience and protection only when you can not be in the open air.

3. The kitchen and the Dust Heap.—Removal of Household Refuse.—It has to be assumed, especially where servants are not carefully overlooked, that the dust heap of most houses will contain more or less decomposing organic matter, such as bits of meat, scales and refuse of fish, tea and coffee grounds, and the peelings of vegetables, which, though quite out of place in the ash heap, are apt surreptitiously to be thrown upon it. Such matter soon becomes offensive and even dangerous, and a few days' retention of it in warm weather constitutes a legal nuisance. Household refuse should be carted away as often as once in two days; in extreme hot weather, daily. Where it is inexpedient to remove it frequently, it should be kept covered to the depth of two or three inches with a layer of powdered charcoal, or freshly burnt lime, or, at least, of clear dry earth. All soil which has become foul by the soakage of decaying or vegetable matter should be similarly treated. The refuse heap should be protected from rain, and liquids should never be thrown upon it. Where obnoxious matter has been allowed to accumulate, its disturbance for removal should be conducted with special precaution, both on account of its temporary offensiveness of odor and the more serious results which may follow. It can not be too distinctly understood that cleanliness, ventilation, and dryness are the best of all deodorizers. One of the first of household regulations should be to see that no unsanitary rubbish remains in or about the dwelling. Keep the dust heap itself at the farthest practicable remove from the house. Sow grass seed plentifully upon the back premises, and induce tidiness in the domestics by having the kitchen door open upon a well-kept lawn.

Burning of Garbage.—The easiest, quickest, and most sanitary method of disposing of household garbage is to burn it This plan has been officially recommended by the Boards of Health in various cities. Many housekeepers have adopted it, and find it so practicable that in New York City there has become a marked decrease in the amount of household refuse collected by the scavengers. If, after every meal, the draughts of the range be opened, and all waste matter be deposited within, a few moments, or at most, a half hour, will effectually dispose of it, and prevent all the dangers that arise from its retention and accumulation. In the country, where there is plenty of ground, nearly all rubbish can be destroyed in this way and by outside fires, with the additional advantage that the—E. R. S.

4. The Sewers and Drains.—How to Keep out Sewer Air.—The most perfectly flushed sewers that are made, under the latest and fullest sanitary light, must, owing to the constant entrance of greasy and other adhesive material, contain more or less of particles that "stick," and also more or less of fungi and mold; so that here, shut away from light and air, goes on the peculiar fermentation that fits it for the soil or habitat of the malarial germ. These germs, the soil once ready, take possession and multiply, whether that soil be a sewer or the blood of a person who sits calmly unconscious in a gorgeous chamber above, with a small continuation of the sewer extending untrapped up to his washbowl.— DR. DERBY.

Keep constant watch of your traps and drains. Cultivate the faculty of detecting sewer gas in the house. Always fear a smell; trace it to its source and provide a remedy. At the same time, bear in mind that it is not always the foul smell that is most dangerous. There is a close, sweet odor often present in bathrooms, and about drains, that is deadly as the Upas tree. Bad air from neglected drains causes not only fevers, dysentery, and diphtheria, but asthma and other chronic disorders. Illuminating gas, escaping from pipes and prevented from exuding by frozen earth, has been known to pass sidewise for some distance into houses. Thus also the air from cesspools and porous or broken drains finds its way, when an examination of the household entrance to the drain fails to reveal the cause of an existing effluvia. But, however bad the drain may be outside the house, there is little to fear provided the gas can escape externally. Every main drain should have a ventilating pipe carried from it directly outside the house to the top of the highest chimney. The soil pipe inside the house should be carried up through the roof and be open at the top.

Digging for drains or other purposes should not be allowed when the mercury stands above 60°; but if, as in repairs of pipes, it becomes necessary to dig about the house in hot weather, let it be done in the middle of the day, and replace the turf as speedily as possible. If the soil be damp, or the district malarious, sprinkle quicklime upon the earth as fast as it is turned.

How to Clear Waste Pipes.—The "sewer gas," about which so much has been written, and which is so justly dreaded, is not, as many suppose, the exclusive product of the sewer. Indeed, the foul and dangerous gases are not only found in the sewers themselves, but in the unventilated waste pipes, and those which are in process of being clogged by the foul matter passing through them. Any obstruction in the soil or waste pipes is therefore doubly dangerous, because it may produce an inflow of foul gas into the pipe, even though the entrance to the sewer itself has been entirely cut off.

In pipes leading from the house to the cesspool, there is a constant accumulation of grease. This enters as a liquid, but hardens as the water cools, and is deposited on the bottom and sides of the pipes. As these accumulations increase, the water way is gradually contracted, till the pipe is closed.

When the pipe is entirely stopped, or allows the water to fall away by drops only, proceed thus: Empty the pipe down to the trap, as far as practicable, by "mopping up" with a cloth. If the water flows very slowly, begin when the pipe has at last emptied itself. Fill the pipe up with potash, crowding it with a stick. Then allow hot water to trickle upon the potash, or pour the hot water upon it in a small stream, stopping as soon as the pipe appears to be filled. As the potash dissolves and disappears, add more water. At night a little heap of potash may be placed over the hole, and water enough poured on so that a supply of strong lye will flow into the pipe during the night.

Pipes that have been stopped for months may be cleaned out by this method, though it may call for three or four pounds of potash. The crudest kind, however, appears to act as well as the best. If the pipe is partially obstructed, a lump of crude potash should be placed where water will drip slowly upon it, and so reach the pipe. As water comes in contact with the potash, it becomes hot, thus aiding in dissolving the grease. Potash, in combination with grease, forms a "soft" or liquid soap, which easily flows away. It is also destructive to all animal and most mineral matters.

Some of the most dangerous gases come from wash-basin pipes, being, perhaps, the result of the decay of the soap and the animal matter washed from the skin.

When a pipe is once fairly cleaned out, the potash should be used from time to time, in order to dissolve the greasy deposits as they form, and carry them forward to the cesspool or sewer.—Artisan.

What Came from a Neighbor's Cesspool.—Keep watch not only of your own premises, but stand on guard against those of your neighbors. Dr. Carpenter cites a case wherein "four members of a certain household were attacked with typhoid fever, one of whom narrowly escaped with her life. The circumstances left no doubt in the mind of the attending physician that the malady originated in the opening of an old cesspool belonging to a neighboring house, then in course of demolition. The house in which the outbreak took place is large and airy, and stands by itself in a most salubrious situation. The most careful examination failed to disclose any defect either in its drainage or its water supply; there was no typhoid in the neighborhood; and the milk supply was unexceptional. But the neighboring house being old, and having been occupied by a school, its removal had been determined on to make way for a house of higher class; and as the offensive odor emanating from the uncovered cesspool was at once perceived in the next garden, and the outbreak of typhoid followed at the usual interval, the case seems one which admits of no reasonable question."

5. The Cellar.—A Typical Bad Cellar.—Did the reader ever, when a child, see the cellar afloat at some old home in the country? You creep part way down the cellar stairs with only the light of a single tallow candle, and behold by its dim glimmer an expanse of dark water, boundless as the sea. On its surface, in dire confusion, float barrels and boxes, butter firkins and washtubs, boards, planks, hoops, and staves without number, interspersed with apples, turnips, and cabbages, while half-drowned rats and mice, scrambling up the stairway for dear life, drive you affrighted back to the kitchen….Now consider the case of one of these old farmhouse cellars that has been in use fifty years or more. In it have been stored all the potatoes, turnips, cabbages, onions, and other vegetables for family food. The milk and cream, the pork and beef, and cider and vinegar, have all met with various accidents, and from time to time have had their juices, in various stages of decay, absorbed by the soil of the cellar bottom. The cats have slept there to fight the rats and the mice, who have had their little homes behind the walls for half a century; and the sink spouts have for the same term poured into the soil close by, their fragrant fluids. The water rushes upward and sideways into the cellar, forming, with the savory ingredients at which we have delicately hinted, a sort of broth, quite thin and watery at first, but growing thicker as the water slowly subsides and leaves its grosser parts pervading the surface of the earth, walls, and partitions. All this time the air rushes in at the openings of the cellar, and presses constantly upward, often lifting the carpets from the floors, and is breathed day and night by all who dwell in the house. Does it require learned doctors or boards of health to inform any rational person that these conditions are unfavorable to health?—MRS. PLUNKETT, Women, Plumbers, and Doctors.

What Came from a Crack in a Cellar Wall.—A few years ago a Boston gentleman inherited a house, situated on one of the most desirable streets of the city. Resolving to make a healthy as well as a beautiful home, he. spent a large sum, and gave personal supervision to all the details of an elaborate system of plumbing. He moved in. Imagine his grief and disappointment when member after member of his family succumbed to diphtheria, and an infant and a grown daughter died. Though so deeply smitten, he did not lose his belief in the connection between cause and effect. He ordered a minute investigation of the premises by experts. A slight crack, so small as to have escaped ordinary observation, was found in the cellar wall. Investigation of the premises next door—the inmates of which were also suffering from diphtheria—showed a choked-up drain, which ought to have connected with the sewer, but did not. The filthy ooze from this was pouring out, just where its effluvium and its disease germs could pass without any hindrance through the crack.

Now that it is shown that gases pass through bricks and many kinds of stone, it is easy to see that the sanitary welfare of one is the sanitary welfare of all.—MRS. PLUNKETT.

6. The Bedroom.—The Bed a Night Garment.—There is still one of our garments to be considered, which generally is not regarded as such. I mean the bed—that piece of clothing in which we spend such a great part of our time.

The bed is not only a place of rest; it is especially our sleeping garment, and has often to make up for privations endured during the day and the day's work, and to give us strength for to-morrow. Like our day garments, the bed covering must be airy and warm at the same time. We warm the bed by our body, just as we warm our clothes, and the bed warms the air which is continually flowing through it from below, upward. The regulating strata must be more powerful in their action than in our day clothes, because during rest and sleep the metamorphosis of our tissues and the resulting heat become less; and because in a horizontal position we lose more heat by an ascending current of air than in a vertical position, where the warm ascending current is in more complete and longer contact with our upright body.

The warmth of the bed sustains the circulation in our surface to a certain degree for the benefit of our internal organs at a time when our production of heat is at its lowest ebb. Hence the importance of the bed for our heat and blood economy. Several days without rest in a bed not only make us sensible of a deficiency in the recruiting of our strength, but very often produce quite noticeable perturbations in our bodily economy, from which the bed would have protected us.—DR. MAX VON PETTENKOFFER.

Bed Ventilation.—It often happens that the desire of the energetic housekeeper to have her work done at an early hour in the morning, causes her to leave one of the most important items of neatness undone. The most effectual purifying of bed and bedclothes can not take place, if the proper time is not allowed, for the free circulation of pure air, to remove all human impurities which have collected during the hours of slumber. At least two or three hours should be allowed for the complete removal of atoms of insensible perspiration which are absorbed by the bed. Every day the airing should be done; and, occasionally, bedding constantly used should be carried into the open air, and left exposed to the sun and wind for half a day.—Home and Health.

CIRCULATION.

THE PULSE (p. 116).—The pulse which is felt by the finger does not correspond precisely with the beat of the heart, but takes place a little after it, and the interval is longer, the greater the distance of the artery from the heart. The beat of the artery on the inner side of the ankle, for example, is a little later than the beat of the artery in the temple.—HUXLEY.

The pulse is increased by exertion, and thus is more rapid in a standing than in a sitting, and in a sitting than in a lying posture. It is quickened by meals, and while varying thus from time to time during the day, is on the whole quicker in the evening than in early morning. It is said to be quicker in summer than in winter. Even independently of muscular exertion, it seems to be quickened by great altitude. Its rate is also profoundly influenced by mental conditions.—FOSTER.

CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD IN THE BRAIN (p. l20).—Signer Mosso, who has been engaged on the subject for six years, has published some new observations on the different conditions of the circulation of the blood in the brain. He has had the privilege of observing three patients who had holes in their skulls, permitting the examination of the encephalic movements and circulation. No part of the body exhibits a pulsation so varied in its form as the brain. The pulsation may be described as tricuspid; that is, it consists of a strong beat, preceded and followed by lesser beats. It gathers strength when the brain is at work, corresponding with the more rapid flow of blood to the organ. The increase in the volume of the brain does not depend upon any change in the respiratory rhythm; for, if we take the pulse of the forearm simultaneously with that of the brain, we can not perceive that the cerebral labor exercises any influence upon the forearm, although the pulsation in the brain may be considerably modified. The emotions have a similar effect upon the circulation of the brain to that of cerebral labor. Signor Mosso has also observed and registered graphically the variations of the cerebral pulse during sleep. Generally the pulses of the wrist and the brain vary oppositely. At the moment of waking, the pulse of the wrist diminishes, while that of the brain increases. The cerebral pulsations diminish as sleep grows deeper, and at last become very weak. Outward excitations determine the same modifications during sleep as in the waking state, without waking the sleeper. A deep inspiration always produces a diminution in the volume of the brain, in consequence, probably, of the increased flow of blood into the veins of the thoracic cavity; the increase of volume in the brain, when it takes place, is, on the contrary, due to a more abundant flow of arterial blood to the encephalus.—Popular Science Monthly, March, 1882.

CATARRHAL COLDS (p. l30).—I maintain that it can be proved, with as absolute certainty as any physiological fact admits of being proved, that warm, vitiated indoor air is the cause, and cold outdoor air the best cure, of catarrh….Fresh cold air is a tonic that invigorates the respiratory organs when all other stimulants fail, and, combined with arm exercise and certain dietetic alternatives, it is the best remedy for all disorders of the lungs and upper air passages….A combination of the three specifics,—exercise, abstinence, and fresh air,—will cure the most obstinate cold….Frost is such a powerful disinfectant, that in very cold nights the lung-poisoning atmosphere of few houses can resist its purifying influence; in spite of padded doors, in spite of "weatherstrips" and double windows, it reduces the indoor temperature enough to paralyze the floating disease germs. The penetrative force of a polar night frost exercises that function with such resistless vigor that it defies the preventive measures of human skill; and all Arctic travelers agree that among the natives of Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador pulmonary diseases are actually unknown. Protracted cold weather thus prevents epidemic catarrhs, but during the first thaw Nature succumbs to art: smoldering stove fires add their fumes to the effluvia of the dormitory, tight- fitting doors and windows exclude the means of salvation; superstition triumphs; the lung poison operates, and the next morning a snuffling, coughing, and red-nosed family discuss the cause of their affliction….It is a mistake to suppose that "colds" can be propagated only by direct transmission or the breathing of recently Vitiated air. Catarrh germs, floating in the atmosphere of an ill-ventilated bedroom, may preserve their vitality for weeks after the house has been abandoned; and the next renter of such a place should not move in till wide-open windows and doors and a thorough draught of several days have removed every trace of a "musty" smell.—DR. FELIX L. OSWALD, Remedies of Nature, Popular Science Monthly, March, 1884.

CATCHING COLD.—The phrase "to catch cold," so often in the mouths of physicians and patients, is a curious solecism. It implies that the term "cold" denotes something positive—a sort of demon which does not catch, but is caught by the unfortunate victims….If most persons outside of the medical profession were to be asked what they consider as chiefly to be avoided in the management of sick people, the answer would probably be "catching cold." I suspect that this question would be answered in the same way by not a few physicians. Hence it is that sick rooms are poorly ventilated, and patients are oppressed by a superabundance of garments and bedclothes. The air which patients are made to breathe, having been already breathed and rebreathed, is loaded with pulmonary exhalations. Cutaneous emanations are allowed to remain in contact with the body, as well as to pervade the atmosphere. Patients not confined to the bed, especially those affected with pulmonary disease, are overloaded with clothing, which becomes saturated with perspiration, and is seldom changed, for fear of the dreaded "cold."…

A reform is greatly needed in respect to "catching cold." Few diseases are referable to the agency of cold, and even the affection commonly called a cold is generally caused by other agencies, or, perhaps, by a special agent, which may prove to be a microbe. Let the axiom, A fever patient never catches cold, be reiterated until it becomes a household phrase. Let the restorative influence of cool, fresh, pure atmosphere be inculcated. Let it be understood that in therapeutics, as in hygiene, the single word comfort embodies the principles which should regulate coverings and clothing.—AUSTIN FLINT, M.D., in a Lecture printed in The New York Medical Journal.

DIGESTION AND FOOD.

THE WATER WE DRINK (p. l55).—Qualities of Pure Water.—"A good drinking water," says Dr. Simpson (in The Water We Drink), "should possess the following physical characters: it should be entirely free from color, taste, or odor; it should, moreover, be cool, well aerated, soft, bright, and entirely free from all deposit. But it should be remembered that a water having all these characteristics may yet be more or less polluted by organic matter, owing to the proximity of drains and sewers….Disease has frequently been traced to the use of perfectly bright and clear water, where there was no sediment, and where the animal organic matter was held in a state of solution."

In the case of diseases, such as typhoid, which attack the stomach, disease germs are removed along with the excreta; and if, as is often the case, the drainage of an infected town flows into a river, and that river is used in some after portion of its course as a water supply, there is great danger of such diseases being communicated. For, however well the water may be purified and filtered, we have no guarantee that it will not contain some of these disease germs, which are so small that they pass through the finest filters. It is in this way that almost all the great cholera and typhoid epidemics have spread.—Chambers's Journal.

Well Water Often Dangerous.—A densely crowded population soon impregnates the soil to some depth with filth, which drains into the water course below, especially if such water is near the surface. This surface water easily penetrates a loosely walled well. Every well, therefore, should not only be widely separated from barnyards, cesspools, pens, sinks, and similar places, but should be made water-tight with cement, so that nothing can reach its interior except water that has been filtered through dense beds of unpolluted ground below. If these precautions are neglected, the best and deepest well may become continually contaminated by infiltration from the surrounding surface. This impure water, even when not used for family drinking, is sometimes supplied to cows, or used for washing dairy pans, or employed in diluting milk for the market, and there are many known cases in which disease has thus been disseminated. Thus, an epidemic of typhoid fever in Cambridge, Mass., was definitely traced to a dairy which supplied the victims with milk. Upon investigation it was found that a short time before there had been a typhoid patient in the farmhouse, and that the well from which water was taken to wash the milk pans had become contaminated with the specific poison brought into it from the surrounding drainage.

All suspected water should be thoroughly boiled before using it to drink. Some physicians insist that the boiling should continue for one or two hours in order entirely to destroy the bacterial germs. The heaviness and insipidity incident to boiled water may be somewhat relieved by afterward filtering it. Filtering, of itself, however, will do little toward ridding the water of microbes, which are much too minute to be arrested by the ordinary apparatus.—When journeying, where one must often take a hasty meal at a railway station, drink hot water in preference to cold. A convenient portable filter may be arranged with a bottle of powdered charcoal, and a piece of filtering paper. A traveler by briskly stirring a tablespoonful of the charcoal into a pint of water, allowing it to stand five or ten minutes, and then filtering it through the paper, may venture to relieve his thirst in almost any part of the country.

Water an Absorbent of Foul Gases.—If a pitcher of water be left uncovered in an occupied apartment for only a few hours, it will become foul from the absorption of the respired and perspired gases in the room. The colder the water, the greater the capacity to contain these gases. Water kept in a room over night is therefore unfit for drinking, and should not be used even to brush the teeth or to gargle in the throat.

Impure Ice, a Breeder of Disease.—We generally take the purity of our ice for granted, and, like the alligator in the bayou, close our mouths and swallow it. In the country, I have seen during the ice- harvesting season, wagon after wagon passing me on the road, laden with ice that had been collected from canals, rivers, and streams receiving sewerage, and from ponds that are in the summer time reeking with slime, and often offensive from the quantity of decomposed vegetable and animal matter brought in by the washing from the meadow. These streams would be shunned as a source of water supply.

Should you interview a native regarding the slimy mud puddle before you, called Mr. So-and-so's private "ice pond," he would say that "in winter it is much better, and when frozen, you know, it makes fine ice," presenting that popular though ignorant belief that while in the act of crystallizing, water rids itself of all its injurious qualities, however offensive it may be in its liquid state. Unfortunately, there is enough truth in the current idea of the elimination of noxious and foreign matter during the process of freezing to give color to the popular belief, but not enough to make it a safe reliance; therefore all means should be used to enlighten the public regarding this subject. Experiment has shown that freezing produces little change or effect in overcoming the poisonous influences, and ice has often served as a vehicle to convey the germs of typhoid and other low forms of fever. Pure ice can be procured only from water free from impurities, and ice for domestic or surgical purposes should never be collected from ponds or streams which contain animal or vegetable refuse, or stagnant and muddy material.—Journal of Reconstructives, Oct., 1887.

THE GLANDULAR COAT OF THE STOMACH, AND HOW IT WEEPS (p. l62).—While the food is thus being continually moved about, it is at the same time subjected to the action of the chemical sac. This is, as we have said, a glandular sac. It is of some thickness, and is made of little glands bound up together with that stringy fibrous packing material which anatomists call connective tissue.

If we were to imagine many gross of small India-rubber vials all placed side by side, and bound together with hay or straw into a great mat, and the mat rolled up into a sac, with all the mouths of the vials turned inward, we should have a large and coarse, but tolerably fair image of the glandular coat of the stomach. Each vial would then represent one of the glands of this coat, one of the gastric or peptic glands, as they are called. Each gland, however, is not always a simple tube, but is often branched at the bottom end, and all of them are lined, except just at their mouths, with large rounded bodies, which not unfrequently almost choke up their cavity.

FIG. 72.

[Illustration: BRANCHED GASTRIC GLAND a. The peptic cells. b. The inert cells.]

The rounded masses, or cells, as they are called, in the interior of each gland, form the really active part of the apparatus. Each cell is a little laboratory, which concocts out of the material brought to it or near it by the blood a certain potent, biting fluid, and is hence called a peptic or digestive cell. Each cell is born at the bottom of the tube, and in process of time travels upward toward the mouth. When it reaches the mouth, it bursts, and pours into the stomach the fluid it has elaborated, or perhaps may give it out without bursting, while it is still within its tube.

In those cases in which it has been possible to look in upon the stomach while at work (as in the famous case of Alexis St. Martin), and where the orifices of the tiny glands (for though we have compared them to bottles, they are exceedingly small) appear like little dots, tears were seen to start at the mouths of the glands, gather into drops, and finally trickle down into the lowest part of the stomach. The stomach, as it were, weeps, and indeed the weeping of tears is just such another effect of glandular activity—only ordinary tears form a mild and, chemically speaking, impotent fluid; while the fluid which the tears of the stomach weep—the gastric juice—is a sharp, piercing water of excessive chemical power.—Hinton.

POISONOUS MILK, CHEESE, AND ICE CREAM (p. l69).—In late years there have been many cases of poisoning by ice cream, cheese, and milk. The poisonous principle sometimes developed in these articles of food has been made a subject of special investigation, and it has been found to be due to natural causes. Dr. Vaughan, of Michigan, after spending several months in experimenting upon samples of twelve different cheeses, which had caused three hundred cases of poisoning, finally succeeded in isolating certain poison crystals, which he calls Tyrotoxicon. He says: "A few drops of an aqueous solution of these crystals placed upon the tongue produces all the symptoms observed in those who had been made sick by eating of the cheese. This was tried repeatedly upon myself, and upon some of my students who kindly offered themselves for experimentation." Dr. Vaughan afterward procured the poison crystals from milk which had stood some months in a closed bottle, and also from a sample of ice cream by which eighteen persons had been made ill. It was learned in the latter case that the custard, of which the ice cream was made, had been allowed to stand in a foul atmosphere for two hours before it was frozen. By placing small bits of this poisonous cream in good milk, and allowing it to stand twenty-four hours, the whole became vitiated. This proved that the poison is due to the growth of some ferment. In the autumn of 1886, many persons in different hotels at Long Branch were poisoned by milk obtained from a certain milkman. In this case it was found that the cows were milked at noon, the warm milk being immediately placed in cans and carted eight miles during the warmest part of the day, in a very hot month. In June, 1887, nineteen persons in New York city were similarly poisoned by milk which also came from one dairy. Many of these persons had narrow escapes from death. These, and many other like instances, teach us the importance of the greatest care in every detail of milk handling. A little dried milk formed along the seam of a tin pail, or any similar lodging place, may be the starting point of poison generation. A month after his first experiments with the ice cream mentioned above, Dr. Vaughan put small pieces of the dried custard in pans of milk, and afterward made custard from this milk. This yielded tyrotoxicon as before, showing the tenacious vitality of the poison, and also explaining the fact that the precise cause of poisoning is in many cases so difficult to trace.

FISH AS FOOD (p. 169).—It is not desirable that fish should be the sole kind of nitrogenous food eaten by any nation; and even if milk and eggs be added thereto, the vigor of such a people will not be equal to that of flesh-eating nations. At the same time, the value of fish as a part of a dietary is indicated by the larger proportion of phosphorus which it contains, and which renders it especially fitted for the use of those who perform much brain work, or who are the victims of much anxiety and distress.—EDWARD SMITH, in "Foods."

For the mentally exhausted, the worried, the "nervous," and the distressed in mind, fish is not simply a food; it acts as physic. The brain is nourished by it, the "nerves"—to use the term in its popular sense—are "quieted"; the mind grows stronger, the temper less irritable, and the whole being healthier and happier when fish is substituted for butcher's meat….I find persons who are greatly excited, even to the extent of seeking to do violence to themselves or to those around them, who can not sleep, and who are in an agony of irritability, become composed and contented when fed almost exclusively on fish. In such cases I have withdrawn butter, milk, eggs, and all the varieties of warm-blooded animal food; and, carefully noting the weight and strength, I find no diminution of either, while fish is supplied in such quantities as fully to satisfy the appetite.—J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE, M.D., "Fish as Food and Physic."

COFFEE AND TEA (p. 170).—Besides the alkaloid Caffeine which coffee contains, it also develops, in roasting, a volatile oil called Caffeone, to which is due its characteristic aroma. The main effects of coffee are due to both the caffeine and the caffeone, which are antagonistic, though not contemporaneous, in action. The volatile oil reduces arterial tension, allows a brisker flow of blood, and so increases the rapidity of the heart's action. It also acts upon the brain, and intellectual faculties in general; keeps one awake, and his mind clear. Caffeine, on the other hand, like digitalis, produces a high arterial tension, and slows the heart beat. It exerts its chief effect upon the spinal cord, to which, like strychnia, it is an excitant. The shaking hand of the inveterate coffee drinker is caused by caffeine. Thus a cup of coffee produces on the drinker a double effect,—of the oil and the alkaloid; the former sooner and transient, the latter later and lasting….Coffee is not in itself nutritious to any marked degree; but it saves food, and also maintains life, by its exhilarating effect upon the nervous system. It is an excellent antidote to opium, producing the wakefulness that antagonizes the narcotic sleep of the drug; is now and then curative of sick headache, and is one of the standard remedies for certain forms of nausea.

To the chemist, Tea is much the same thing as coffee. It contains considerably more tannin, a volatile oil, and an alkaloid (theine) indistinguishable from caffeine. That the injurious effects of overdoses are due as much to the volatile oil as to the alkaloid, is shown by the fact that tea packers are made ill by long breathing of air filled with it, and that tea tasters in China, who avoid swallowing the infusion, can endure their trade but a few years, and leave the country with shattered nerves.

Probably every one numbers among his friends women who are actual slaves of the tea habit, and who would find tea as hard to forsake as men find tobacco. It is not unlikely that the functional cardiac disorder, often spoken of as the "tobacco heart," due to nervous derangement, and accompanied by palpitation and pain in the cardiac region, is more often due to tea than tobacco. In fact, the disorders induced by excessive tea drinking have been grasped as a special disease, to which has been given the name of Theism. This includes a train of symptoms, usually progressive, loss of appetite, pain after meals, headache, constipation, palpitation, cardiac distress, hysterical manifestations, dizziness, and paresis.—DR. MAURICE D. CLARKE, Popular Science News.

Tea drinkers, as a rule, express doubts as regards the correctness of alleged poisonous properties of tea. Numerous instances of individuals of this class have been noticed who were themselves suffering from tea poisoning. Their nerves were in a deplorably abnormal condition, the heart and brain were functionally disturbed, and the sleep less in quantity and less refreshing than it should be….One's opinion of the physical disturbances which may be caused by rum, tobacco, or tea, are not worth much, when the opinion comes from a victim of the excessive use of these agents.

The tannin found in tea does not differ from that found in oak and other barks which the tanners use to convert the raw hides of animals into leather. It is a powerful astringent, which accounts for some of the peculiar physical evils to which confirmed tea drinkers are subject.

Theine does not differ essentially from Cocaine (see p. 223). They both produce exaltation of the nervous system and increased powers of physical endurance. The brain is largely influenced in its functions, and long periods of wakefulness are induced. Continued use of strong infusions of either coca or tea result in great disturbance of nervous centers and functional offices, and either will produce fatal results by persistent use of inordinate quantities.

A cup of tea as served at tea tables contains usually only a trace of the alkaloidal principle, but infinitesimal quantities are capable of exerting baneful effects upon some tea drinkers….Poisons act in a variety of ways, some slowly, and without producing pain; others act violently, and with speedy, fatal results. Inasmuch as we do not observe a very large number of clearly proved cases of acute poisoning by tea, we must conclude that it is characteristically a slow poison, and also that its influence is unlike in different individuals….Four or six cups of tea, however, taken during each twenty-four hours, will in time produce tea poisoning, and greater or less evil effects.

Tea is well enough, when its use is kept under absolute, intelligent control; but if it becomes master in any case, then it must be promptly abandoned, for danger attends the intemperate tea drinker every hour of his life. Those advanced in life crave its stimulating effects, and it is well for them to use it in moderation; but the young should abstain from it entirely.—Abridged from "Tea Poisoning," by DR. NICHOLS, in Popular Science News, December, 1887.

CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF INDIGESTION (p. l72).—When a light breakfast is eaten, a solid meal is requisite in the middle of the day. If the digestive organs are left too long unemployed, they secrete an excess of mucus, which greatly interferes with their normal functions. One meal has a direct influence on the next; and a poor breakfast leaves the stomach over-active for dinner. This is the secret of much excess in eating. The point to bear in mind is that not to eat a sufficiency at one meal makes you too hungry for the next; and that when you are too hungry, you are apt to overload the stomach, and to give the gastric juices more to do than they have the power to perform.

To eat too often, and to eat irregularly, are other sources of indigestion. People who dine at uncertain hours, and eat one meal too quickly on the last, must expect the stomach to retaliate in the long run. A very fruitful cause of dyspepsia is imperfect mastication. We remember one old gentleman who used always to warn young people on this point by saying: "Remember you have no teeth in your stomach." Nervous people nearly always eat fast, and as nearly always are the victims of nervous irritability, produced by dyspepsia….To sit much in a stooping posture interferes with the stomach's action. Well-marked dyspepsia has been traced to sitting immediately after dinner in a low armchair, so that the body was curved forward, and the stomach compressed….

The skin, core, and kernels of fruit should be avoided. Some people are not able to digest raw apples; and dyspepsia has been sometimes greatly aggravated by eating pears. The latter fruit, in its ripest state, contains an abundance of gritty material, which, as it can not be separated in the mouth, on being swallowed irritates the mucous membrane….

Of food itself, bear in mind that hot meat is more digestible than cold; the flesh of full-grown animals than that of young ones; that land birds are more digestible than waterfowl; wild animals than domestic ones; and that in game, newly killed birds are easier of digestion than those which have been kept a long time.—Hints to Dyspeptics, Chambers's Journal.

HOW FOOD DEVELOPS ENERGY (p. 173).—It may appear strange that the small amount of food we eat should suffice to carry our large and bulky bodies through all the varied movement of the day. But this difficulty disappears at once, when we recollect how large an amount of dormant energy can be laid by in a very small piece of matter. A lump of coal no bigger than one's fist, if judiciously employed, will suffice to keep a small toy engine at work for a considerable time. Now, our food is matter containing large amounts of dormant energy, and our bodies are engines so constructed as to utilize all the energy to the best advantage. A single gramme of beef fat if completely burned (that is, if every atom unites with oxygen), is capable of developing more than 9,000 heat units; and each heat unit, if employed to perform mechanical work, is capable of lifting a weight of one gramme to a height of 424 meters; or, what comes to the same thing, 424 grammes to a height of one meter. Accordingly, the energy contained in one gramme of beef, and the oxygen with which it unites, would be sufficient to raise the little bit of fat itself to a height of 3,816 kilometers, or almost as high as the distance from London to New York.— GRANT ALLEN in "Why do we Eat our Dinner?"

Danger of Too High Pressure.—A prudent fire engineer, when his water hose is old and weak, would not try to force as much water as he could into it. No; to prevent a rupture he would work it at a low pressure. But men seldom think of carrying out the same simple mechanical principle when there is reason to believe that the vessels of the brain are getting weak and brittle. They eat and drink just as much as they feel inclined to, and sometimes a little more. With a good digestion, nearly all they consume is converted into blood, to the yet further distention of vessels already over-distended. This high-pressure style of living produces high-pressure results. Its effects were painfully illustrated by the death of Charles Dickens. The brain work he performed was immense; he lived generously, taking his wine as he did his meat, with a liberal hand. He disregarded the signs of structural decay, forcing his reluctant brain to do what it had once done with spontaneous ease, until all at once, under a greater tension than ordinary, a weak vessel gave way, flooding the brain with blood.—J. R. BLACK, M.D., in "Apoplexy," Popular Science Monthly, April, 1875.

Evils of Gluttony.—"Is it not strange," says Dr. Hunt, "how people, even the most considerate, will trifle with their stomachs? Many a person seems to prefer taking medicine to avoiding it by a proper regulation of the appetite. You may stuff the stomach to the full, year after year, but as sure as effects follow causes, so sure will you reap the accumulating penalty." A physician of extensive practice declares that he has never lived through a Christmas or Thanksgiving without frequently being consulted for ailments produced by excessive eating. He says: "It would seem as if multitudes thought they had a gluttonous license once a year, and that the most appropriate method of expressing gratitude, was by stuffing the stomach. Excessive eating produces scrofula. Surfeiting among children results in mental stupidity and unmanageable temper….I am acquainted with a family, in which about the average amount of stuffing is indulged. To my expostulations, the mother has replied: "I may not be able to give my children as much education as some folks, and I may not be able to give them any property, but as long as we can get it, they shall have what they want to eat. I have spoken of their black teeth, bad breath, eruptions, and frequent sickness. "Yes," she has replied, "I know all that, but would you have me stop them before their appetites are half satisfied, and tell them, 'there, that is all you can have'? No; as long as I can get it, my children shall have enough to eat; it never shall be said that I have starved them." This indulgence of children to the full extent of their undiscriminating appetites is extreme folly and genuine unkindness. Pampered with a variety of dishes, they eat enormously, which engenders a craving for another large meal, and so on—their youthful and elastic constitutions enabling them to bear the excess without immediate serious injury. Let them be confined to one or two plain dishes at a meal, and the quantity be determined for them; it will then be found that a growing child does not need to be stuffed, and that his appetite will soon become reasonable; and if the food be plain, and mostly or entirely vegetable, it will soon be observed that the child's teeth are whiter, its breath sweeter, its skin clearer, its tongue cleaner, its eyes brighter, its sleep quieter, its brains sharper, and its temper more amiable. There are few changes in the management of children which would prove so beneficial as that from the present mode of cramming with a multitude of rich foods, to a plain vegetable diet, eaten in regular and moderate quantities.—DIO LEWIS, in Weak Lungs, and How to Make them Strong.

REGULAR PHYSICAL HABITS (p. 177).—Constipation lies at the root of a host of chronic ailments, which seem especially to beset American women. Impaired blood, nervous excitability, sick headaches, mental depression, sleeplessness, and a long train of untold sufferings may be directly traced to this physical sin. We say sin, for in the large majority of instances this habit may be prevented; or, if already formed, may, by proper attention, be cured. The principal causes which lead to this deplorable state of the system are:

1. Errors in Food.

2. Errors in Exercise.

3. Inattention to Nature's laws.

Errors in Food have much to do with the evil in question. Our diet is, in general, too concentrated. We indulge ourselves with animal food two or three times a day, accompanying it with spices, condiments, greasy gravies, fine wheat bread, and a sparse amount of vegetables. We wind up our dinners with rich and heavy pastry, and our luncheons or our suppers with sugared sweetmeats and that indigestible compound often offered under the name of cake. A few cups of strong tea intensify the error. Coffee has a less astringent effect, and therefore can not be so severely arraigned for this particular consequence. When we think what delicious meals can be enjoyed from any of the cereals, well cooked, and taken with milk or cream, bread from unbolted flour, plenty of unsugared fruit, and pure rain or spring water, filtered and cooled or taken hot, with or without milk, we wonder that so many people consent day after day to use greasy pork, fried steaks, fried potatoes, hot biscuit, and in many cases poorly made coffee and tea. These are the people who make up the grand army of sallow- faced sufferers upon which the venders of patent pills and nauseous compounds thrive.

A wise mother will not allow mere culinary convenience to take precedence of the requirements of health. She will study the peculiar physical needs of each one of her children, that she may provide for each the food best suited to his or her constitution. This is not a difficult matter. "Water, not only by itself, but in some of its combinations," says Dr. Oswald, "is an effective aperient; in watermelons, and whey, for instance, but still more in conjunction with a dish of peas, or beans. No constipation can long withstand the suasion of a dose of pea soup, or baked beans, flavored with a modicum of brown butter, and glorified with a cup of cold spring water. Moreover, the aperient effect thus produced is not followed by an astringent reaction, as in the case of drugs,—the cure, once effected, is permanent."

Errors in Exercise may lie in two directions, and overexertion, viz., exercise carried to the point of nervous exhaustion, is as mischievous in its effect as is the other extreme. A too long walk, for instance, may cause the very evil it is intended to cure.

As a rule, however, sedentary habits are chargeable with the greater share of influence in this unhappy state of the system. Light gymnastics within doors, a brisk walk or horseback ride without, both taken in garments suspended from the shoulders, and devoid of all constriction so that the abdominal viscera can partake in the general movement of the body, are advisable. For invalids or those incapacitated for active exercise, friction or massage treatment daily, including a vigorous kneading of the abdomen, or a relaxation of the entire muscles of the body with especial thought directed to the desired result, are often of great service.

Inattention to Physical Laws is perhaps the prime culprit. Nature always inclines to regularity, and when we do not respect her dictates, we invite the retribution which, sooner or later, she invariably inflicts. The elimination of waste from the system is an imperative necessity, and whenever it is thwarted, evil must and will follow. Aside from the avoidance of positive discomforts, suffering, and disease, there is the not unimportant consideration of bodily elasticity and a fine complexion. Let every young woman who would possess and retain a fair, delicate complexion, remember that the most important factor in its formation and retention is a clean system.

Proper diet, plenty of fruits, plenty of wholesome drink, enough exercise to send the blood pleasurably bounding through the veins, followed up and enforced by prompt recognition of the immutable laws of Health in this as well as all other organic functions, will soon work a reform that could not be so successfully effected by all the drugs in Christendom.—E. B. S.

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

EFFECT OF VIOLENT PASSIONS UPON HEALTH (p. 202).—The man who is given to outbursts of anger is sure to experience a rapid change of the physical organs, in case he does not die in a fit of rage.

Death under such circumstances is of frequent occurrence. Sylla, Valentinian, Nerva, Wenceslas, and Isabeau of Bavaria, all died in consequence of an access of passion. The medical annals of our own time recount many instances of fatal effects following the violent brain disturbance caused by anger. The symptoms usually are pulmonary and cerebral congestions. Still such fatal accidents as these are exceptional; as a rule, the passions of hate and anger deteriorate the constitution by slow, but sure degrees.

How, then, do we explain those morbid phenomena which have their origin in misplaced affection, in disappointed ambition, in hatred, or in anger, and which culminate either in serious chronic maladies, or in death or suicide? They all seem to start from an impairment of the cerebro-spinal centers. The continual excitation of these by ever-present emotions determines a paralysis of the central nerve substance, and thus affects its connections with the nerves extending out to the various organs. These nerves next degenerate by degrees, and soon the great functions are compromised. The heart and the lungs cease to act with their normal rhythm, the circulation grows irregular and languishing. Appetite disappears, the amount of carbonic acid exhaled decreases, and the hair grows white, owing to the interruption of the pigmentary secretion. This general disturbance in nutrition and secretion is attended with a fall of the body's temperature and anæmia. The flesh dries up and the organism becomes less and less capable of resisting morbific influences. At the same time, in consequence of the reaction of all these disturbances on the brain, the psychic faculties become dull or perverted, and the patient falls into a decline more or less complicated and aggravated by grave symptoms. Under these conditions he dies or makes away with himself.

Two organs, the stomach and the liver, are often affected in a peculiar and characteristic way in the course of this pathological evolution. The modifications produced in the innervation, under the influence of cephalic excitement, cause a disturbance of the blood circulation in the liver. This disturbance is of such a nature that the bile, now secreted in larger quantity, is resorbed into the blood instead of passing into the biliary vesicle. Then appears what we call jaundice. The skin becomes pale, then yellow, owing to the presence in the blood of the coloring matter of the bile. This change in the liver is usually developed slowly: sometimes, however, jaundice makes its appearance suddenly. Villeneuve mentions the case of two youths who brought a discussion to an end by grasping their swords; suddenly one of them turned yellow, and the other, alarmed at this transformation, dropped his weapon. The same author speaks of a priest who became jaundiced on seeing a mad dog jump at him. Whatever may be said of these cases, we must reckon painful affections of the soul among the efficient causes of chronic diseases of the liver.

The digestion, says the author of a work published some years ago, is completely subjected to the influence of the moral and intellectual state. When the brain is wearied by the passions, appetite and digestion are almost gone….There is nowhere perfect health, save when the passions are well regulated, harmonized, and equipoised. Moral temperance is as indispensable to a calm and tranquil life as physiological temperance….If it is your desire that your circulatory, respiratory, and digestive functions should be discharged properly, normally, if you want your appetite to be good, your sleep sound, your humor equable, avoid all emotions that are overstrong, all pleasures that are too intense, and meet the inevitable sorrows and the cruel agonies of life with a firm and resigned soul. Ever have some occupation to employ and divert your mind, and to make it proof against the temptations of want or of desire. Thus will you attain the term of life without overmuch disquiet and affliction.—FERNAND PAPILLON, in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

BRAIN WORK, OVERWORK, AND WORRY (p. 205).—Overstimulation of the Brain in Childhood.—Most civilized communities have enacted laws against the employment of children in severe physical labor. This is well enough, for the muscles of young persons are tender and weak, and not, therefore, adapted to the work to which cupidity or ignorance would otherwise subject them. But no such fostering care does the State take of the brains of the young. There are no laws to prevent the undeveloped nervous system being overtasked and brought to disease, or even absolute destruction. Every physician sees cases of the kind, and wonders how parents of intelligence can be so blind to the welfare of their offspring as to force, or even to allow, their brains to be worked to a degree that, in many cases, results in idiocy or death. Only a few months ago I saw for the first time a boy of five years of age, with a large head, a prominent forehead, and all the other signs of mental precocity. He had read the first volume of Bryant's "History of the United States," and was preparing to tackle the other volumes! He read the magazines of the day with as much interest as did his father, and conversed with equal facility on the politics of the period. But a few weeks before I saw him he had begun to walk in his sleep, then chorea had made its appearance, and on the day before he was brought to me he had had a well-marked epileptic paroxysm. Already his mind is weakened —perhaps permanently so. Such cases are not isolated ones. They are continually occurring.

The period of early childhood—say up to seven or eight years of age—is that during which the brain and other parts of the nervous system are most actively developing, in order to fit them for the great work before them. It is safe to say that the only instruction given during this time should be that which consists in teaching children how to observe. The perceptive faculties alone should be made the subjects of systematic attempts at development. The child should be taught how to use his senses, and especially how to see, hear, and touch. In this manner, knowledge would be acquired in the way that is preeminently the natural way, and ample food would be furnished for the child's reflective powers.—DK. WM. A. HAMMOND, Popular Science Monthly, November, 1884.

Reserve Force.—The part which "a stock of energy" plays in brain work can scarcely be exaggerated. Reserves are of high moment everywhere in the animal economy, and the reserve of mental force is in a practical sense more important than any other….Without this reserve, healthy brain work is impossible. Pain, hunger, anxiety, and a sense of mind weariness, are warning tokens of exhaustion. When the laborious worker, overcome with fatigue, "rouses" himself with alcohol, coffee, tea, or any other agent which may chance to suit him, he does not add a unit of force to his stock of energy; he simply narcotizes the sense of weariness, and, the guard being drugged, he appropriates the reserve….Meanwhile, the effort to work becomes daily more laborious, the task of fixing the attention grows increasingly difficult, thoughts wander, memory fails, the reasoning power is enfeebled; physical nerve or brain disturbance may supervene, and the crash will then come suddenly, unexpected by on-lookers, perhaps unperceived by the sufferer himself.

Overwork and Worry.—The miseries of "overwork," pure and simple, are few and comparatively insignificant….The natural safeguards are so well fitted for their task that neither body nor mind is exposed to the peril of serious exhaustion so long as their functions are duly performed. Overwork is impossible so long as the effort made is natural….There is then no excuse for idleness in the pretense of possible injury. If insane asylums were searched for the victims of "overwork," they would nearly all be found to have fallen a prey to "worry," or to the degeneracy which results from lack of purpose in life, and of steady employment ….The cause or condition which most commonly exposes the reserve of mental energy to loss and injury is worry. When a strong and active mind breaks down suddenly in the midst of business, it is usually worn out by this cause rather than by the other….Work in the teeth of worry is fraught with peril. The unhappy victim is ever on the verge of a catastrophe; if he escape, the marvel is not at his strength of intellect so much as at his good fortune. Worry is disorder, however induced, and disorderly work is abhorred by the laws of nature, which leave it wholly without remedy.

The pernicious system of Cram slays its thousands, because uneducated, undeveloped, inelastic intellects are burdened and strained with information adroitly deposited in the memory,—as an expert valet packs a portmanteau, with the articles likely to be first wanted on the top. Desultory occupation, mere play with objects of which the true interest is not appreciated, ruins a still larger number. But worry, that bane of brain work and mental energy, counts its victims by tens of thousands.—DR. J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE, in "Worry," Nineteenth Century.

SLEEP (p. 206).—Some Curiosities of Sleep.—One of the most refined and exquisite methods of torture is long continued deprivation of sleep. The demand for unconscious rest is so imperious that nature will accommodate itself to the most unfavorable surrounding conditions. Thus, in forced marches, regiments have been known to sleep while walking; men have slept soundly in the saddle; and persons will sometimes sleep during the din of battle. It is remarkable how noises to which we have been accustomed will fail to disturb our natural rest. Those who have been long habituated to the endless noise of a crowded city frequently find difficulty in sleeping in the oppressive stillness of the country. Prolonged exposure to intense cold induces excessive somnolence, and if this be induced, the sleep passes into stupor, the power of resistance to cold becomes rapidly diminished, and death is the inevitable result. Intense heat often produces drowsiness, but, as is well known, is not favorable to natural sleep….It is difficult to determine with exactness the phenomena of sleep that are absolutely physiological, and to separate those that are slightly abnormal. We can not assert, for example, that a dreamless sleep is the only normal condition of repose of the system; nor can we determine what dreams are due to previous trains of thought, or to such impressions from the external world received during sleep as are purely physiological, and what are due to abnormal nervous influence, disordered digestion, etc.

The most remarkable experiments upon the production of dreams of a definite character, by subjecting a person during sleep to peculiar influences, are those of Maury. The hallucinations produced in this way are called hypnagogic (from its derivation this term is properly applied only to phenomena observed at the instant when we fall asleep, or when we are imperfectly awakened, and not to the period of most perfect repose), and they occur when the subject is not in a condition favorable to sound sleep.

The experiments made by Maury upon himself are so curious and interesting that we quote the most striking of them in full.

First Observation.—I am tickled with a feather successively on the lips and inside of the nostrils. I dream that I am subjected to a horrible punishment, that a mask of pitch is applied to my face, and then roughly torn off, tearing the skin of the lip, the nose, and the face.

Second Observation.—A pair of pincers is held at a little distance from my ear, and rubbed with steel scissors. I dream that I hear the ringing of bells; this soon becomes a tocsin, and I imagine myself in the days of June, 1848. (The time of the French Revolution.)

Third Observation.—I am caused to inhale Cologne water. I dream I am in a perfumer's shop; the idea of perfumes doubtless awakens the idea of the East; I am in Cairo, in the shop of Jean Farina….

Fifth Observation.—I am slightly pinched on the nape of the neck. I dream that a blister is applied, which recalls to my mind a physician who had treated me in infancy.

Seventh Observation….The words Azar, Castor, Leonore, were pronounced in my ear; on awaking I recollected that I had heard the last two words, which I attributed to one of the persons who had conversed with me in my dream.—FLINT'S Physiology of Man.

The transition stage between the dream simple and the dream acted is witnessed in the spasmodic movements which a vivid dream produces in the limbs or person of the sleeper. The dreamer engages in a fierce struggle, and twitchings of his legs and arms indicate the feeble response of body to the promptings of mind removed from its wonted power over the frame. Even the dog, as he sleeps, apparently dreams of the chase, and gives vent to his sensations by the short, sharp bark, or sniffs the air, and starts in his slumber as if in response to the activity with which, in his dreaming, he is hurrying along after the object of pursuit….Persons have been known to swim for a considerable time in the somnambulistic state without waking at the termination of their journey; others have safely descended the shaft of a mine, while some have ascended steep cliffs, and have returned home in safety during a prolonged sleep vigil. (See p. 204.)—DR. ANDREW WILSON, F.R.S.E., What Dreams are Made of.

Sleep and Conscience.—Edward Everett Hale says: Never go to bed in any danger of being hungry. People are kept awake by hunger quite as much as by a bad conscience. Remembering that sleep is the essential force which starts the whole system, decline tea or coffee within the last six hours before going to bed. Avoid all mathematics or intricate study of any sort in the last six hours. This is the stuff dreams are made of, and hot heads, and the nuisances of waking hours. Keep your conscience clear. Remember that because the work of life is infinite, you can not do the whole of it in any limited period of time, and that therefore you may just as well leave off in one place as another.

The Art of Rising Early.—The proper time to rise is when sleep ends. Dozing should not be allowed. True sleep is the aggregate of sleeps, or is a state consisting in the sleeping or rest of all the several parts of the organism. Sometimes one and at other times another part of the body, as a whole, may be the least fatigued, and so the first to awake; or the most exhausted, and therefore the most difficult to arouse. The secret of good sleep is, the physiological conditions of rest being established, so to work and weary the several parts of the organism as to give them a proportionately equal need of rest at the same moment. To wake early, and feel ready to rise, a fair and equal start of the sleepers should be secured; and the wise self-manager should not allow a drowsy feeling of unconsciousness, or weary senses, or an exhausted muscular system, to beguile him into the folly of going to sleep again when once he has been aroused. After a few days of self-discipline, the man who resolves not to doze, that is, not to allow some sleepy part of his body to keep him in bed after his brain has once awakened, will find himself, without knowing why, an early riser.

INFLUENCE OF SUNLIGHT (p. 207).—Light is an essential element in producing the grand phenomena of life, though its action is ill understood. Where there is light there is life, and any deprivation of this principle is rapidly followed by disease of the animal frame, and the destruction of the mental faculties. We have proof of this in the squalor of those whose necessities compel them to labor in places to which the blessings of sunshine never penetrate, as in our coal mines, where men having everything necessary for health, except light, exhibit a singularly unhealthy appearance. The state of fatuity and wretchedness to which those individuals have been reduced, who have been subjected for years to incarceration in dark dungeons, may be referred to the same deprivation.— ROBERT HUNT, Poetry of Science.

Effect of Dungeon Life.—"You can not imagine, Mr. Kennan," said a condemned revolutionist to me in Siberia, "the misery of prolonged confinement in a casemate of the fortress under what are known as dungeon conditions. My casemate was sometimes cold, generally damp, and always gloomy. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I lay there in solitude, hearing no sound save that of the high-pitched, melancholy bells of the fortress cathedral, which slowly chimed the quarter hours, and which always seemed to say: 'Here thou liest—lie here still.' I had absolutely nothing to do except to pace my cell from corner to corner, and think. For a long time I used to talk to myself in a whisper; to repeat softly everything in the shape of literature that I could remember, and to compose speeches which, under certain imagined conditions, I would deliver; but I finally ceased to have energy enough to do even this, and used to sit for hours in a sort of stupor, in which, so far as I can now remember, I was not conscious of thinking at all. Before the end of the first year, I grew so weak, mentally and physically, that I began to forget words. I knew what ideas I desired to express, but some of the words that I needed had gone from me, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I could recover them. It seemed sometimes as if my own language were a strange one to me, or one which, from long disuse, I had forgotten. I greatly feared insanity, and my apprehension was increased by the fact that two or three of my comrades in cells on the same corridor were either insane or subject to hallucinations; and I was often roused at night and thrown into a violent chill of nervous excitement by their hysterical weeping, their cries to the guard to come and take away somebody, or something which they imagined they saw, or their groans and entreaties when, in cases of violent delirium, they were strapped to their beds by the gendarmes."—GEORGE KENNAN, in Russian State Prisoners, The Century, March, 1888.

THE GROWTH AND POWER OF POISON HABITS (p. 218).—In order to distinguish a poison stimulant from a harmless and nutritive substance, Nature has furnished us three infallible tests:

1. The first taste of every poison is either insipid or repulsive.

2. The persistent obtrusion of the noxious substance changes that aversion into a specific craving.

that craving is always followed by a depressing reaction….

One radical fallacy identifies the stimulant habit in all its disguises: its victims mistake a process of irritation for one of invigoration…. Sooner or later the tonic is sure to pall while the morbid craving remains, and forces its victims either to increase the quantity of the wonted stimulant, or else to resort to a stronger poison. A boy begins with ginger beer and ends in ginger rum; the medical "tonic" delusion progresses from malt extract to Mumford's Elixir; and the nicotine habit once introduced, the alcohol habit often follows. The tendency of every stimulant habit is toward a stronger tonic….We have found that the road to the rum shop is paved with "mild stimulants," and that every bottle of medical bitters is apt to get the vender a permanent customer. We have found that cider and mild ale lead to strong ale, to lager beer, and finally to rum, and the truth at last dawns upon us that the only safe, consistent, and effective plan is Total Abstinence from all Poisons.

…More than the hunger after bread, more than the frenzy of love or hatred, the poison hunger overpowers every other instinct, even the fear of death. Dr. Isaac Jennings has illustrated this by the following example: A clergyman of his acquaintance attempted to dissuade a young man of great promise from habits of intemperance. "Hear me first a few words," said the young man, "and then you may proceed. I am sensible that an indulgence in this habit will lead to the loss of property, the loss of reputation and domestic happiness, to premature death, and to the irretrievable loss of my immortal soul; and now, with all this conviction resting firmly on my mind and flashing over my conscience like lightning, if I still continue to drink, do you suppose anything you can say will deter me from the practice?"

…Ignorance is a chief cause of intemperance. The seductions of vice would not mislead so many of our young men if they could realize the significance of their mistake. There is still a lingering belief that, with due precaution against excess and adulteration, a dram drinker might "get ahead" of Nature, and, as it were, trick her out of some extra enjoyment. There is no hope of a radical reform till intelligent people have realized the fact that this "trick" is in every instance a losing game, entailing penalties which far outweigh the pleasures that the novice may mistake for enjoyments. For the depression of the vital energy increases with every repetition of the stimulating process, and in a year after the first dose all the "grateful and exhilarating tonics" of our professional poison venders can not restore the vigor, the courage, and the cheerfulness which the mere consciousness of perfect health imparts to the total abstainer. A great plurality of all beginners underrate the difficulty of controlling the cravings of a morbid appetite. They remember that their natural inclinations at first opposed, rather than encouraged, the indulgence; and they feel that at the present stage of its development they could abjure the passion without difficulty. But they overlook the fact that the moral power of resistance decreases with each repetition of the dose, and that the time will come when only the practical impossibility of procuring their wonted tipple will enable them to keep their pledge of total abstinence. It is true that, by the exercise of a constant self-restraint, a person of great will force may resist the progressive tendency of the poison habit and confine himself for years to a single cigar or a single bottle of wine per day….But the attempt to resist that bias will overtask the strength of most individuals. According to the allegory of the Grecian myth, the car of Bacchus was drawn by tigers; and it is a significant circumstance that war, famine, and pestilence have so often been the forerunners of veritable alcohol epidemics….The explanation is that, after the stimulant habit has once been initiated, every unusual depression of mental or physical vigor calls for an increased application of the accustomed method of relief….Nations who are addicted to the worship of a poison god will use his temple as a place of refuge from every calamity; and children whose petty ailments have been palliated with narcotics, wine, and cordials, will afterward be tempted to drown their greater sorrows in deeper draughts of the same nepenthe.—FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D., Remedies of Nature, Popular Science Monthly, October and November, 1883.

DANGERS FROM THE USE OF NARCOTICS.—It may seem a paradox, it is a truism, to say that in the value of narcotics lies their peril. Because they have such power for good, because the suffering which they alleviate is in its lighter forms so common, because neuralgia and sleeplessness are ailments as familiar to the present generation as gout, rheumatism, and catarrh were to our grandfathers, therefore the medicines which immediately relieve sleeplessness and neuralgic pain are among the most dangerous possessions, the most subtle temptations of civilized life. Every one of these drugs has, besides its instant and beneficial effect, other and injurious tendencies. The relief which it gives is purchased at a certain price; for, at each repetition of the dose, the immediate relief is lessened or rendered uncertain, while the mischievous influence is enhanced and aggravated; till, when the drug has become a necessity of life it has lost the greater part, if not the whole, of its value, and serves only to satisfy the need which itself alone has created….We read weekly of men and women poisoned by an overdose of some favorite sedative, burned to death or otherwise fatally injured, while insensible from self- administered ether or chloroform….The narcotist keeps chloroform or chloral always at hand, forgetful or ignorant that one sure effect of the first dose is to produce a semistupor more dangerous than actual somnolence. In that semistupor the patient is aware, or fancies, that the dose has failed. The pain that has induced a lady to hold a chloroformed handkerchief under her nostrils returns while her will and her judgment are half paralyzed. She takes the bottle from the table beside her bed, intending to pour an additional supply upon her handkerchief. The unsteady hand perhaps spills a quantity on the sheet, perhaps sinks with the unstoppered bottle under her nostrils, and in a few moments she has inhaled enough utterly to stupefy, if not to kill. The sleepless brain worker also feels that his usual dose of chloral has failed to bring sleep; he is not aware how completely it has stupefied the brain, to which it has not given rest. His judgment is gone, so is his steadiness of hand; and he pours out a second and too often a fatal dose….But the cases that end in a death terrible to the family, though probably involving little or no suffering to the victim himself, are by no means the worst. A life poisoned, paralyzed, rendered worthless for all the uses of intellectual, rational, we might almost say of human existence, is worse for the sufferer himself and for all around him than a quick and painless death; and for one such death there must be twenty, if not a hundred, instances of this worst death in life….The demoralization of the narcotist is not, like that of the drunkard, rapid, violent, and palpable; but gradual, insidious, perceptible at first only to close observers and intimate friends. Here and there we find a constitution upon which opium exerts few or none of its characteristic effects. Such cases are, of course, wholly exceptional; but their very existence is a danger to others, misleading them into the idea that they may dally with the tempter without falling under its yoke, or may fall under that yoke and find it a light one. I doubt, however, whether the most fortunate of its victims would encourage the latter idea; whether there be an opium eater who would not give a limb never to have known what opium slavery means….Besides, no one can be sure, or indeed reasonably hope, that the mischief will be confined to the individual victim. That the children of drunkards are often predisposed to insanity is notorious; that the children of habitual opium eaters inherit an unmistakable taint, whether in a diseased brain, in morbid cravings, or simply in a will too weak to resist temptation, is less notorious, but equally certain.—PERCY GREG, Narcotics and Stimulants, Contemporary Review.

Thus also in America scarcely a week passes but we see announced in the public prints deaths or suicides resulting from the use of narcotics. Now, it is from tobacco: A Yale College student dies from excessive smoking; another student in the same college, and as a result of the same habit, commits suicide; a third young man is found dead in his bed in New York, from heart disease induced by cigarettes; and so, month by month, and year by year, grows in rapid increase the list of tobacco deaths.—Or, again, it is from opium. A Harvard student with two of his college companions in search of a new sensation, tries opium smoking one fatal night and dies before morning; a woman in Ohio, belonging to a prominent family, dies at the age of thirty-three years, from an overdose of morphine, her body covered with hypodermic scars; another, once the respected wife of a Baptist clergyman, becomes a morphine drunkard, drifts, step by step, into a Central New York Almshouse, and there hangs herself; a third, young, accomplished, and wealthy, falls first a victim to the morphine habit, then to opium smoking, finally becomes the frequenter of a New York opium joint, and so is lost forever to home, friends, and respectability.— Occasionally it is cocaine, as in the case of the Chicago physician, who, for the purposes of investigation, experiments with this new drug upon himself, his wife, and finally upon his innocent children; the entire family being found unconscious from the effects of the subtle narcotic. These are but solitary instances in an appallingly long list of similar cases, most of which have occurred within the last two years (1887-'88).

Cigarette Smoking is chargeable with a growing demoralization and mortality among boys and young men. It is no uncommon sight to see lads of ten years old and under, with the irresponsibility of ignorant childhood, puffing the dangerous cigarette, and thus undermining health and intellect at the very outset of useful existence. Even when told of the near and remote perils thus incurred, they scarcely listen, for do not they see their elders smoke and prosper?—Most of them do not understand that there is more danger to the young than to the old in the tobacco habit, more danger to some constitutions than to others, and more danger in the cigarette than even in the pipe or the cigar. Pause a moment to consider it, boys, when you are tempted to light the clean-looking, paper-covered roll and place it in your mouth. Think of the heated smoke irritating the delicate membrane in your throat, dulling your brain, and vitiating the blood which should be bounding fresh and pure through your veins. Think of the many filthy and diseased mouths from which have been cast away the tobacco refuse, picked up in streets and public places to reappear in the "Cheap and Popular Brand" which looks to you so innocent and so attractive. It is astonishing, indeed, how an otherwise cleanly boy will consent to defile himself with these vile abominations. And yet, I have known lads who—not always with perfect politeness—would fastidiously refuse "hash" at their mother's breakfast table, but who would shortly afterward serenely place one of these unknowable compounds between their lips and walk away with the air of superior manhood!

Of Chloral Hydrate, Dr. Fothergill remarks: "When this was announced with a flourish of trumpets as a perfectly innocuous narcotic, the sleepless folk hailed its advent with eager acclamation. But a little experience soon demonstrated that the innocuous, harmless drug was far from the boon it was proclaimed. In fact, the impression of its harmlessness was the outcome of ignorance of its properties. Death after death, even among medical men themselves, as well as nonprofessional persons, have already resulted from the use, or rather misuse, of this narcotic agent."

The Bromides (of Soda or Potash), also, should be used with caution, and only on the prescription of a conscientious physician. "The bromide of potash," says Percy Greg, "is claimed not to produce sleep by stupefaction, like chloral or opium, but, at least in small doses, to allay the nervous irritability which is often the sole cause of sleeplessness. But in larger quantities and in its ultimate effects, it is scarcely less to be dreaded than chloral." Overdoses of the bromides will produce among other evil effects a peculiar eruption upon the face, which, though generally temporary, is liable to reappear from time to time under certain conditions of the system, and especially upon a subsequent dose, however dilute.

Absinthe is a compound of absinthium (the essence of wormwood), various aromatic oils, and alcohol. Absinthium, taken in small doses, induces trembling, stupor, and insensibility; in larger doses, epilepsy. When, therefore, this dangerous essence is added to alcohol, it strengthens its influence to specific disease. Absinthe drinking is recognized in France as such a serious vice that it has been officially prohibited in the army and navy.

Hasheesh is a syrup prepared from the leaves and flowers of Indian Hemp. Though its use in this country is comparatively small, instances are not unknown in which reckless or curious persons have fatally experimented with it. As a medicine, it is in limited use, and with results not always satisfactory. It acts in a peculiar manner upon the nervous centers, occasioning that strange condition of the nervous system called catalepsy, in which the limbs of the unconscious patient remain stationary in whatever position they may be placed. After an average dose of hasheesh, the subject becomes the helpless victim of rapidly shifting ideas, a prominent characteristic of which is an entire loss of judgment as to time and place. A larger dose produces hallucinations and delirium, with that distressing sensation of falling through endless space which is induced in some people by opium. [Footnote: In an article entitled "An Overdose of Hasheesh" (Popular Science Monthly, February, 1884), Miss MARY A. HUNGERFORD gives a vivid description of a painful experience with this drug, some portion of which is as follows:

"Being one of the grand army of sufferers from headache, I took, last summer, by order of my physician, three small daily doses of hasheesh in the hope of holding my intimate enemy in check….I grew to regard the drug as a harmless medicine, and one day, when I was assured by some familiar symptoms that my headache was about to assume an aggravated form, I took a larger quantity than had been prescribed. Twenty minutes later I was seized with a strange sinking or faintness which gave my family so much alarm that they telephoned at once for the doctor.

"…One terrible reality—I can hardly term it a fancy even now—that came to me again and again, was so painful that it must, I fear, always be a vividly remembered agony….I died, as I believed, although by a strange double consciousness I knew that I should again reanimate the body I had left. In leaving it I did not soar away, as one delights to think of the freed spirits soaring….I sank, an intangible, impalpable shape, through the bed, the floors, the cellar, the earth, down, down, down! Like a fragment of glass dropping through the ocean, I dropped uninterruptedly through the earth and its atmosphere, and then fell on and on forever….As time went on, and my dropping through space continued, I became filled with the most profound loneliness, and a desperate fear took hold of me that I should be thus alone for evermore, and fall and fall eternally….There was, it seemed to me, a forgotten text which, if remembered, would be the spell to stop my fatal falling. I sought in my memory for it, I prayed to recall it, I fought for it madly, wrestling against the terrible fate which seemed to withhold it. Single words of it came to me in disconnected mockery, but erased themselves instantaneously. Mentally, I writhed in such hopeless agony that, in thinking of it, I wonder I could have borne such excess of emotion and lived….I began, then, without having reached any goal, to ascend. As I rose, a great and terrible voice from a vast distance pronounced my doom: 'Fall, fall, fall, to rise again in hopeless misery, and sink again in lonely agony forever.' …Then ensued a wild and terrible commingling of unsyllabled sounds, so unearthly that it is not in the power of language to fitly describe them. It was something like a mighty Niagara of shrieks and groans, combined with the fearful din and crash of thousands of battles and the thunderous roar of a stormy sea….I fought my upward way in an agony which resembled nothing so much as the terrible moment when, from strangling or suffocation, all the forces of life struggle against death, and wrestle madly for another breath. In place of the woeful sounds now reigned a deadly stillness, broken only at long but regular intervals by a loud report, as if a cannon, louder than any I ever heard on earth, were discharged at my side, almost shot into me, I might say, for the sound appeared to rend me from head to foot, and then to die away into the dark chaos about me in strange, shuddering reverberations. Even in the misery of my ascending I was filled with a dread expectancy of the cruel sound. It gave me a feeling of acute physical torture, with a lingering intensity that bodily suffering could not have. It was repeated an incredible number of times, and always with the same suffering and shock to me. At last the sound came oftener, but with less force, and I seemed again nearing the shores of time. Dimly in the far distance I saw the room I had left, myself lying still and deathlike upon the bed, and the friends watching me….Then, silently and invisibly I floated into the room, and was one with myself again.

"…'She is conscious now,' I heard one of the doctors say, and he gently lifted the lids of my eyes and looked into them. I tried my best to throw all the intelligence I could into them, and returned his look with one of recognition. But, even with my eyes fixed on his, I felt myself going again in spite of my craving to stay. I longed to implore the doctor to save me, to keep me from the unutterable anguish of falling into the vastness and vagueness of that shadowy sea of nothingness again. I clasped my hands in wild entreaty; I was shaken by horrible convulsions—so, at least, it seemed to me at the time—but, beyond a slight quivering of the fingers, no movement was discernible by the others….For five hours I remained in the same condition—short intervals of half-consciousness and then long lapses into the agonizing experiences I have described….Coming out of the last trance, I discovered that the measured rending report like the discharge of a cannon, which attended my upward way, was the throbbing of my own heart."]

Concerning all these and other narcotics, it should never be forgotten that they are true poisons, sold with the mark of skull and crossbones, useful, like strychnine and henbane, in the hands of a skillful physician, but fraught with deadly danger when otherwise employed. Their private use is never safe. The weak and nervous invalid, who can not by hygienic means build up new strength, need never hope to gain it by surreptitiously indulging in popular narcotics. Instead, he will soon discover that he has but added to his list of ills a new and fatal one.—E. B. S.

THE SPECIAL SENSES.

AN EDUCATED SENSE OF TOUCH (p. 230).—Laura Dewey Bridgman, teacher in the Perkins Institute for the Blind, South Boston, lost her sight, hearing, and sense of smell, when she was two years of age. At the age of eight years she was taken to the institution where she yet remains. At this time, by following her mother around the house she had become familiar with home appointments, and by feeling her mother's hands and arms had also learned to sew and knit. When she first became an inmate of the Perkins Institute, she was bewildered by her strange surroundings, but after she had become used to place and people, through her one and only sense, her education was carefully begun. Through indomitable effort on the part of her preceptor, she was taught to write, read, and spell, by means of her fingers, and thus to exchange sentiments with her teachers and with others skilled in the mysterious language of the blind and the mute. She is now as proficient in the ordinary branches of learning as is the average person, possessed of all the senses. Her studies include geography, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, history, and philosophy. She makes her own clothing, can run a sewing machine, and observes great neatness in her dress and the arrangements of her room. Her character is religious, and she has great success as a teacher. Not long since, she celebrated, on the same day, her fifty-eighth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of her entrance to the Perkins Institute. During her earlier years, it was her practice to keep a journal, and she now has about forty manuscript books of her own making. She has also written three autobiographical sketches, several poems, and is an accomplished correspondent. When Miss Bridgman expresses pleasure, she clasps her hands and smiles. So keen and refined are her sensibilities, that it is said she can, in a small way, appreciate the beauty of music by means of the sound vibrations on the floor.—MRS. GEORGE ARCHIBALD. (Laura D. Bridgman died in 1889.)

THE NOSE (p. 232).—The Anatomy of the Nose.—Probably most of us look upon the nose as a double hole in the head, by which we get, with more or less acuteness, a sense of smell, and through which we occasionally breathe. The intricate mechanism, and the skillful adaptation of means to end, which, in common with the other organs of special sense, it exhibits, naturally do not reveal themselves to any but the students of anatomy and physiology. Its fourteen bones are probably better hidden than any other fourteen bones of the body, and assist in converting what would otherwise be a mere channel of communication, into a series of cavities designed and adapted for particular purposes. The arch of four bones which forms the bridge of the nose, and which is of such strength as to enable the gymnast of the circus to perform the feat of supporting with it a man on a ladder, is pieced on with cartilage to form the nostrils, through which the nose communicates with the outer air. Similar openings behind connect it with the upper and posterior parts of the mouth. The space between these anterior and posterior openings makes a large chamber, divided by a vertical wall into halves, each of which is still further separated into three irregular cavities by three bones, called spongy, from the porosity and delicacy of their texture. The ceiling of these chambers is formed by a bone of the thinness of paper, upon which lies the front part of the brain,—a fact the Egyptians made use of in embalming their corpses, easily crushing this bone, and extracting the brain through the nostrils. This bone is called cribriform (sieve-like), because it is perforated by many minute holes, through which, from the olfactory bulbs (specialized parts of the brain in which is resident the capacity of smell) that rest on its upper surface, issue the delicate filaments of the olfactory nerves, to spread themselves over the lining membrane of the two upper spongy bones. It is in the upper chambers of the nose, therefore, that the function of smell is performed; the nerves that supply the lower spongy bone being entirely unconnected with the organs of smell. Over these latter, however, sweep in and out the currents of air when the act of respiration is properly carried out, and it is these that are especially concerned in its abnormal performance. Usually but a very little of the volume of air that traverses the lower chamber of the nose has any influence upon its upper regions; and therefore, when our attention is attracted by an odor, we sniff, in order to bring a larger quantity of air into contact with the higher parts of the nose, or olfactory cavities, where odors are perceived.

But the half has not been told of the anatomical and physiological arrangements of the nose. By minute openings its chambers have communication with many other parts of the head,—with the hollow that forms the greater part of the cheek bone; with the eye by a minute spout that carries off the lachrymal secretion, unless the tears are so abundant as to roll down the cheeks; with the front of the roof of the mouth; with the abundant cells of the bone that makes the forehead, and the congestion of whose lining membrane probably accounts for the severe headache that so often accompanies and aggravates a "cold in the head." The gateway to the inner air passages, its abundant surfaces raise the air inspired to the temperature of the body, supply it with the moisture it lacks, and sift from it more or less of the mechanical impurities with which the atmosphere of our houses and shops is laden.—MAURICE D. CLARKE, M.D., Popular Science News, April, 1888.

Smell Necessary to Taste.—What we are in the habit of calling a "taste," is in most cases a compound of smell, taste, temperature, and touch—these four sensations ranking in gastronomic importance in the order in which they are here named….Amusing experiments may be made, showing that without the sense of smell it is commonly quite impossible to distinguish between different articles of food and drink. Blindfold a person and make him clasp his nose tightly, then put successively into his mouth small pieces of beef, mutton, veal, and pork, and it is safe to predict that he will not be able to tell one morsel from another. The same result will be obtained with chicken, turkey, and duck; with pieces of almond, walnut, and hazel-nut; with slices of apple, peach, and pear; or with different kinds of cheese, if care be taken that such kinds are chosen as do not, by their peculiar composition, betray their identity through the nerves of touch in the mouth. To hold an article of food under the nose at table would be justly considered a breach of etiquette. But there is a second way of smelling, of which most people are quite unconscious, viz., by exhaling through the nose while eating and drinking….It is well known that only a small portion of the mucous membrane which lines the nostrils is the seat of the endings of the nerves of smell. In ordinary expiration, the air does not touch this olfactory region, but by a special effort it can be turned into that direction….Instinct teaches most persons while eating to guide the air, impregnated with the fragrance of the food, to a part of the nostrils different from that used during ordinary exhalation; but, being unaccustomed to psychologic analysis of their sensations, they remain quite unconscious of this proceeding, and are, indeed, in the habit of confusing their sensations of taste, smell, touch, and temperature in a most absurd manner….

In trying to ascertain by experiment how far smell, touch, and temperature enter into this compound sensation, popularly known as "taste," it is best to make use of the pungent condiments. Mustard and horse-radish, for example, have little or no taste, but reserve their pungent effect for the mucous membrane of the nose during expiration. It is an advantage to know this, for if care is taken to breathe only through the mouth, we need no longer prepare to shed tears every time we help ourselves to the mustard. The pungent quality of mustard, the fiery quality of ginger, and the cool sensation in the mouth after eating peppermint, are due to the nerves of touch and temperature, which are commonly classed as one sense, though they are quite as distinct sensations as sight and hearing, or taste and smell….

There are two ways in which the effort to extract all its fragrance from a morsel of food confers a benefit.

(1.) It is necessary to keep the morsel in the mouth as long as possible. Now the habit thus formed of eating very slowly is of the utmost importance, for if farinaceous articles of food are swallowed before the saliva has had time to act on them, they are little better than so much waste material taken into the system; and if meat is not thoroughly masticated, the stomach is overloaded with work which should have been done by the teeth; the result, in either case, is dyspepsia. It has been suggested that Mr. Gladstone owes his remarkable physical vigor to certain rules for chewing food, which he adopted in 1848, and to which he has adhered ever since. "He had always," we are told, "paid great attention to the requirements of Nature, but he then laid down as a rule for his children that thirty-two bites should be given to each mouthful of meat, and a somewhat lesser number to bread, fish, etc."

(2.) Besides this indirect advantage resulting from the effort to get at the fragrant odors of food, there is a still more remarkable direct advantage. It is one of the most curious psychologic facts that odors exert a strong influence on our system, either exhilarating or depressing. While an unpleasant odor may cause a person to faint, the fumes of the smelling bottle will restore him to consciousness. The magic and value of gastronomic odors lies in this, that they stimulate the flow of saliva and other alimentary juices, thus making sure that the food eaten will be thoroughly utilized in renovating the system.—HENRY T. FINCK, in "The Gastronomic Value of Odors." HYGIENE OF THE EAR (p. 236).—Never Box a Child's Ear.—Children and grown persons alike may be entirely deafened by falls or heavy blows upon the head. Boxing the ears produces a similar effect, though more slowly and in less degree, and tends to dull the sensibility of the nerve, even if it does not hurt the membrane. I knew a youth who died from a terrible disease of the ear. There had been a discharge from it since he was a child. Of course his hearing had been dull; and his father had often boxed his ear for inattention! Most likely that boxing on the ear, diseased as it was, had much to do with his death. And this brings me to the second point. Children should never be blamed for being inattentive, until it has been found out whether they are not a little deaf. This is easily done by placing them at a few yards' distance, and trying whether they can understand what is said to them in a rather low tone of voice. Each ear should be tried, while the other is stopped by the finger. Three things should be remembered here: 1. That slight degrees of deafness, often lasting only for a time, are very common among children, especially during or after colds. 2. That a slight deafness, which does not prevent a person from hearing when he is expecting to be spoken to, will make him very dull to what he is not expecting. 3. That there is a kind of deafness in which a person can hear pretty well while listening, but is really very hard of hearing when not listening.

Avoid Direct Draughts in the Ear.—There are some exposures especially to be guarded against. One is sitting or driving with the ear exposed to a side wind. Deafness has also been known to come from letting rain or sleet drive into the ear.

Do not Remove the Earwax.—It ought to be understood that the passage of the ear does not require cleaning by us. Nature undertakes that task, and, in the healthy state, fulfills it perfectly. Her means for cleansing the ear is the wax. Perhaps the reader has never wondered what becomes of the earwax. I will tell him. It dries up into thin fine scales, and these peel off, one by one, from the surface of the passage, and fall out imperceptibly, leaving behind them a perfectly clean, smooth surface. In health the passage of the ear is never dirty; but, if we attempt to clean it, we infallibly make it so. Washing the ear out frequently with soap and water keeps the wax moist when it ought to become dry and scaly, increases its quantity unduly, and makes it absorb the dust with which the air always abounds. But the most hurtful thing is introducing the corner of the towel, screwed up, and twisting it round. This does more harm to ears than all other mistakes together. It drives down the wax upon the membrane, much more than it gets it out. But this plan does much more mischief than merely pressing down the wax. It irritates the passage, and makes it cast off small flakes of skin, which dry up, and become extremely hard, and these also are pressed down upon the membrane. Often it is not only deafness which ensues, but pain and inflammation, and then matter is formed which the hard mass prevents from escaping, and the membrane becomes permanently diseased.

The Eustachian Tube.—The use of this tube is twofold. First, it supplies the drum with air, and keeps the membrane exactly balanced, and free to move, with equal air pressure on each side; and, secondly, it carries off any fluid which may be in the drum, and prevents it from being choked by its own moisture. It is not always open, however, but is opened during the act of swallowing, by a little muscle which is attached to it just as it reaches the throat. Most persons can distinctly feel that this is the case, by gently closing the nose and swallowing, when a distinct sensation is felt in the ears. This sensation is due to a little air being drawn out of the ears through the open tube during swallowing; and it lasts for a few minutes, unless the air is again restored by swallowing with the nose unclosed, which allows for the moment a free communication between the ear and the throat. We thus see a reason for the tube being closed. If it were always open, all the sounds produced in the throat would pass directly into the drum of the ear, and totally confuse us. We should hear every breath, and live in a constant bewilderment of internal sounds. At the same time the closure, being but a light contact of the walls of the tube, easily allows a slight escape of air from the drum, and thus not only facilitates and regulates the oscillations of the air before the vibrating membrane, but provides a safety valve, to a certain extent, against the injurious influence of loud sounds.

The chief use of the Eustachian tube is to allow a free interchange of air between the ear and the throat, and it is very important that its use in this respect should be understood. Persons who go down in diving bells soon begin to feel a great pressure in the ears, and, if the depth is great, the feeling becomes extremely painful. This arises from the fact that in the diving bell the pressure of the air is very much increased, in order to balance the weight of the water above; and thus it presses with great force upon the membrane of the drum, which, if the Eustachian tube has been kept closed, has only the ordinary uncompressed air on the inner side to sustain it. It is therefore forced inward and put upon the stretch, and might be even broken. Many cases, indeed, have occurred of injury to the ear, producing permanent deafness, from descents in diving bells, undertaken by persons ignorant of the way in which the ear is made; though the simple precaution of frequent swallowing suffices to ward off all mischief. For, if the Eustachian tube is thus opened, again and again, as the pressure of the outside air increases, the same compressed air that exists outside passes also into the inside of the drum, and the membrane is equally pressed upon from both sides by the air, and so is free from strain. The same precaution is necessary in ascending lofty mountains.— DR. JAMES HINTON.

THE COLORED CURTAIN IN THE EYE (p. 238).—This ring-like curtain in the eye, of gray, green, bluish-green, brown, and other colors, is one among the very many remarkable contrivances of the organic world. The eye can not bear the entrance of too much light, and the colored curtain so regulates its own movements as to serve this requirement. The dark circular aperture in the center, known as the pupil, is consequently forever altering in size; on a bright, sunshiny day, out in the open, it may be only the size of a pin's head, but at night, when there is no light stronger than starlight, it is even bigger than a pea. The eye curtain is fixed at its outer edge, leaving the inner edge to contract or expand, which it does automatically and quite independent of the will, ever preserving its circular outline. Its movements may be watched in a variety of ways, some of which we shall describe.

The common way of watching the movements of the iris is to regard it closely in a looking-glass while the amount of light entering the eyes is varied. Place yourself before a looking-glass and with your face to the window. Probably the iris will be expanded, and there will only be a very small opening or pupil in the center. Now shut one eye suddenly, while narrowly watching the other in the glass all the time. At the moment the light is cut off from one eye, the iris of the other contracts or is drawn up so as to enlarge the pupil. This shows that there is a remarkable interdependence between the curtains of the two eyes, as well as that they are affected by variations in the quantity of light falling on them.

Perhaps one of the most interesting ways of watching the movements of these sympathetic eye curtains is one which may be followed while you are out walking on the street some dark winter night. A gas lamp seen at a distance is, comparatively speaking, a point of light, with bars of light emanating from it in many directions. These bars, which give the peculiar spoked appearance to a star, are probably formed by optical defects of the lens within the eye, or by the tear fluid on the exterior surface of the eye, or by a combination of all these causes. Be that as it may, the lengths of the spokes of light are limited by the inner margin of the eye curtain; if the curtain be drawn up, then the spokes are long; if the curtain be let down, or, in other words, if the pupil be very small and contracted, then one can not see any spokes at all. Hence, as I look at a distant gaslight, with its radiating golden spokes, I am looking at something which will give me a sure indication of any movements of the eye curtains. I strike a match and allow its light to fall into the eyes; the spokes of the distant gas lamp have retreated into the point of flame as if by magic; as I take the burning match away from before my eyes, the spokes of the gas-lamp venture forth again. The experiment may be utilized to see how much light is required to move the window curtains of the eyes. Suppose you are walking toward two gas lamps, A and B; B about fifty yards behind A. If you steadfastly look at B and at the golden spokes apparently issuing from it, you may make these spokes a test of how soon the light of A will move your iris. As you gradually approach A, you come at last to a position where its light is strong enough to make the spokes of B begin to shorten; a little nearer still and they vanish altogether. I have found that about a third of the light which is competent to contract the pupil very markedly will serve to commence its movement.—WILLIAM ACKROYD.

PURKINJE'S FIGURES (p. 222).—Stand in a dark room with a lighted candle in hand. Shutting the left, hold the candle very near the right eye, within three or four inches, obliquely outward and forward, so that the light shall strongly illuminate the retina. Now move the light about gently, upward, downward, back and forth, while you gaze intently on the wall opposite. Presently the field of view becomes dark from the intense impression of the light, and then, as you move the light about, there appears projected on the wall and covering its whole surface, a shadowy, ghost-like image, like a branching, leafless tree, or like a great bodiless spider with many branching legs. What is it? It is an exact but enlarged image of the blood vessels of the retina. These come in at the entrance of the optic nerve, ramify in the middle layer, and therefore in the strong light cast their shadows on the bacillary layer of the retina. The impression of these shadows is projected outward into the field of view, and seen there as an enlarged shadowy image. These have been called Purkinje's Figures, from the discoverer.—PROF. JOSEPH LE CONTE, in Sight.