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Between the closing of the chamber door at night and its opening in the morning, a third of human life passes away, and upon the manner of its employment the physical, mental, and moral character of man largely depends. If so considerable a portion of existence is spent in breathing an impure air, bodily disease and a premature death will inevitably result; to this subject the first part of the book is devoted. If during this third of life improper habits are cultivated, or there is an intemperate indulgence in the propensities of our nature, moral contam- ination and physical deterioration follow. If by the above or other causes a full propor- tion of sound and regular sleep is prevented, the mind sooner or later fails of its elasticity, its vigor, PREFACE. and its life, to be followed by nervousness, weak- ness of intellect, softening of the brain, insanity, and death. The following pages are intended to urge the practical and individual application of these truths on the part of husbands, wives, and children ; hence every intelligent reader has a personal in- terest in ascertaining the most healthful method of filling up a portion of his existence which has such important bearings, — in acquainting him- self with "THE HYGIENE OF THE NIGHT." In addition to the ventilation of chambers and securing abundant healthful sleep, it was thought desirable to make the book more thoroughly prac- tical and extensively useful by discussing other topics connected with the night-time of life, — subjects in which every intelligent and thought- ful reader will feel a special, personal interest. SUBJECTS TREATED. — •— PAOl. Blbbpinq with thb Old 5 n. Deadly Nature of Bad Air 9 m. Pure Slekpino Rooms I9 IV. Sleeping in Prisons 43 V. Vitiated Chambers 55 VI. Bodily Emanations 69 VII. Night Lodgings in Cities 81 VIII. Sleeping with Others 109 IX. Indulgences op the Night 119 X. Business and Sound Sleep 130 1 iv SUBJECTS TREATED. ZI« tAQn. NOrsino Children at Night 136 XII. Morning Debilities 1*1 XUL Bad Night Habits 347 XIV. Ventilating Chambers 199 XV. Ventilation and Housu Warming 229 XVI. Ventilation and Longevity 248 XVII. The Breath op Life 277 XVIIL Sleeping with Consumptives 285 XIX. Poisonous Chambers 295 • • XX. Nervousness, Debilities, etc 326 XXI. Private Considerations 333 XXII. Books on Physiology, Manhood, Marriage, etc., i their False Teachings, their Peunicious Ef- fects, AND their Corrupting Tendencies , 341 SLEEP. • *• SLEEPING WITH THE OLD. On a beautiful September morning in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, a note was found on the author's table in a hand- writing which was immediately recognized as that of a wife and mother of high culture, in behalf of a young sister, whom she had hoped would have grown up as healthful, as beautiful, and as accomplished as herself; but the lovely blossom seemed to be fading in its unfolding, and the communication was a his- tory of the case, intended to give the physi- cian an idea of its nature and its needs. 1* 6 SLEEP. " Baby Bell, as we all grew up to call her, might have been an exquisite model for a baby llebc ; so rounded, so rosy, so full of vivacity and health I As I recall her child- ish form now, after the lapse of years. I can imagine nothing more beautiful in mortal shape. Her fair head was covered with sun- ny curls which dropped apon white and dim- pled shoulders. She was of the Saxon type, her eyes of the most limpid blue, 'roses were her cheeks, and a rose her mouth.' Until six years old, she retained all her health and beauty, when her system began slowly to undergo a change. Her limbs lost their roundness, her cheek its dainty bloom. Was it not strange ? She seemed well ; but as the next six years wore on, each succeed- ing day stole something of her vitality, which changed the once ruddy and healthful child into a puny, pallid, nervous girl. Yet she had no constitutional ailment; no hereditary dis- ease ever developed itself. She never had a serious illness, and yet she was always ailing. She was troubled with nervous headaches, so unnatural to a child, whose perfect organism sliould have made her unconscious of the possession of nerves. THE FAr.WG CHILD. "She was my little sister, my darling lit- tle sister. I saw her at intervals during the lapse of six or seven years, and was always troubled by the unagreeable changes which each succeeding year wrought in her person. Those who were in the habit of seeing her daily, laughed at my expressed fears that her health was declining ; they said : * She was growing, that was all.' Growing! Yes! but so slowly, that at twelve years she was not taller than the generality of children at ten, and not so broad across the chest as an or- dinary child at five; and her little puny arms, how slender they were; the skin on her temples was transparent. Growing ! Yes ! other children were 'growing' and developing likewise. Chubby faces and limbs are cha- racteristic of childhood. Slender and delicate forms in children are untrue to nature, there- fore there must be a cause for them. The constant exercise and generous appetite of a shild should secure to it well-developed mus sles and an abundance of pure blood. When, therefore, the venous fluid seems through the fikjA to be no more than mere lymph, and '^ limbs evince no muscle at all, there must SLEEP. be a cause, and oaght to be a remedy. " What id it?" Special inquiry elicited the fact, that at the close of the fifth year, this promising child became possessed with the idea that she must sleep with an aged relative, and in failing health. Her whim was gratified. Time passed imperceptibly. The practice had become a habit which parental indulgence had not the firmness to break up. All suggestions that the evident failing in health and vigor and comeliness in the once beautiful child, was the result of sleeping in the same bed with an old person, who was evidently now sink- ing into the grave with an incurable disease, or rather a complication of ails, were re- garded with indifference, and the child pined and withered away like a flower without J water. -. ' . - ' " ' ""' ' *' ''' ■'■'' ': Authentic history records the following mcumful narration: rJ5f BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. 9 "Lord Clive, while a colonel in the British Army, commenced his career as founder of the British empire in India. Full of honors and wealth, he returned to England ; but being defeated in getting into Parliament, in seven- teen hundred and fifty -five, sailed again un- der the King's command for India, the Com- pany appointing him to the governorship of Port St. David. But the very day he stepped into the gubernatorial chair at Madras, the Bengal Nabob took Calcutta. Then came that chapter of unheard of cruelty, familiar to every child who has learned to read his story- books. The tragedy of the Black Hole oc- curred in seventeen hundred and fifty-six. The dungeon was twenty feet square. The little garrison thought it all a joke when they were ordered to go in : but to refuse was to die, for Surajahul Dowlak's orders must be obeyed; prolonged suffering was better than instant death ; they entered I one hundred and thirty- six in all. The door was closed, the small aperture admitted neither light nor air. When they began to exchange breaths the startling truth burst upon them. The air already was almost putrid' they shrieked, they yelled in 10 SLEEP. mortal agony ; they screamed for water, and then killed each other over the cup which was passed through the grating. While the poor prisoners were biting and squeezing each other's life away, gasping for air, for water, for any thing that would relieve them of their agony, the jailers laughed and danced in pure delight. Holmeil, the highest in rank, offered the jailer heavy bribes; but no, the Nabob was sleeping, and no one dared to wake him. In the morning, when the debauch was slept away, he ordered the dungeon-door to be opened, and out staggered twenty -three swollen, distorted living corpses! One hundred and twenty-three were piled up, a putrefying mass of men ; all shapes and forms were represented in the death-struggle. The English woman who survived was sent to the harem of the Prince of Moorshebadad. Holmeil was saved and tells the tale. The dead were burned on the spot, but the harrowing picture did not move in the least the granite disposition of the human tiger. The horrible deed reached Olive, and the celebrated battle of Plassey showed the inhuman Nabob that it was a fooUhardy thing to trifle with the feelings of DEADLY AIB. 11 Englishmen. The soldiers fought like bull- dogs; revenge stimulated them, and the Na- bob's array of sixty thousand strong was broken like a reed. Clive lost but twenty- two men." At about four o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, in the latter part of August, eighteen hundred and sixty, the following distressing occurrence took place in Federal street, Alle- gheny City, Pennsylvania : "Alfred Bottles, William his brother, and James Vance, were engaged in digging a well in the rear of the beer-hall of Herman Hendal, corner of Federal street and Center alley, on a lot owned by John Chislett, Esq., of the Alle- gheny Cemetery, from whom Hendal had leased. The object was to drain a privy- vault, and the well was dug thirteen feet deep close to the vault. Alfred Bottles, after four o'clock, descended into the well by a ladder, and made a hole in the vault, six feet from the ground, to drain off the contents. When he thought the hole «ras through, he stooped to look, when the foul ftir in the vault came out, suffocated him, and 12 SLEEP. he fell from the ladder to the bottom of the well, where the filth poured down upon him. Vance, seeing him fall, waited a few moments and followed him, but was also overcome by '; the foul gas, and fell to the bottom. William Bottles next went down to the assistance of the others, and shared the same fate. By this time there was a foot or more of liquid in the well, ; d those undermost, Alfred Bottles and Vance, were partially covered with it. At this juncture, John Taggart, gardener for Mr. Wilson, at Shousetown lane, who was in a store on Federal street receiving pay for some articles he had sold, heard of the accident and hastening to the spot, jumped into the well, to save, if possible, the lives of the three suf- ferers. Wm. Bottles had then been in the well some five minutes. Mr. Taggart was overcome, in like manner with the rest, by the gas, and fell over Wm. Bottles, forcing his head partially under the fluid in the well. " The bystanders were paralyzed, and near- ly all were afraid to give any assistance. But tt young German, named William Brown, about twenty-five years of age, fearless of the con- sequences, volunteered to go down. A rope T? NATIONAL HOTEL DISEASE. 13 was fastened around his waist and with an- ther in his hand, he was let down in the well, and fastening a rope around the body of Tag- gart, he was drawn up. Brown descended a second, third and fourth time, and thus the four bodies were brought to the surflice. Al- fred Bottles and James Vance were dead when taken out, and Taggart expired soon after being carried in a house adjacent. William Bottles was taken to his residence and re- covered." ' In the early part of the yt^ar eighteen hun- dred and fifty-seven, the inmates of the Na- tional Hotel in Washington Cit^, the capftal of the United States of America, were filled with, consternation at the fact that several of their number were taken ill. in and about the same time. Eeports were immediately circulated, that the symptoms were uniform and were those which ordinarily attend arsenical poison, 10 wit, severe griping pains, uncontrollable diarrhea, inward "burning" sensations, and the like. Persons were attacked under a great 2 14 SLEEP. variety of circumstances. Some were habitues of the Hotel ; others ate there, but slept -else- where. Some neither ate nor slept there, but passed several hours of each day in the rooms on the ground-floor. Some were attacked who had slept there but a single night A traveler ate a single dinner, and came near dying. Some persons died in a few days, others lingered for months and then died. Some lingered for years without recovering their wonted energy of mind and vigor of body. Some went to Europe in the hope of wearmg the poison out of their systems, and returned the next year with but little of the desired improvement. Some of the first phy- sicians in the country gave their convictions in the public presses, that there could be no remaining doubt that all was the result of some mineral poison, in some way introduced into the food. But two simple facts were tes- tified to on an ofl&cial investigation, and of their truth there was not the shadow of a doubt, DEADLY EMANATIONS. 15 and could not be denied. Persons were at- tacked who never ate an atom or drank a drop on the premises. Second, not a single case occurred in any family living across the streets which bounded the Hotel, and where none of the members of which had visited the build- ing. A third fact needed no proof, that persons, especially some of the ladies who had been living at the Hotel for weeks, and occupied rooms in it during the time, were not affected at all, and yet they came down to the common table day after day. i ' ^v.j»r On official inquiry, it was ascertained by ocular demonstration, that a large sewer of the city opened into the cellar of the Hotel, and also, that the privies under the same roof were in an ill condition, one of them being so full, that when a person stepped on the floor of it, the matter beneath spirted up between the joinings of the boards. t . , > vfi ;.^i: • During the summer of eighteen hundred and sixty, a gentleman was traveling in 18 SLEEP. Italy. Aa he left Rome, he was warned of the danger of sleeping at Baccano. He was told to travel all night rather than stop at thai place, as a malignant fever prevailed there. He arrived there about bed-time. The air was balmy, and the accommodations inviting. He concluded co stop for the night Those whose interests would be promoted by his doing so, told him there was no danger. He rose in the morning and proceeded on his journey. Some days after he had reached Florence the fever developed itself, and he was soon in his grave. Signer Ardisson, now o^ New York, an ex- iled Italian patriot of high culture, was born in Rome, where he spent the first twenty or twen- ty-five years of his life, and therefore must be familiar with the habits and customs of the people, and with the peculiarities of the country. While on a visit to his friend, Robert Earle, Esq., he informed the author, on inquiries made, that always when hunting in the Pontine marshes, it was well understood by himself and GROTTA DEL CANE. 17 companions, that it was necessary to avoid hunger during their excursions, and also to keep up a vigorous circulation, either by ac- tive exercise, or mental hilarity, such as by singing, shouting, and slapping one another on the shoulders. On one occasion, when there was a failure of these precautions, it was followed in his own person by a danger- ous illness of several weeks' duration. . , * In the celebrated Grotta Del Cane, there is an apartment where a man may walk with impunity, and yet his dog following him will fall down dead, and if the master lies on the floor, he too will die, showing the existence of a poisonous air near the floor. ..s i; r, -. The argument of this book is founded on the narrations which have been given. Vol- umes of similar ones, well authenticated, might be easily collected, going to show that breath- ing an impure air for various durations, will occasion states of ill-health of all grades, from an almost imperceptible decline, to symptoms 2* 2S SLEEP. which have the malignity of tho most viruleni and speedily fatal poisons. It needs no caution, generally, to keep per- sona from breathing an atmosphere which will produce certain death in a few hours or minutes even. But the most earnest and irresistible arguments have failed thus far to impress upon the public mind the conviction of the certainly destructive influences upon human health which follow from too many persons sleeping in the game room, of several persons sleeping in the same bed, or of a single person sleeping habitually in a small apartment. ••''.' - The plan of this book is to show the de- structive influence on health and life which bad air exercises and state a variety of the causes of deterioration ; among these, the most rapid in their effects are emanations from the human body, and the expirations from the lungs; and therefore, as we spend a third of our existence in sleep, during which, in con- PURE 8LEEPINO ROOMS. 19 flequence of its passive condition, the corporeal system is greatly more liable to the influ- ence of the causes of disease, it is of the utmost consequence that every practical and rational means for securing a pure air for the chamber should be employed, the most im- portant of these being large rooms and sin- gle beds. • / • r It is not only unwise, it is unnatural and degenerative, for one person to pass the niglit habitually in the same bed or room with an- other, whatever may be the age, sex, or rela- tionship of the parties. Unwise, because it impairs the general health and undermines the constitution, by reason of the fact, that the atmosphere of any ordinary chamber occupied by more than one sleeper, is speedily vitiated, and that in this vitiated condition, it is breathed over and over again for the space of the eight hours usually passed in sleep, amounting, in the aggregate, to one third of a man's entire existence. Unnatural, because it is contrary 20 SLEEP. to our instincts; and it is lowering, be* cause it diminishes that mutual consideration and respect which ought to prevail in social life. A person feels elevated in proportion to the deference received from another, and there springs up a self-restraint, a consciousness of personal dignity, which has an exalting eflfect on the whole physical, moral, and social nature of man; but the habitual occupation of the same chamber must largely detrac- from tuese in a variety of ways. "Without the argument of analogies, that the moat spiteful, the vilest, and the filthiest of the animal kingdom — wolves, hogs, and vermin — huddle together, the physical aspects of the case will be considered in their bearings on human health. It is not denied that two per- sons have slept together in tho same bed for half a century, and have lived in health to a good old age; this only proves how long some may live in spite of a single bad habit. Persons have Uved quite as long in the habit INTENT OF THE BOOK. ual indulgence in low, vicious, degrading, and drunken practices. It will be found, however, that in these cases there were counteracting causes in steady operation, such as open cham- bers, houses with a thousand cracks and cran- nies, and frequently during the time, the earth a pillow, a canopy the sky, with the additional fact that a large portion of every day was habitually spent in wholesome activities in the open air. To these considerations may be added the high advantage of a good constitu- tion to begin with, and the necessity of a plain and primitive mode of life. Exceptional cases are not to be considered in a general argument. It is proposed to show that the tendencies of certain social habits are uniformly pernicious, iind that prejudicial results will follow as cer- tainly as that water will fall over a precipice, if physical obstacles are not presented, such is that of its being frozen at the instant, diverted from its course, or caught in the beginning of •ts descent. SLEEP. The general argument against sleeping witli others, is found in the undeniable fact, that when several persons sleep in the same apart- ment, the fewer conveniences are there for per- sonrl cleanliness, which is at the very founda- tion of bodily health, of moral purity, and mental elevation. There is another argument of an exceedingly wide range, and yet a mind of very limited cul- ture can not fail to feel its force. As men im- prove in their condition, there is a strong desire for greater domestic conveniences and com- forts ; the very first of these is " more room ;" and eventually, instead of several members of a family sleeping in the same bed, each child, as it grows up. has a separate apartment, and a rich man's dwelling has more than one room to each member of his household. In former times, it was oftener the case than at present, that the married children would remain with their parents as a matter of econ- omy, for several years ; but now it is usually a CROWDED LIVING. 23 settled thing to secure a " home of their own" before the marriage ceremony; "going to housekeeping," is an event second only to the marr.age itself, and is one of the surest indica- tions of thrift. On the other hand, as families herd together in the same building, there are found those brutal debasements which have made famous the "tenement-houses" of New- York, where as many as one hundred and twenty distinct fam- ilies lived under the same roof, and where there were thirteen thousand six hundred and twen- ty-three houses which averaged nearly six fam- ilies each, and thus three fourths of the popula- tion of the metropoli^^ of the United States of North- America, lived in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine, with the result of its being the sickliest of all the large cities of the civilized world; while Philadel- phia, but eighty-six miles away, with hotter summers and sometimes colder winters, without thai proximity to the sea, which ia so fruitful 24 SLEEP. m K^^ ^'■A &;. I of sanitary blessings, is one of the healthiest cities in the Union. But Philadelphia has a house to every six persons, while New- York has but one to every thirteen. Such facts as these prove, on a large scale, that the moro house-room a community has, the more health- ful will that community be. Another great fact iii. that there are three times the number of deaths, in proportion to the population, in those parts of the city where the poorest, and consequently the most persons live together in the same house, as compared with the mortality where neprly every family lives in a dwelling of its own. For example, , in the First Ward of the city of New- York, where almost all are poor, one person died out of every twenty-two, while in the Fifteenth Ward, where the inhabitants live mostly to themselves, in large, roomy buildings, only one died out of every seventy I Further, in the sixteenth century, when the great majority of mankind lived in huts and CONVULSIONS OF CHILDREN. 25 hovels, whole families eating, sleeping, and working in the same apartment, the average of aman life was five j'-ears, according to the estimate of Marc ..'Espine and others ; but in the former half of the nineteenth century, that is, from eighteen hundred to eighteen hundred and forty, it had increased to forty-one y<^ars. Nothing, perhaps, more accurately measures the thrift of any community than the greater number and size of its buildings, and the allowable inference is, that the more houses there are, in inverse proportion to the number of people, the further they sleep from one an- other, the larger the number of persona who have rooms to themselves, and the more capa- cious are their chambers. . , ' The convulsions or " fits " of children usuallv occur at night, while sleeping; these, in most cases, arise from over-eating or breathing an impure air. Fifteen hundred and ninety-nine children under two years of age died in New- York City durng eighteen hundred and fifty- 'i 3 26 SLEEP. five, from this malady alone. While bad air causes these convulsions, immediate introduc- tion to a piire atmosphere gives instantaneous and efficient relief. The broad fact can not then be denied, that, as a general rule, and in the sense in question, the further people sleep apart, the more they occupy separate rooms, the greater are their chances of life. A more critical examination into the nature of things will show, in a most conclusive manner, the reason of such results. Dr. Arnott reports that a canary hung up in a bed surrounded with closely-drawn curtains, and in which two persons slept, was found dead in the morning. This was because that, after the sleepers had breathed the air, there was not life enough left in it, not oxygen enough to feed a bird, and it perished. This shows in a general way, that when the breath comes out of the mouth, there is no substance in it, no nutriment, no life, and that we can no more live upon it than we could live upon food CAPACITY OF THE LUNGS. M after all its nourishment had been extracted from it, and it had become as innutrieiit as saw-dust, or as the driest husks of the field. Experimenters have ascertained that a breath of air is so wholly deprived of its substance, its life, while in the lungs, that if re-breathed without any admixture of the common air, it would cause death in a minute or two. ,? . i • The lungs of an ordinary man hold some ten pints of air ; but as they are never entirely emptied in life, they take in about six pints, or one gallon at a full breath. ,. ,.:■,', ,n ;.. ,• In the breathing of repose, as in ordinary occupations about one pint, or forty cubic inches, is taken in at a breath. A person breathes at Dut eighteen times a minute during sleep, or two and a quarter hogsheads in one hour; or eighteen hogsheads during the eight hours which are usually given to sleep, or two hundred cubic feet ; tliat is, in eight hours, every particle of nutriment would be abstracted from a room containing that amount 28 SLEEP. of air. To make it more tangible, if a person were put to sleep in a room six feet high, eight feet long, and a little over four feet broad, and no air was allowed to come in from without, all the life of the air would be consumed, and he would die at the expiration of the eighth hour, even if each breath given out could be kept to itself. But this would not be the case, for the very first breath of the first minute would, on passing out of the mouth, mingle with the air of the room, and taint and corrupt it, so that in reality, the first breath of air taken would be the only one that was pure, each succeeding one would be less and less so, and long before the eight hours had expired, the whole mass, although not entirely vitiated, would be so to such an extent that it could not possibly sustain life. All have observed the disagreeableness of the air of an ordinary-sized room, in which one or more persons have slept all night, when first entering it from a morning walk ; and this, too, when tlie SIZE OF SLEEPING ROOMS. 29 various crevicea about the doors and windows, and an open fire-place, allowed some fresh air to come in, and some of the foul air to escape. With this view of the case, physiologists ad- vise that each person should sleep in a room equal to twelve feet square and eight or more feet high. The floor-surface of a room is mea- sured by the length and breadth multiplied to* gether. But ordinary chambers do not equal twelve bv twelve ; do not measure a hundred and forty-four square feet. Not one in a thou- sand hotel-chambers is as large ; very few of the "state-rooms," so called, of ships and steamers, measure over seven ffeet long, seven feet high, and four broad, giving only two hun- dred and forty-five feet for two persons, which is barely enough to save one from inevitable death, if there were no crevices to admit the fresh air. ^. / i -jh. I'-r j' 'I « U Since, therefore, each out-breathing vitiates the whole body of air in a close chamber, as a drop of ink will discolor a glass of water, it 3-» so SLEEP. should have a thorough ventilation ; that is, a current of air should be passing through the room from without up through the open fire- place and chimney, carrying before it the bad air, leaving a fresher and u purer in its place. .. But very few chambers in this country mea- sure twelve feet square, and consequently are not large enough for one person, let alone two ; and in proportion as the room is too small, in such proportion are the lungs and body and blood deprived of their essential food, as es- sential to life as water is to a fish ; and in such proportion are sown the seeds of disease and premature death. All know that a fish can not live an hour out of its natural element, water ; nor can man live an hour out of his natural element, air, nor a quarter of an hour, and tc both a fresh supply of these must come in as steadily as used, or harm will follow as inevitably as uni- versal darkness would envelop the earth, if the sun were blotted from existence. ; , , SIMOONS OF AFRICA. 9i To show how a little taint of the atmosphere with a substance not natural to it will materi- ally influence the animal economy, it is suffi- cient to state a fact of repeated observation, that a man who sleeps neai a poppy-field with the wind blowing steadily towards him from the field, will die before tlie morning. Intelli- gent readers have often perused descriptions of the fatal effects of the dreadful Simoons which sweep over the African desert, leaving whole caravans of beasts and men dead from the in- stant contact with their scalding breath. Simi- lar winds are also known in India. Vit a late meeting of the Meteorological Society of Lon- don, Dr. Cook remarked that there are certain days in which, however hard and violent the wind may blow, little or no dust accompanies it, while at other times every little puff of air or current of wind raises up and carries with it clouds of dust, and at these times the individ- ual particles of sand appear to be in such an electrified condition, that they are even ready 82 SLEEP. to repel each other, and arc consequently dis- turbed from their position and carried up into the air with the slightest current. To so great an extent does tliis sometimes exist, that the atmosphere is positively filled with dust, and when accompanied by a strong wind, nothing is visible at a few yards, and the sun at noon- day is obscured. This condition of the atmo- sphere is evidently accumulative ; it increasea by degrees till the climax is reached, when, after a C/Crtain time, usually about twenty-four hours, the atmosphe. s cleared, equanimity is restored. Dust-columns appear under a similar condition of electrical disturbance or intensity. On calm, quiet days, when hardly a breath of air is stirring, and the sun pours down his heating rays with full force, little circular ed- dies are seen to rise in the atmosphere near the surface of the ground. These increase in force and diameter, till a columu is formed of great hight and diameter, which usually remains sta- tionary for som' time, and then sweeps away SIMOONS OF INDIA. 88 acro8s the country at great speed, and ulti- mately, losing the velocity of its circular move- ment, dissolves and disappears. Dr. Cook had seen in the valley of the Mingoehav, which is only a few miles across, and surrounded by high hills, on a day when not a breath of air stirred, twenty of these columns. These seldom changed their places, or but slowly moved across the level tract, and they never interfered with each other. j .,• The author then spoke of the Simoon, that deadly wind which occasionally visits the des- erts of Cutchee and Upper Scinde, which is sudden and singularly fatal in its occurrence, invisible, intangible, and mysterious. Its na- ture, alike unknown, as far as the author is aware, to the wild, untutored inhabitants of the country which it frequents, as to the Euro- pean man of science ; its eflfects only are visible, its presence made manifest in the sudden ex- tinction of life, whether of animal or vegetable, Dver which its influence has extended. Dr. S4 SLEEP. Cook gives the resulte of his infonuution ro- epecting the Simoon as follows: 1. It is sudden in its attack. 2. It is sometimes preceded by a cold cui> r(Mit of air. 8. It occurs in the hot months — usually June and July. 4. It takes place by night as well as by day. 5. Its course is straight and defined. 6. Its passage leaves a narrow "knife-like" track. 7. It bums up or destroys the vitality of animal and vegetable existence in its path, 8. It is attended by a well-marked sul- phurous odor. 9. It is described as being like the blast of a furnace, and the current of air in which it passes is evidently greatly hoated. 10. It is not accompanied by dust, thunder, and lightning. ,,,., ., . ;,, ,. .^ . It is so generally known to be fatal to travel- ers to pass the night in the campagna in Italy, ROIiniNS AND CAUrENTER. 86 that citizens uniformly caution strangers to pn.s8 directly tlirou);?h it. And nearer home it is known that it was considered almost certain death for those crossing the Isthmus of Pana- ma to spend a night there, and sailors were threatened with severe punishment who did not return to their ships in the offing before the night came on. Dr. E. Y. Bobbins says of Professor Carpen- ter, the first physiologist of Great Britain, if not of the world, that, in his experiments, he "had ascertained that air containing five or six per cent of carbonic acid gas would pro- duce immediate death, and that less than one half that quantity would soon prove fatal. Now, if effects are proportioned to their causes, and if an atmosphere impregnated with five per cent, or one twentieth part of its volume, of carbonic acid, will thus produce death in a few minutes, what must be the probable effect of breathing for twenty or forty years, even the much minuter proportions which must be 36 SLEEP. present in every inhabited room where there is not i. constant ingress and egress of air? It must lower the standard of health and shorten the duration of life. But not only if the air in a close room thus constantly being impregnated with carbonic acid gas to the amount of about twenty-eight cubic inches per minute for each adult man occupying such room, but there is also, according to the best authorities, constantly being discharged by the lungs and pores of the skin an equal amount by weight, that is, about three or three and a half pounds in twenty-four hours, of effete, decaying animal substance, in the form of msensible vapor, which we oftt see condensed in drops upon the windows of crowded rooms and railroad cars. These drops, if collected and evaporated, leave a thick putrid mass of animal matter. The breathing of these exha- lations is believed to be quite as efficient in producing disease as carbonic acid itself, -f: c* In the winter of eighteoa hundred and sixty, in one small, ill-ventilated room in CHARCOAL FUMES FATAL. 37 a house at High Blantyre, Sootland, a man named Kobertson, his wife, and three child- ren were in the habit of sleeping. One morning the wife awoke i.bout five o'clock in a very exhausted state, and found her infant child, aged nine months, lying dead in her arms. She immediately aroused her husband, who also felt in a weakly condition, but had strength enough to get out of bed. They then discovered that their next eldest child, a boy aged about three years, was also dead, and the third, a girl nine years old, ap- parently dying, but upon being removed into another apartment she eventually recovered. Facts like these show that breathing a bad air for a single night is perilous to life. Few are so ignorant as not to have learned that if a handful of charcoal is lighted in a small, close room, death before the morning is an in- evitable result, hence it is used sometimes as a means of self-destruction. The reason is, that charcoal in burning, subtracts the oxygen from 38 SLEEP. ihe whole body of the atmosphere, and this oxygen is its life, and is as fully used up in breathing as in the bu ning of charcoal. It is not actually destroyed in either case, but a new combination is formed called carbonic acid, which has no oxygen, no life, and a single breath of it induces instantaneous suffocation. It is this carbonic acid which taints a sleeper's chamber, and the taint increases at every out- breathing, for every expiration is loaded with it, and where two sleep in the same room the poisonous vitiation increases with a two-fold rapidity, and tbe UDhealthful results are inevi- table and ruinous. To impress these vital lessons on the mind, the philosophy of breath- ing or respiration, should be understood. The object of breathing is to make a change in the condition of the blood, which is said in the sacred Scriptures, with philosophical ac- curacy, to be " the life of a man." It is suf- ficiently precise, for all practical purposes, to say that a man takes into the lungs in twenty- OFFICE OF THE liUNGS. 89 four hours, about sixty hogsheads of air, as in health he breathes about eighteen times in a minute, on an average, for the twenty-four hours, and takes in about a pint or forty cubic inches at a breath. During the same time, there passes through the lungs an amount of blood equal to twenty-four hogsheads ; with this blood, the sixty hoqisheads of air come in virtual contact, and a g^eat change takes place in both the blood and the air ; for the oxygen, the life of the air, is taken from it as such, and becomes, in a measure, incorporated with the blood so as to give life to it ; at the same time, the impurities of the blood are taken up by the breath of air just taken into the lungs, so that when expired, when passed out of the lungs, it is so loaded with these impurities, that it is utterly unfit for being breathed again ; so much so, that ss has been already stated, if re breathed, without the admixture of some fresh air, it would cause ai instantaneous de- struction of life, from its entire destitution of 40 BLEEP. nutritious particles. Each breath of air then, in healthful respiration, goes into the lungs perfectly pure, but comes out, loaded with the impurities of the blood, and thus the blood is purified, made fit to be re-distributed over the body, to impart life, renovation and growth. It is easy to see then, that if the air which is breathed is not pure, it fails to unload the blood of its impurities, and hence it is unfit for the purposes of life; for to purify tlie blood, is to give health to the whole system ; and when it is not purified, disease and pain and ultimate death are the inevitable results. This, then, is the great physical evil of sleep- ing together, the air is rapidly contaminated by two sleepers in any ordinary room; this contamination begins at once to lay the foun- dation for disease, and that result is inevitable in the very nature of things. Such result, however, does not become very marked in a short time, as there are counteracting agencies, such as the fact that there are crevices in the BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. A> doors and windows, and througli these some fresh air is constantly passing; small, it is true, yet enough to keep the body alive ; but how more doad than alive many a one feels without any suspicion of the cause, in that exceedingly languid sensation which some- times pervades the whole body on first waking up in the morning; a little greater depriva- tion, and the sleepers would have waked no more! In the case of the already narrated tragedy of the Black Hole of Calcutta, it may be well to state, that " It was eight o'clock in the morning, when the unfortunate prisoners were locked up, and in less than three hours, fifty of them had ceased to exist. The sur vivors of the next morning were said to be the ghastliest forms that were ever seen alive. But for two small windows for approach to which, there was through the night a frantic struggle, not one would have lived to tell the fearful tale." ' Another more recent incident of Indian 4* 42 .r.v.i BLEEP. ■'' history, is given to illustrate the pernicious influence of a deficient supply of fresh air, although not to the degree of causing instant death. When Sir Charles N'apier was the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army, the hill-stations of Sabathor and Kussowlie, which ought, from their position, to have been most healthy, were in disgrace, and denounced aa pestilential. Sir Charles resolved to ascertain the cause of the mischief, and had no difficulty in accounting for the pestilence which had destroyed so many lives. The barrack-rooms were only eight feet high and had been crammed full of soldiers. "I altered the barracks," said Sir Charles, "and put hrlf the number of men in them, and they became at once the most healthy in India. When I last saw my own regiment with which I made the experiment, in con- junction with the 'Sixtieth Kifles,' both hav- ing been nearly decimated by fever, the twen- ty-second had but nineteen in hospitals, out PRISON ATMOSPHERE. 48 of one thousand and fifty, in the sick season, and the sixtieth about the same." In the times of Pope and Swift, the Au gustan age of England, a little over a cen- tury ago, " debtors and pirates were confined together in the Marshalsea. Thirty, forty, and even fifty prisoners were locked up at night in a single room, not sixteen feet square and eight feet high. For a whole year, there were sometimes forty, never less than thirty-two, persons locked up in George's ward every night, which is a room sixteen by fourteen feet, and about eight feet high. The surface floor was not sufficient to contain that num- ber when laid down, so that one half were hung up in hammocks, while the others re- mained on the floor under them. The air was so wasted by the number of persons who breathed in that narrow compass, that it was aot sufficient to keep them from stifling, sev- eral having, in the heat of summer, perished for want of air. The more offensive part of 44 ,, . SLEKP. the account is omitted, but it may be found entire in the state papers of England." f« .\ John Iloward, of immortal memory, found that there were dungeons in Cornwarl, mea- suring seven and a half feet long, six and a half deep, and live feet broad, in which " two or three persons were chained together. Their provision was put down to them through a hole in the floor of the room above, and the foulness of the air coming up through that hole was such, that those who thus served the food often caught the fatal fever, and the keeper and his wife died in one night." / j Other dungeons containing about four hun- dred cubic feet of air, measuring seven and a half feet long, by six and a half broad, and eight and a half high, had only a hole of four inches by eight, over the door, the only avenue of air to the interior, and even that coming through long, dark passages reeking with dampness and filth and slime. " Yet, in cacli of these dungeons, three human beings HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST. 46 were commonly locked up for the night, which, in winter, lasted fourteen or sixteen hours." In Cheater there were cells measuring nine feet by three, and seven and a half feet high, with a single aperture of four inches by eight. In each of these, three or four felons were locked up every night. •/ , v- In the Chink of Plymouth jail, there was a "diabolical dungeon," eight feet by seven- teen, and only five and a half feet high, with a wicket in the door seven inches by five. Yet Howard learned with horror, that three men had been confined in this dungeon for two months. "They could neither see nor breathe freely, nor could they stand upright. To keep alive at all they were forced to crouch, each in his turn, at the wicket, to catch a few inspirations of air, otherwise, they must have died of suffocation, for the door had not been opened in five weeks." No wonder is it, tliat with such arrange- ments, the jail-fever raged throughout Eng- 46 1 '. *. SLEEP. I land, slaying tens of thousands in its fury, spreading its terrible conttigions in such a deadly manner, that the prison-physicians would not engage their services in some cases, without the express understanding, that tliey should not be required to visit persons who had the jail-fever. - These cases show that a certain r.mount of fresh air is necessary to life, and that if that amount is largely curtailed, fearful diseases and speedy death ensue. If there is but a moderate diminution, as in sleeping together in small rooms, the consequences are not in- stantly fatal, but the life of the system is slowly undermined, predisposing it to wast- ing disease. ,- i .. , ; . But why need the dark and dismal dun- geons of England, a hundred years ago, be cited for proof ? On the fifth day of October, eighteen hundred and sixty. Judge Pierrepont, of the Supe: ' . .' Court of the city of New- York, resigned his seat on the bench, which, by his Randall's island lmbeciles. 47 ability he had ornamented so long, on the ground that the court-rooms were *' ruinous to health and dangerous to life." It is sad to note that valuable lives are often sacrificed by the breathing of a bad atmosphere for a few hours, as in the following case : — Chief Justice Anthony Lispenurd Robertson, of the Superior Court of New York City, ioved, respected, and honored by the profes- sion as one of its brightest lights, eminent for his legal abilities, for his general acquirements, and his lucid decisions, was known among his peers as the " Just Judge.'* He was for some eight hours continuously exposed to the delete- rious air of a crowded court-room, a broken pane at the same time admitting a December wind upon him, inducing pneumonia, of which he died ivithin a week ; died in his mental prime, from a few hours' exposure to a bad atmosphere. An observant correspondent of the New York World, having visited Randall's Island, where there are about eight hundred idiotic children maintained by public charity, says: — 48 • BLEEP. "In a dingle room, porliapn eighteen by twenty-eight fnt in area, I found thirty-scvon inil)«:cilo ciiildren seated ciotwly together upon benches and ciiairR arranged around the room — some roclt- ing themselves incessantly to and fro, some screaming at the top of their voices, some yelling out a laugh, itself the token of a vacant mind, others moaned and muttered, or emitted an unearth- ly noise, intended for music. Here they chattered and quarreled, and grinned their ghastly smiles, seemingly under little restraint other than might bo needed to keep them glued to one spot. This room also is unclean an ' . and at the close of them, as is most generally the case perhaps, a new being is irade, it is inevitable that it will be made in weakness, in imperfection, in incompleteness ; hence is born deteriorated, with a hereditary susceptibility to disease, and with an incompetency to resist the ordinary causes of human ailments. Thus it is that the children of large cities, especially in suinmer time, when the entire air has so much less nutriment in it than is normal, are swept away as if by a pestilence ; a pestilence more terrible than any epidemical cholera that ever visited our shores ; and yet it creates no alarm, seldom a remark ! According to Inspector Morton's returns for eighteen hundred and fifty-five, there died in New- York City ''uring July and August, under five years of a^e, three thousand seven hun- dred and two children; more than the total number of deaths from cholera during the pre- ceding year ; more than died of the first chol- era of eighteen hundred and thirty-two ! These INFANT MORTALITY. 58 figures are found in the exceedingly valuable " Table of the Mortality of the City of New- York for the fifty-two years, comprising the full period from January the first, eighteen hundred and four, to December the first, eighteen hundred and fifty -five, inclusive." Total cholera deaths in New- York City for 1832 3618 •• ♦' «• ^.,..^: 1849 6071 *♦ '« ** 1864 2609 " deaths of children alone during July "'-'''"'■' jpij August 1866 3702 Many are now living who have a vivid re- membrance of the terror pervading all hearts during the prevalence of the first cholera, and yet when a greater number of children die during two months of any summer, it is passed without special remark. This is because in part we have become used to it; and in part be- cause the greatest mortality is among the trowded poor, whose wailings rise not up to the ears of the great world above them. It is 6* 5f. ,V^n. SLEEP. '' : not claimed that this fearful annual mortality among children under five years of age is wholly owing to the fact of too many persons sleeping together in the same room or bed ; but that, under all the circumstances of the case, as presented, this great sacrifice of life is attribu- table, in considerable part, to the habit alluded to, there can be not a shadow of a doubt in any reflecting mind. Let it be remembered that there is a double agency at work in this regard. The children are not only begotten in weakness, in want of vitality and vigor, but the causes of this are still in operation as to themselves ; for very generally the infant sleeps in the same bed with the parents, and if a bird actually dies in a night under the circumstances already de- tailed, it is no wonder that the bird-like life of a tender infant is gradually sapped away by the same causes kept in operation every night for weeks and months and years; for it is not sooner than five years that children CAUSES OF VITIATED CHAMBERS. 66 in poorer families — ^and they aro the majority — are put in other rooms than those in which the parents sleep; but after five years, the mortality of children diminishes fifty per cent. Our calculations have been made on the purity of the air in the twelve-feet chambers, * yet the causes of rapid vitiation of that atmo- sphere are numerous. There are liquids of various kinds in every chamber, besides the soap for washing, which is constantly sending out its emanations ; and there are damp towels and bedding, combs and brushes, and the clothing worn during the day, which, as to . some persons, is alone sufficient to taint the air of a whole room in five minutes afl«r it is laid off. Besides these, if inner doors are left open during the night, emanations from close cellars and warm kitchens, and slops of various kinds, are constantly ascending, espe- jiially during sleeping-hours ; for then the outer doors and windows are closed, no air is in circulation to carry them outside the build* "56 :, -i/JV/.v SLEEP. ing; hence they rise, by their own laws, to taint and corrupt the atmosphere of the sleep- er's apartment. ^ < .' ^ f . . . Then again, there arc found in most cham- bers, hung-up clothing, closets, wardrobes, drawers, and the like, with the carpeting, all of which are sources of dust and lint, and dampness and close air, so that, taking every thing into consideration, it is an almost un- known thing that any sleeper within the four walls of any private house or hotel, gets one single breath of real pure air in a whole night. In the third volume of HaWs Journal of Health, page one hundred and forty-nine, the following statements are made, founded on carefully conducted experiments in one of the best-kept European hospitals : m-^i iUi " If a small portion of the air of a crowded room is made to pass up through distilled water, a sediment is left which contains various colored fibers of clothing, portions of hair, wool, bits of human skin or scales, and a fungus growth, AIR OF CROWDED ROOMS. 57 with its particles of reproduction, which adhere wherever they strike, or fall on wet surfaces or bruises, or sore places, and grow wherever they adhere ; there is also a small amount of inde structible sand and dirt, with great numbers of the forms of animal life. "But if that room be emptied for a few hours, and a portion of its atmosphere be treated in the same way, nothing will be found but a little sand and dirt, a few fibers of woven cot- ton, and only a trace of fungus ; but no animal life, no bits of skin or hair, or scales of dead human matter. "If five times the amount of neighboring out- door air undergoes the same process, a single fiber of wool or cottc»n is now and then found, with a few specimens of fungus, and their atoms of reproduction, but no traces of decayed ani- mal matter, nor are there any signs of organic life : thus showing that in our close apartments we are surrounded with organic living bodies, and that animal matter, living, dead, and de- cayed, loads the atmosphere which we breathe in the chambers of our dwellings and crowded rooms, and that these corrupting particles are swallowed into the stomach, and are breathed B§ ^■*" -' SLEEP. into the lungs every moment of in-door exiflt* enee, thus strongly urging us, by all our love of pure blood and high health, to hurry from our chambers at the earliest moment in the morning, and to consider every hour of out* door breathing a gain of life. "No wonder is it that the blood is soon tainted and corrupted, by making sitting-apart- ments of our chambers, by spending hours in crowded assemblies, or stage-coaches, or rail- cars, where every breath we draw is a mouth- ful of monster-life, or of decaying or foreign substances," But with all our precautions, foreign sub- stances are floating in the air every where. Dust falls on the tops of the highest moun- tains, and drops on the decks of vessels many leagues beyond the shore. Under the head of Mkographie Aimospherique, the Gazette Heh' dom, dated April 1st, 1859, reports a meet- ing of the French Academy of Sciences, at which M. Pouchet reported a paper as follows : " The atmosphere which surrounds us holdd DUST OF ALL CENTURIES. 59 in suspension a mass of corpuscles, the detritus of the mineral crust of our globe, animal and vegetable particles, and the debris of all that is used for man's purposes. These diverse cor- puscles are proportionably more numerous and voluminous as the atmosphere is more or less agitated by the wind, and it is to these that the tenn dust has been applied." The author enumerates the various cor- puscles of mineral, animal, and vegetable ori- gin with which the air is loaded. Under the latter — the vegetable products — he mentions especially particles of wheat, which are always found mixed with dust, be it recent or old, as well as those of barley, rye, potatoes, which have been discovered in rare instances. "Astonished at the proportional abundance of flour which I have found among the atmo- spheric corpuscles," says Mr. Pouchet, "I un- dertook the task to examine the dust of all cen- turies and of all localities. I have explored the monuments of our large cities ; those of the shore and those of the desert ; and in midst 60 . . c; SLEEP. of the immense variety of corpuscles that uni- versally float in the air, almost always have I found the dust of grain, in greater or lesser abundance. Endowed with an extraordinary power of preservation, years seem scarcely to have altered it. * •■ -• • •• " Whatever may be the antiquity of atmo- spheric corpuscles, we find among them the dust of grain yet recognizable. I have dis- covered it in the most inaccessible retreats of our old Gothic churches, mixed with their blackened dust of eight centuries ; I have met it in the palaces and hypog^es of Thebes, where it dates back perhaps to the epoch of the Pha- raohs. I have found it even in the interior of the tympanal cavity of the head of a mummi- fied dog, which I have recovered from a sub- terranean temple of upper Egypt. ■ *- • > ' ** It can be proposed as a thesis, that in all countries where wheat forms the basis of food, its debris is mixed throughout with the dust, and may be detected in it in laiger or smaller quantities." -^"^ t'-^ .!.}..,.i.'.fii Perhaps the reader will pardon the quota- tion of an article entire, written by some un- DUST EVERY WHERE. 61 acknowledged worker for human entertain- ment and profit: •"• '♦ *" " Whence does the dust all come ? You may sweep your room twice every day, and you will find that a cloud arises every time the broom and the floor make acquaintance. You may dust every article of furniture, every book, every picture; you may wipe all about the book-shelves and the floor with a damp cloth ; and yet, after all your labor, there will be dust. Dust flying in the air; dust settling on the books and tables ; dust on the pictures, on the flowers — dust, dust every where. It %$ dis- couraging. You think, perhaps, that 'tis be- cause the room in which you sit is so large ; you think that if you were in snugger quarters there would not be so much of this annoyance ; you therefore move into a smaller apartment, but you are worse off now than you were be- fore. You can't turn around quick, nor even heave a sigh, without setting in motion ten thousand tiny particles of dust. You may hweep till your broom fails, and dust till your arms fall off, and the story will be always the il ' .. SLEEP. same. Even out at sea, where the good ship rides the billows, thousands of miles from laud, the dust gathers. It matters not how much the sailors rub the masts and holystone the decks, the dust will gather, even amid tlie salt spray of the sea. It is forever flying and settling wherever there is any solid substance on which it can alight. Where it comes from is no mys- tery, when we remember what sort of things we are. ^''Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shall return" is written on clothing, on wood, and iron and steel, just as truly as it is in our frail, perishing flesh ; and this changing and going back to its despised original is going on before our very eyes, in each thing that we look upon. Con- stantly — some rapidly, others with a slower waste — but certainly all things are returning whence they came. 'Tis enough to make one fear the dust — to make one feel a horror at the atoms falling on one's garment and one's limbs, to read and understand their language. That language is one of decay and death ; of earth, the grave, and worms; of darkness, forgetful- ness, and despair. This, if one can not look DUST AND CONSUMPTION. 6tf beyond the dnnt, and sec and take hold upon the eternal life. "How carefully and purely should wo step through the world, did we but read, an we walk, all that is written for our admonition and warning. But we go hastily, with care- less eye and dumb heart, taking little heed when we should be most studious. Many there be who have deep skill to read the dark sayings who yet have never understood the plain language of the gathering dust." Under the head of " Analytical and Critical Eeviews," in the British and Foreign Me- dico Chirurgical Review for January, eigh- teen hundred and fifty-nine, is the following: "The fact seems to come out strikingly in these investigations, that one marked indubi- table cause of lung diseases, and especially of consumption, is the inhalation of fine hard dust. This seems to be the case in Warwick- shire, especially where the metallic manulao- tares are of a kind to give rise to such dust, 64 SLEEP. more than where the work is of a coarser de- scription. The same fact is observed where fine pottery is made ; it is well known in the hardware manufactures of Yorkshire, and the mortality of mines where thd ore lies in dry sandstone, is said to be from tlie same cause. " On the other hand, where the dust inhaled is of a soft character, as in woolen, flax and cotton factories, asthma and chronic bronchitis are more prevalent, as also in lace-making and straw-bonnet making." Alston, England,is situated in a most salu- brious country district, yet there are more widows there than in any other district in Great Britain ; at the same time, fewer infants die in Alston than in many other parts of the country. The actual facts of the case make this a very suggestive item in connection with the dele- terious influences of an atmosphere loaded with foreign particles. Alston is the most exclu- iively lead-mining district in England, but only INHERITED INFIRM/TIES. 65 the men work in these mines, where they are constantly breathing a dusty atmosphere, hence their early decease. But it is remarked that more women die of consumption in the healthy atmosphere of Alston, than in other localities which do not enjoy so pure an air. This is accounted for au "due to acquired hereditary tendency," those women having been born of men who breathed habitually a dusty atmosphere, bring- ing to the mind the strong conviction of the sentiment uttered on a preceding page, that children begotten by persons sleeping together in the same small room for eight hours out of every twenty-four, must inevitably partake of the parental infirmity, which, not enough to kill the parent outright, not enough to destroy the power of reproduction, not enough to eat out the life of the new-born in its first years, yet is enough to lay the foundation, either of actual disease or of feeble capabilities of re- sisting the ordinary causes of disease, with 0* 66 SLEEP. the result of becoming life-long martyrs to depressing and wasting sickness, to end in premature death. These are facts collected by men of ability, of industrious research; facts gathered with reference to the discussion of theories of a different nature, hence are the more valuable ; and those " not convinced by these would not likely be by the piling up of pyramids of such like. The great difficulty in having these state- ments result in immediately practical results, lies in this, that death does not presently follow from two persons sleeping together all night in the same bed or room. "Were this the case, the task were easily performed, and a few pages would tell the whole story. But most assuredly, wise men, of pecuniary ability, are most inexcusable if they do not arrange in all their families, that each member have, as far as possible, a separate, airy room, to sleep in. The fact has been already stated, that one of EOOMINESS AND HEALTH. 67 the very first channels of expenditure, on the part of those who are improving their pe- cuniary condition, is in the direction of more house-room; and this may reasonably be con- sidered, at least, one of the causes of the undis- puted fact, that in France, the average life of those who are well to do, is twelve years longer, than of those who are considered poor, and consequently huddle together more, and are restricted to fewer apartments. It is true, as has been remarked on a pre- vious page, that there are multitudes who have slept two and three in a bed, and double the number in the same room, and yet have lived to a good old age. But such persons generally live in very open houses, and spend most of the twenty-four hours in the open air, in neces- sary labor, and these act as counteracting causes. But this argument is of little weight, inasmuch as the constitution of these hardy people, seldom, with all its strength and advan- tages, descends to their children, rarely indeed 68 ' SLEEP. to their grand-children; and that their close living has a tendency to deteriorate the vigor of their descendants, can not reasonably be de- nied. As communities become enriched, their modes of life grow more enervating ; hence the necessity increases of greater care to ward off disease, of removing its causes, and of guarding against the avenues of sickness. What our fathers did with their stalwart frames and iron constitutions, and simple, temperate and regu- lar modes of life, we attempt at our peril, with our easy, gormandizing, pampered ways, our furnace-heated apartments, and our dwellings, three rooms deep, with chambers all guiltless of a window, with curtained apartments as gloomy as the grave, and into which the bless- ed sun-light never enters, except on chance oc- casions, few and far between. Hence, if our motto be, " As our fathers lived, so will we," we will not live long; we w^Il perish in out BODY EMANATIONS. 69 folly, and if we leave descendants behind us, they will be but shadows, the mere outlines of men and women. •- -■ All know that emanations are constantly passing from the body, its impurities, its dead and effete matter, which nature has no use for, and which she is constantly endeavoring to cast off by the pores of the skin, the average num- ber of which for each square inch of the body is estimated by Erasmus Wilson to be two thousand five hundred, or seven millions in all, making, if joined together, a canal twenty- eight miles long, which conducts from the sys- tem every twenty-four hours, in a state of sen- sible perspiration, or water called " sweat," or insensible perspiration, called " vapor," three pounds and a half from one person in the ordi- nary occupations of life, and much more in extraordinary callings. For example, men employed in keeping up the fires in the gas- works, were found to have lost in weight, on an average, over three pounds in forty-five 70 . SLEEP. minutes, wbile some, in an unusually hot place, lost as much as five pounds two ounces in seventy minutes' work. The insensible perspiration from a sleeper during the night, is of itself enough to taint the atmosphere of a whole room, even a large one, as almost every reader has noticed on entering a sleeping-chamber in the morning after having come directly from the out-door air ; and it is the breathing and rebreathing of an atmosphere contaminated in the variety of ways alluded to, which makes the night the time of attack of the great majority of violent human ailments ; it is this which fires the train of impending disease, and which would have been deferred, if not entirely warded off, with the advantages of a pure chamber. It is from close bed-rooms come the racking pains of fever, its torturing thirst, and speedy death ; this it is which wakes up the cholera morbus, the cramp colic, the bilious diarrhea, and the multitudes of other ailments whi ;h surprise us HUMAN EFFLUVIA. 71 in the night-time, and from which, it is worthy of repetition, a night of good sleep in a clean, pure, and well-ventilated chamber would have effected a happy deliverance, as expressed in the familiar phrase of " sleeping it off." It is related that a whole family was once suffering from sickness which no skill of the physician could abate, when accidentaUy a win- dow-glass was broken out, and the means not being at hand for repair, the entire family began to get well ; the cause of the improve- ment was at once suggested to be the broken pane, which admitted a purer air. - It is not known as extensively as it ought to be, that if the effluvia which escapes from the human body in a close room, is breathed by another person, some of the most incurable forms of disease result therefrom, especially the "low fevers," as they are called, as well as " typhoid " ailments, which oppress the whole man, putrefy the blood, take away all sense and feeling, when muttering delirium comes t% SLEEP. on, to be followed apace by a mortal rttupon and the man passes away, but *' makes no sign." All must look upon such a death with " shrinking, and yet it is frequent in the abodes of the poor, whom hard necessity compels to huddle together like pigs in a pen. Lesser de- grees of this crowding together will have a proportionate ill effect, without the possibility of avoidance. The whelming avalanche does not the less come because its motion is not at ' first perceivable, and as inevitably will come the destructive effects of crowded sleeping ' apartments, not only curtailing the health and vigor and life of the sleepers themselves, but in ' perpetuating human infirmity on the innocent ones to whom being is given under the circum- stances. . . . - , The high moral effect of each member of a family occupying separate chambers, will be least contravened by those who know most of ■ human nature. There is great practical truth *' in the saying that " No man is a hero to his DEMORALIZATION OF CROWDING. 73 valet" "All men," said the first Napoleon, " lose on close view." Proofs of this are con- stantly recurring to the observation of the thoughtful. Hence there must be a greater or less depreciatory effect in the close associations of " bed- fellows." Those who, by humanity or self-interest, or in the discharge of official duty, have become familiar with persons living in crowds, have frequently given their testi- mony to the moral debasements, social, physi- cal, and mental, which follow therefrom ; and that these feed on one another, is proven by the testimony of one of the reporters connected with the New- York Daily Times, as detailed in the issue of that journal for the firsi day of July, eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. No person of feeling and refinement can read the account without a shudder. And as these things are in passing, in the middle of the nine- teenth century, in the richest city on the conti- nent, and within five hundred yards of Bioad- way, one of the most magnificent streets in the >7 74 SLEEP. world, occurring every night, being literally a standing institution, it is convincing proof that a book on the subject of human beings herding together, in personal propinquity, is a want of the times. The article referred to is headed " THE ABODES OF THE POOR. VISIT TO THK CELLARS AND ATTICS OP THD FOUBTH WAUD, NEW-YORK CITY. OOW BAT AT MIDlflOHT. " There is no pleasure in visiting the haunts of wretched men and women, and none in writing about them. Indeed, if we tell what makes their abodes most wretched, cleanly peo- ple think we have sullied our sheet. Still, it is wholesome to know how humanity suffers in our midst, how it even contents itself amidst its suffering. We continued our rambles in the Fourth Ward last week. ' ; " A house in Dover street, near Front, for its rickety, lazy look — as if the winds must not visit it too roughly lest it throw up all efforts to maintain its uprightness and crumble down — arrested attention. The policeman said it cow BAY AT MIDNIGHT. 1i would be an ugly place to visit at night, but by daylight was safe enough. Picking our way tlirough the filth on the staircase, we ascended to the second story. A knock on the half- open door of the first room brought no answer. Pushing in, a fat baby, some two years old, whose face was plastered thick with dirt, sat on the floor, a cat purring at her side. On the bed lay a woman dead drunk — a nursing infant cuddled beside her. No other person was visi- ble, about the premises. Before fiightening the baby or alarming the guardian kitten we retreatcid. In the next room two women were idly gossiping. We asked who lived in the room we had just left. They said it was a woman who had gone out somewhere. In the third room, a woman was washing — she said she knew nothing about the rest of the house, and didn't know what rent she paid. Ascend- ing another flight of stairs that creaked and trembled at every step, we found one vacant room under the attic. In another a woman lay drunk on the floor, face upward, snoring heav- ily. Two children, about three and seven years old, were playing together. There was no means of exit from this house except by 76 SLEEP. the frontdoor. The out-house of the concern wafl accessible through the adjoining shed, where a negro kept a rum shop. ■ " We next visited the collars in James street, between Oak and Madison. One of them, kept by a man of insignificant stature, but consider- able selfrcspect, was particularly interesting. This and the adjoining house are old two-story shanties ; still, one of thorn rented last year for $387. For the two, $550 was offered and refused this year. The collar was just deep enough fbr us to stand erect in with our hats on. It was fitted up for lodgers. It contained no bedsteads, but on the left side as we entered, two shelves were placed against the wall, one above the other, making accommodations for four beds. A door on the right opened into a room where more shelves were placed for the same purpose. Stooping low to avoid a beam, we passed to the rear-room, where were a stove, a few kitchen utensils, and three more beds. Passing into the area behind, we thought we had seen the last bed, but the landlord opened the door of what was built for an ash-hole, atid pointing through the darkness to a heap of rags, said that it was his bed. The side of a LODGING CELLARS. ft shoe-box fastened by leathern hinges, stood as a door to what we took for a dog-kennel — but he said it contained anotlier bed. All iold, the beds numbered eleven. Our policeman said lie had seen one of them occupied by a woman and her five children. The landlord protested, however, that he only took in male lodgers, and " some of them were gentlemen too — cap- tains who sailed their own boats, having been on a bit of a spree, and coming here to sleep it off before going on board." He charged a shil- ling a night for lodgers, and meant to take none but those he knew ; but they wouM break his door down if he didn't take them in, so some- times his company wasn't so select as he would choose to have it. " In the next cellar were three women. They too took lodgers, but only families that they knew. While the two who belonged on the premises were quietly responding to our in- quiries, a young woman, who sat on the side of a bed, gaudy in a high-colored and low-necked dress, suddenly burst out in a very loud tone of voice, but decidedly a low tone of morality, that her cha-rack-ter was being assailed ; that she knew some body who would not stand it ; 7* 78 SLEEP. that if some folks could not attend to their own business, she knew some body who knew what was what, etc. The two ladies of the cellar fell to quieting their gayly-dressed visitor, in such loud tones of entreaty to shut up and be civil^ and not be offended, and of assurance that no body meant her, whereupon she grew so much more turbulent, and they so much more demon- strative in thei^ efforts to hush her, that the policeman on that beat turned in to see what the row was, and we prudently retreated. " Our next visit was '.o the famous Cherry street tenement-house. It consists of cwo build- ings, both standing with their ends toward Cherry-street, one double the width of the other. Between them runs * Gotham-court,* into which the lower entry-ways open. 'East Gotham-court ' is the alley into which the den- izens of one half of the larger building debouch. T\e wisdom of the builders of this five-story box )f b^ick and m( .tar for the packing of mortnla, led them, when there was a fair oppor- tunity t*"" get a ventilation, carefully to exclude it. If you enter from Gotham-court, Tishing to get through to Last Gotham court, there is no wa) but te climb to "\e roof and pass down THE TENEMENT-HOTTSE. 79 again five flights of steps, and if a current of air should feel inspired to blow through, it would need to take the same route, which of course it would refuse to take, and die out first, vainly endeavoring to dilute the prevalent stench. As if eight feet w'Jth of air, walled in between two five story buildings, might still be rathd* raw and cool for the lungs of those whose windows open upon it, the proprietors of the place have erected at the far end of the court a blacksmith shop, whose perpetual emis- sion of charcoal smoke and heat tempered the summer wind to the pretty well shorn lambs inside. Five years ago the Croton water pipes were laid on each floor, but since then they have been taken out ; and if, under the eaves of this model tenement, a weary woman should resolve to try "^he virtue of cleanliness, she must fii-st descend to the foot of all the stairs to fill and then tug up to the top again with her pail of water. Some ninety-six families claim this abode as their home, and pay va- riously from ,"^4.50 to $6 rent. It has no cel- lar, but from every hall a flight of steps leads down to a diu i unr'er the pavement of the oourt^ that empties into the street-sewer. Over 80 SLEEP. tliis drain are erected the water-closets, without doors. The stench that emanates from this drain, and that is thrown back from the sewer, pervades the whole place. A more successful device to poison slowly, on a large scale, hun- dreds of poor people, could not easily be con- ceived. "This ended our tour for the day. The wretchedness it exposed seemed as if it could scarcely be paralleled in a civilized city, but to some of the miserable shanties we looked back after our next expedition, and in comparison they seemed cleanly, wholesome, and tolera- blel " It was late Sunday night when our party set out from the Sixth Ward Station-house, under convoy of Sergeant Preston, and another oflScer, who took the lead, lantern in hand. The first cellar visited was at No. 35 Baxter street. Down half a dozen rickety steps, the door was already open to one of the filthiest, blackest holes we had yet seen. The stout Irishman, who claimed to be landlord, assured us that we should find clean sheets in his lodg- ing-house, whereat we laughed, supposing him to be of a merry turn ; but he was in earnest— NIGHT LODGINGS. 81 he washed them himself every Thursday, he said. We looked in vain for sheets, however ; they might have been there, but all the bed- clothes were of one color, whatever their tex- ture. There were bunks arranged along the wall, two or three deej), a 1 in most of them men or women, black or white, sleeping soundly. The glare of the lantern in their eyes did not disturb them at all — ^pretty clearly indicating the possession of consciences cleaner than their faces, or that the sleeper had had the run of the back-door into the liquor-shops during the day. The landlord charged six- pence a night for lodging, and lodged none under any circumstances but honest hard-work- ing people — which statement the police received with smiles and without contradiction. Two inner rooms were equally well occupied — in one of the hideous beds two children sleeping as sweetly as if their couch had been down, and the horrible den a cottage. The older sister of these children was out begging even at this hour. " In another cellar close by, a young woman jvith a single scanty garment on, sat on a chest crying. That old woman's husband, she said, 82 SLEEP. (the keeper of the place,) had been ' banging his wife, and hit her a lick sideways that al- most killed her.' The wretch had kicked an- other girl so severely that she had gone to bed early in the day and not got up since. The person thus alluded to, lay on a pile of shavings in the corner of the room, snoring vigorously. The old woman, wife of the brute who admin- istered the ' banging,' the ' sideways lick,' and the * kick,' sat on the side of her bed in very good spirits. The old man was a little wild when he was in liquor, but he'd gone now, and that was a comfort. She sympathized with the crying woman, and said it was a shame to treat the other girl as he did, but he'd gone now. She evidently was disposed to let by- gones be by-gones. There was a child asleep in a cradle, whose mother was also asleep in another bed. Two men slept soundly in the next bunk, and never minded the light sud- denly flashed on them from the lantern. But the state-bed, the one that occupied the central position, and looked as if a double fare had to be paid for its use, was occupied by a stalwart negro. * Then you have no prejudices about color?' we asked. 'No,' said the old woman, SCENES IN NEW-YORK. * he pays for his bed, and his money is as good as any body's.' " The next visit was to a spot a little south of the Ladies' Five Points Mission-room. The access to it was through a long, winding hall. Reaching the end, the door of one room stood half- open, through which a giant negro was visible, lying in bed, and, by the light of a candle, reading a yellor -covered novel. ' Who's there ?' he asked, but as no one an- swered, he kept his eyes on the crack of the door, though the book was still held in its place. But it was at an adjoining door at which the officer knocked. The only answer was a volley of oaths. Another knock and another explosion of oaths. ' Come, Mose, turn up and let us in,' said the officer, and his voice seemed to explain the matter, for there was soon heard a noise inside as of Mose fumb- ling for his clothes, and of feet shuffling oil' into a distant part of the room. At last Mose was ready. He turned a key, took down two bars, drew a bolt, and took the lighted match handed to him. A bottle in the center of the floor held the candle, to which he applied the light, and Mose's quarters were dimly visible It lored most of the rooms that are entered from this noted alley. Climbing to the top of one of the furthest up, much knocking on the door brought an answer from a gray-haired old man who deplored his poverty. He used to take lodgers, but all his bed-clothes had been stolen, and now he had none, but lived in filthy solitude. In another attic room a black man owned the drunken white woman at his feet on thv) floor as his new wife. Three wretched white women were in a corner, one of whom protested that theirs was the true DKGRADATIONS OF CUOWDING. 87 happy family, but their ribaldry degenerated into angry oaths and curses on us as we left. A vacant room adjoining emitted a most sick- ening odor, and for causes that were apparent on entering it. In another an infant was cry- ing. A woman of reputable appearance and cleanly, who was trying to comfoii; it, with a scowl of despair on her face, said her husband was away, locked up now three months, as a witness. And so they all were, each with a tale of misery to tell, or if asleep, with a still more hopeless story written in their faces. Some of these people pay rents that would se- cure for them decent apartments in decent parts of the city. But they seldom leave them, ex- cept to go up to Blackwell's Island, or to their common lodging in the ditch of Potter's Field." That the same degradations, social, civil, and moral, are found in other countries and other ages, to result from many persons herding to- gether in the same small house, or hut, or single apartment, and that a change to larger apart- ments and more roomy buildings, effects a like change in social character and position, 88 SLKEP. is strikingly illustrated by a writer of the past age. " The town of Cardington, England, was one of the worst loealities in the kingdom. Like all others of their elass, the huts of the people were huddled together, were dirty, ill- built, ill-drained, impcrfeetly lighted and wa- tered, and altogether, so badly eonditioned and unhealthy, as to be totally unfit for the resi- denee of human beings. While thus miserably cabined, compelled to be uncleanly on their do- mestic hearths, uneomfoi*tablc in their homes, any attertipt to improve their minds, to induce them to become more sober, industrious, and home-loving was useless, except by first aim- ing to improve their physical condition, to supply them with the means of comfort, at- taching them thus to their own fireside, the great center of all pure feelings and sound morals, to foster and develop in them a relish for simple domestic enjoyments and thus open to them a way to the attainment of such mo- derate intellectual pleasures, as their lot in life did not forbid," To these wise and humane ends the first HOVELS AND corrAdEs. 89 step taken waa to render the Lomea of the poor fitter dwellings for self-reapccting men, by removing the mud huts, and replacing them with luind.some little cottages, and in a few years, Cardington became one of the most orderly and prosperous localities in the king- dom ; the people kept their homes neat, clean and comfortable, while they themselves became honest, sober, industrious, and religious; and at the end of nearly a hundred years, this same village is distinguished for the order, regularity, respectability, and thrift of its in- habitants. These' changes, be it remembered, were commenced by exchanging the contracted mud hut of the family, for the roomier and more inviting cottage. In these mud huts, as in Ireland to-day, which the author has visited in person, a whole family dwells, of half a dozen or more, in the one single room, which answers at once for kitchen, chamber, dining- room, and parlor. In such a mode of life there must be degradation, self-debasement 8* IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // ^ >% 1.0 1.1 1.25 150 "^^ ■ 25 1^ 12.2 -Itt ■ lis 14 2.0 11111= 1.4 11.6 III ^ /} '?; t V ** ''W '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 90 SLEEP. and disease, proving Mly all that was charged on a previous page ; and more, that the breaking up of this huddling, crowded life, with other things which naturally follow in their train, is the first, the essential step to- wards elevating the people and fitting them for the duties of citizenship and religion. The force of the above statements, which are corroborated by other writers, will be par- ried perhaps, by those living in the country, by saying that they apply only to the crowded portions of large cities, but that those who live in separate dwellings in the healthful and pure atmosphere of the country, need not be specially careful in having large airy rooms for each individual member of the family. To this it may be replied, that Dr. Green- how, in an official paper on " The Preventa- bility of certain kinds of Premature Death," published in London in eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, states that one half of the deaths occurring m a certain district within a period ATMOSPHERIC TAINTS. 91 of seven years, were of persons under tweii' ty years of age, and that such a result — " Does not require large aggregations of im- purity for development. A neglected sewer, ash - pit or cess-pool, an unsound soil pipe, whether in town or country, may be all that is required. " The farm-house or laborer's cottage, nay the mansion of the squire, though situated in the most healthy district, if putrefying animal and vegetable refuse is permitted to taint its immediate atmosphere, is as liable to be in- vaded by fever, as the town Cvvelling in a close alley. " The taint of the atmosphere in the vicinity of fermenting and decaying matter, proceeds chiefly from the gases, but partly also from organic matter, in a state of active decomposi- tion. Lctherby and Barker most thoroughly demonstrate, not only how certainly sewerage gases affect both health and life, but how small I, proportion of the gases are capable of extin- guishing of life, giving rise to forms of disease according to the intensity and duration of their administration. 92 SLEEP. " The demonstrations of Dr. Barker were chiefly in the way of experiment. Exposure by means of a suitable and mgenious contri- vance, to the gas of a large cess-pool, proved fatal to a mouse, and produced in larger ani- mals a series of symptoms analogous to those of febrile disease. Sulphurcted hydrogen, car- bonic acid and ammonia, (hartshorn,) the prin- cipal and most deleterious components of sew- age gas, were experimented with separately. Of the first, less than two per cent in the air killed a puppy in two minutes and a half, and so small a proportion as forty -three hundredths (or less than one half of one per cent) killed another within the hour. " A dog exposed to an atmosphere contain- ing one quarter of one per cent of the gas, died in nine hours and a half, but another in the same description of atmosphere, suffered at first, but soon recovered. Others were more violently affected in a less contaminated air. " Hartshorn and its salts produced what may be unhesitatingly considered typhoid symptoms ; and prostration and diarrhea followed the in- halation of carbonic acid in small proportions.'' Two most important facts developed by EMANATIONS IN THAMES TUNNEL. 93 these statements are, first, that different in- dividuals arc aifected with a different degree of violence on exposure to the very same causes of sickness, as was exhibited in the matter of the "National Hotel Disease." Second, the small "^ mount of a deleterious gas mixed with the atmosphere, sufficient to produce disease. Let it be remarked that sulphureted hydrogen, carbonic p.cid and ammonia, so small a proportion of which be- ing mixed in a pure atmosphere causes disease and death, are the very gases which are given out in largest proportions by a sleeper, and the usual standing liquids of a chamber. In the cutting of the Thames Tunnel, the workmen suffered seriously from the delete- rious gas. Falling away in flesh, low fever, and actual death, were the result in several cases, and this, when all chemical tests, and those of the most delicate kind, failed to dis- cover more tlian one part of the gas in a him- 94 SLEEP. dred thousand of the air in which they worked. These facts show beyond denial, that it matters not how healthful the location of a man's residence may be, whether in city, village or country, whether on a plain or on a mountain-top — if there are causes in opera- tion which taint the atmosphere of the room in which he spends hours together, disease will inevitably resultj and speedily. And as crowding in rooms and sleeping together in the same bed, are indisputable causes of a vitiated atmosphere, it would seem to be an imperative duty on the part of all reflecting persons, to make it a study how to best secure large, airy, well-vontilated rooms to sleep in, one person in a bed, and, as often as practica- ble, one apartment to each perscm. In order to make an ineffaceable impression on the reader's mind, of the immediate deadly effects of breathing a bad air, the very kind of air which comes from the lungs at each «jut- FATAL EXPERIMENTS. 96 breathing, to wit, Carbonic Acid Gas, the fol- lowing memorandum of a French gentleman is given verbatim. From some cause, he became tired of life, and not being willing to commit the fearful crime of self destruction, without having something useful connected with it, he wrote a statement of his sensations as long as he was able to trace an intelligible line, thus secu- ring for himself an immortality, which, perhaps, could never have been achieved by him in any- other way. M. Deal resolved to destroy him- self by burning charcoal in a close room, and thus narrates: "I have thought it useful in the interest of science, to make known the effects of charcoal upon man. I place a lamp, a candle and a watch on my table, and commence the cere- mony. " It is a quarter-past ten ; I have just lighted the stove ; the charcoal burns feebly. " Twenty minutes past ten ; the pulse is calm, and beats at its usual rate. " Thirty minutes past ten ; a thick vapor 96 SLEEP. gradually fills the room ; the candle is nearly extinguished ; I begin to feel a violent head- ache ; my eyes fill with tears ; I feel a general sense of discomfort ; the pulse is agitated. " Forty minutes past ten ; my candle has gone out ; the lamp still burns ; the veins at my tem- ple throb as if they would burst; I feel very sleepy ; I suflfer horribly in the stomach ; my pulse is at eighty degrees. " Fifty minutes past ten ; I am almost stifled ; strange ideas assail me. ... I can scarce- ly breathe. ... I shall not go far There are symptoms of madness. . . "Sixty minutes past ten ; I can scarcely write. . . . my sight is troubled. . . . My lamp is going out. ... I did not think it would be such agony to die. . . . ten . . ". . Here followed some quite illegible characters. Life had ebbed. On the following morning he was found on the floor." The expired breath is loaded with Carbonic Acid, which was the agent of death, in the case just cited. The fatal eflfects were produced in a little over an hour. But not less destructive are the results of breathing the atmospher of a EFFECTS OF BAD Allt. 97 room crowded with human beings, as was terri- bly illustrated in the passage of the steamer Londonderry, which loft Liverpool on the sec- ond of December, eighteen hundred and forty- eight, for an Irish sea-port. A sudden and fearful sto'm came on, which threatened the immediate destruction of the vessel. In order to allow the sailors the fullest opportunity of managing the ship well, the passengers, two hundred in number, were required to go below into the cabin, which was eighteen feet long, eleven wide, and seven high. The hatches were closed, and a stout tarpaulin was fastened over the only entrance, so as to prevent the passen- gers from coming on deck in their uncontrolla- ble alarm. There is no evidence to suppose that the captain acted otherwise than in good faith. He took the course, best calculated in his own opinion, to secure the safety of the ves- sel and passengers, but he was fearfully igno- rant of the nature of bad air and human ema- nations; as much so, perhaps, as some who 9 98 SLEEP. may read these lines. lie acted on the " spur of tlie moment ;" there is no time for delibera- tion in a sudden, fearful storm at sea. The re- sult, however, was, that in a short time, in the fearful agony of the death-struggle, tlie surging mass of suffocating unfortunates burst open the hatches and poured out on the deck, the blood started from nose, eyes, and ears, and horrible convulsions agonized the sufferers. Many were dying, seventy-two were already dead I What they endur.d, no pen has described; but in the very nature of the case, they must have en- dured the terrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta, already referred to ; and in the wish to produce complete conviction on the reader's mind as to the corrupting influences which human emana- tions have on the atmosphere of a close room, and as to the deadly effects of breathing such an air, the description of Commander Holwell is given, as printed in the Annual Register for seventeen hundred and fifty-eight, rie, himself, having been one of the prisoners. BLACK IlOhK OF CALCUTTA. 99 " Figure to yourself the situation of a hun- dred and forty-six wretches, exhausted by continual fatigue and action, crammed together in a cube of eighteen feet, in a close sultry- night in Bengal, shut up to the eastward and southward (the only quarter whence air could reach us) by dead walls, and by a wall and door to the north, open only to the westward by two windows strongly barred with iron, from which we could receive scarce any circu- lation of fresh air. . . We had been but a few minutes confined before every one fell into a perspiration so profuse, you can form no idea of it. This brought on a raging thirst, which increased in proportion as the body was drained of its moisture. Various expedients were thought of to give more room and air. To gain the former it was moved to put off their clothes ; this was approved as a happy motion, and in a few moments every one was stripped — myself, Mr. Court, and the two young gentle- men by me, excepted. For a little while they flattered themselves with having gained a mighty advantage ; every hat was put in mo- tion to gain a circulation of air, and Mr. Baiilie proposed that every man should sit on his 100 sriiEf. hnins. This expedient was several times put in practice, and at ea"li time many of the poor creatures, whose natural strength was less tlian that of others, or who hud been more exhausted, and could not immediatiily recover their legs,, when the word was given to rise — fell to rise no more, for they W(^re instantly trod to death or suffocated. When tlie wlu^le body sat down, they were so closely wedged together that tiiey were obliged to use many efforts before they could get up again. Before nine o'clock every man's thirst grew intolerable, and respiration difficult. Efforts were made to force the door, but in vain. Many insults were used to the guard to provoke them to fire on us. For my own part, I hitherto felt little pain or uneasi- ness, but what resulted from my anxiety for the suff^;rings of those witlim. By keeping my fiice eljse between two of the bars I ol»tained air enough to give my lungs easy play, though my perspiration was excessive, and thirst com- mencing. At this period, so strong a urinous volatile effluvia came from the prison, that I was not able to turn my head that way for more than a few se<',()nds at a time. "Now every bod}', e\ce})t those situated EFFECTS OF CIIOWDED ROOMS. 101 in and near the windows, began to grow out- rageous, and many delirious. Water I water 1 became the general cry. An old Jcmmantdaar, taking pity on us, ordered the people to bring US some skins of water. This was what I dreaded. I foresaw it would prove the ruin of the small chance left us, and essayed many times to speak to him privately to forbid it being brought ; but the clamor was so loud it became impossible. The water appeared. Words can not paint the universal agitation and raving the sight of it threw us into. I flat- tered myself thnt some, by preserving an equal temper of mind, might outlive the night ; but now the reflection that gave me the greatest pain was, that I saw no possibility of one escaping to tell the dismal tale. Until the water came, I had not myself suffered much from thiidi, which instantly grew excessive. We had no means of conveying it into the prison but by hats forced through the bars ; and thus myself, and Coles, and Scott, supplied them as fast as possible. But those who have experienced intense thirst, or are acquainted with the cause and nature of this appetite, will be sufficiently sensible it could receive no more 9* 102 SLEEP. than a momentary alleviation ; the cause still subsisted. Though we brought full hats through the bars, there ensued such violent struggles and frequent contests to get it, that before it reached the lips of any one, there would be scarcely a small teacupful left in them. These supplies, like sprinkling water on fire, only seemed to feed the flame. my dear sir I how shall I give you a just concep- tion of what I felt at the cries and cravings of those in the remoter parts of the prison, who could not entertain a probable hope of ob- taining a drop, yet could not divest themselves of expectation, however unavailing, calling on me by the tender considerations of affection and friendship. The confusion now became general and horrid. Several quitted the other window (the only chance they had for life) to force their way to the water, and the throng and press upon the window was beyond bear- ing ; many, forcing their w aj from the further part- of the room, pressed down those in their passage who had less strength, and trampled them to death. "From abou!- nine to eleven 1 sustained this cruel scene, still supplying them \vrith TERRIBLE SCENES. 108 water, though my legs were almost broke with the weight against them. By this time I my- self was near pressed to death, and my two companions, with Mr. Parker, who had forced himself to the window, were really so. At last I became so pressed and wedged up, I wag de- prived of all motion. Determined now to give every thing up, I called to them, as a last in- stance of their regard, that they would relieve the pressure upon me, ind permit me to retire out of the window to die in quiet. They gave Aray, and with much difficulty I forced a pas- sage into the center of the prison, where the throng was less by the many dead, amounting to one third, and the numbers who flocked to the windows ; for by this time they had water also at the other window. ... I laid my- self down on some of the dead, and, recom- mending myself to Heaven, had the comfort of thinking my sufferings could have no long duration. My thirst now grew insupportable, and the difficulty of breathing much increased ; and I Lad not remained in this situation ten minutes before I was seized with a pain in my breast, and palpitation of heart, both to the aiost exquisite degree. These obliged me to 104 SLEEP. get up again, but still the pain, palpitation, and difficulty of breathing increased. I re- tained my senses notwithstanding, and had the grief to see deaih not so near me as I had hoped, but could no longer bear the pains I suffered, without attempting a relie:^ which I knew fresh air would and could only give me. I instantly determined to push for the window opposite me, and by an effort of double the strength I ever before possessed, gained the third rank at it — with one hand seized a bar, and by that means gained a second, though I think there were at least six or seven ranks between me and the window. In a few mo- ments the pain, palpitation, and difficultly of breathing ceased, but the thirst continued in- tolerable. I called aloud : ' Water, for God's sake I' I had been concluded dead ; but as soon as the men found me amongst them, they Lstill had the respect and tenderness for me to cry out, ' Give him water ! ' nor would one of them at the window attempt to touch it till I had drunk. But from the water I had no re- lief; my thirst was rather increased by it; so I determined to drink no more, but patiently wait the event. I kept my mouth moist from TERRIBLE SCENES. 105 time to time by sucking the perepiration out of my shirt-sleeves, and catching the drops as they fell like heavy rain from my head and face; you can hardly imagine how unhappy I was if any of them escaped my mouth. I was observed by one of my com- panions on the right, in the expedient of al- laying my thirst by sucking my shirt-sleeve. He took the hint, and robbed me from time to time of a considerable part of my store, though, after I detected him, I had the ad- dress to begin on that sleeve first when I thought my reservoirs were sufl&ciently replen- ished, and our mouths and noses often met in contact. This man was one of the few who escaped death, and he has since paid me the compliment of assuring me he believed he owed his life to the many comfortable draughts he had from my sleeves. No Bristol water could be more soft or pleasant than what arose from perspiration. " By half-past eleven the much greater num- ber of those living were in an outrageous delirium, and others quite ungovernable; few retaining any calmness but the ranks near the windows. They now all found that water, 106 SLEEP. instead of relieving their uneasiness, rathet hightened it, and Air ! air I was the general cry. Every insult that could be devised against the guard was repeated to provoke them to fire on us, every man that could, rushing tumultuously towards the windows with eager hopes of I leeting the first shot. But these failing, they vhose strength and spirits were quite exhausiv^d laid themselves down, and quietly expired upon their fellows ; others who had yet some strength and vigor left, made a last effort for the windows, and several suc- ceeded by leaping and scrambling over the backs and heads of those in the first ranks, and got hold of the bars, from which there Was no removing them. Many to the right and left sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon suffocated; for now a steam arose from the living and the dead which affected us in all its circumstances, as if we were forcibly held by our heads over a bowl of strong volatile spirit of hartshorn until suffocated ; nor could the effluvia of the one be distinguished from the other. I need not ask your commiseration when I tell you that in this plight from half an hour after eleven till two in the morning, 1 TERRORS OF SUFFOCATION. 107 sustained the weight of a heavy man with his knees on my back, and the pressure of his whole body on my head ; a Dutch sergeant who had taken his seat on my left shoulder, and a black soldier bearing on my right : all which nothing would have enabled mc to support but the props and pressure equally sustaining me all round. The two latter I frequently dis- lodged by shifting my hold on the bars, and driving my knuckles into their ribs ; but my friend above stuck fast, and, as he held by two bars, was immovable. The repeated trials I made to dislodge this insufferable incumbrance upon me, at last quite exhausted me, and to- wards two o'clock, finding I must quit the window or sink where I was, I resolved on the former, having borne truly, for the sake of others, infinitely more for life than the best of it is worth. "I was at this time sensible of no pain, and little uneasiness. I found a stupor coming on apace, and laid myself down by that gallant old man, the Reverend Jervas Bellamy, who lay dead with his son, the lieutenant, hand in hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison. Of what passed in the interval, to the time of re- 108 ■ SLEEP surrection from this hole of horrors, I can give you no account." Surely, further argument can not be needed to produce a practical conviction on the read- er's mind of the absolute necessity to health, of so arranging, that these destructive, human em- anations shall not accumulate in the chambers where a third of existence is passed, but that while as few of them as possible shall be emitted, even these should be swept away by such ventilating contrivances as will most effi- ciently secure so desirable an object; the two first steps being large rooms and separate beds. A conjectural reason forms another argu- ment against two persons sleeping near each other. Each individual has an amount of electrical influence, which in its normal pro- portion, is health to him. Electricity, like air and water, tends constantly to an equi- librium, and when two bodies come near each other, having different quantities, that which SLEEPING WITH OTHERS. 109 has the greater imparts to that which hart the less, until both are equal. The lightning and the thunder are caused by this exchange between a cloud which has plus, and another which has its own share, minus. Wind is the passing of air from a section which has more to a another which has less. But if a human body, with its healthful share of elec- tricity or other influence, gives part of it to another which has less, it gives away just that much of its life, and must die, unless it is recovered in some way ; hence the frequent fact, which it needs no authority to substan- tiate, that a healthy young infant, who sleeps with an old person, will wither and wilt and wane and die. Thus, also, the healthy have been observed to grow diseased themselves, by sleeping with sickly persons In the author's experience, of some twenty years, in the special study and treatment of common consumption of the lungs, the fact tias stood out with constant confirmations, that 10 110 SLEEP. of the widows and widowers applying for relief, quite a large proportion had lost their companions by consumption. On the other hand, no facts have come to light as yet, which prove that the more weak or sickly person is at all benefited by what injures the healthier party. If then, two clouds of diflferent electrical states, can not approach each other without a mutual change of conditions, and if a man, who has an electrical state, natural and healthful to him, comes near another in an unhealthful state, it would seem demonstrative that harm, by an unchangeable physical law, must fall to the healthier, without benefiting the other; and that sleeping together in the same bed, is a certain injury, and ought to be avoided as a habit, by every reflecting person, who is so fortunate as to have the means of having a **oom and a bed to himself. It certainly is undeniable, that influences are exchanged, call them what we may, which waste away the life now TO SLEEP SOINDLY. Ill of the child, and make it witlier tand wilt and die, like a flower without water. The same is true of tlie robust sleeping with the weakly ; and the feeble sleeping with the strong. This int(;rchange of influence from close associa- tion, is such, that in the course of years, the man and wife have been taken for brother and sister. But it is a law of nature, enforced by authority, human and divine, that kindred shall not intermarry ; observation shows that it detiiriorates the race morally, mentally, and physically. This may point to the fact that human health, that the perfection of our physical nature, at least its preservation, is dependent to a great extent on intermarriages between persons who are at as great a remove as possible from one another, and, we may say, of electrical states, as different as possible. Ix must be confessed that this is conjecture as to the system, but the one fact is clear, that sleeping together in the same bed is des- tructive to health as between the old and the 112 SLEEP. young, as between the well and the sick, and we may infer as between persons of (lifTeieat constitutions. A beneficent Providence has wisely ordered that the preservation and perpetuation of the race should depend on the gratification of certain appetites and propensities, and that such gratifications should be pleasurable. But a high wisdom dictates that these should not be blunted by immoderate indulgence, nor marred by too frequent repetition ; and it should be remembered that they are all under the same general laws, for infinite wisdom avoids unnecessary complications and diversi- ties. "Few and simple" may be considered the description of all the regulations neces sary for the preservation of corporeal man. "Regularity and moderation" is written on all that gives us pleasure, with a wise view that it should wear out only with life, and that at a good old age. The regulations connected with eating, drinking, sleeping, etc., INSTINCT AND REASON. 113 are so much alike, the t.^mptations to over- indulgence so conntant, the necessity of re- straint so apparent, and the evils of excess as to times and amounts, so much to be dreaded, that a volume might be filled in illustrating each. It may, however, suffice to treat only of one or two, leaving it to the intelligence and aptness of the reader to make a general application, and thus much time and space will be saved, while the practical lessons will be equally valuable. Instinct is given to the brute, but diviner reason to man — the great end and aim of both being the preservation and perpetuation of the species of each. This instinct and reason were implanted for the purpose of re- gulating the enjoyment of those pleasures which are wisely and benevolently made a happiness and a necessity. Instinct leads the brute to the indulgence of the appetites, and how often and how much it shall eat and drink and sleep is apportioned in a manner 10* 114 SLEKP. which makes excess impracticable ; hence there is a happy (^xi^mption from the mil- lion forms of disease and pain and suffering belonging to the lot of man. He was made of a nobler njiture, and was treated as a nobleman, in that he waa not bound down to rules and regulations as inflexible as fet- ters of brass, but was left to govern him- self, to choose for himself, to act for him- self, with the reward of elevation here, and happiness hereafter, if he deported himself well ; but y,'Iih the penalty of suffering and death, physical and moral, if he failed to practice a high and wise and dignified self- restraint, the first element of which, as to eating, drinking, and sleeping, is uniformity'. A certain amount of sleep rests, renews, and strengthens the whole man, but to accomplish such a result, sleep must be regular. As to what constitutes regularity, it is only neces- sary to remark, that the general l\abit should be to relire at the same hour in the early now TO SLEEP SOUNDLY. 116 evening of every day. In a short time the result will be an ability to go to sloop within a few moments aftor retiring, and to sleep con- tinuously until morning, provided the sleeper leaves his bed at the moment he first wakes up, and does not sleep during the day. In this way sleep will be refreshing, will be de- licious, and to the busy worker of brain or body, will be worth more than silver or gold, and this priceless habit of sleeping soundly will be continued to a good old age. It is in ore sense a daily miracle that a man wakes up out of sleep ; the more it is considered, the more wonderful will it ap- pear. With a regularity of retiremert, and arranging to guard against interruptions, na- ture wakes us up the very moment the sys- tem has had enough repose, the propensity to sleep will come on within a few minutes of the regular time, will grow stronger until it is yielded to, and eventually will become m a measure irresistible, or its resistance will 116 SLEEP. be attended with great discomfort. Another result will be that the body will wake up from sleep within a few minutes of the same point of time, from one month's end to an- other, bein^i^ a little sooner or a little later, making variations according to the tempera- ture of the weather, the condition of the at- mosphere, and the amount of the exercise of the preceding day. Thus it is with other desires of the animal nature. Let there be an appointed time, not to be changed for any common reason ; the feelings will come at that appointed time, and when satisfied, nature calls for no more until the appointed time comes round again. But suppose enoiigh sleep is not given. Suppose we make an effort to rob nature of her due allowance, madness, unending and hopeless, is the result; if the curtailment is not great, various degrees of debility and wasting and decline come on apace. Suppose, on the other hand, it is attempted ■"1 SLEEPING AND EATING COMPARED. 117 to force more sleep on nature than she re- quires, it is an unnatural sleep, it does not rest a:^id refresh and invigorate; and instead of having more good sleep, the whole of it is rcotless and disturbed, and we lose the lusciousness of it all. As to eating, there is a remarkable paral- lel. If a man eats when he is decidedly hungry, and at regular hours of the day, not stimulating or teasing or tempting the appe- tite by a great variety of food or otherwise, he will be regularly hungry under ordinary circumstances, will digest his food well, and will not desire it especially, except at the stated times. If, on the other hand, the pppetite is stimulated, if it is tempted, or if a person places himself in a situation where food can be had for the turning round, or for the stretching out of the hand, and it is taken when there is no special desire for it, and 118 SLEEP. when the person would just as lief let it alone as to take it, under these circumstances a fictitious and an unnatural appetite will be created, the digestion will be deranged, a de- praved craving for food will be set up; but no sooner is it swallowed, than some trouble- some feeling will arise, only to be arrested by another gratification ; and thuy the whole life is a craving, an unsatisfied desire, and so much of a burden that the predominating wish is to die. In this same manner have multitudes fallen from high positions into degrading habits of beastly intoxication, by allowing themselves to have convenient drinks at hand, and at first to taste them, not for any particular re- lish, but just tO be doing something; and having no regular hours for drink, and no regular quantity, an unnatural desire springs up, a steady craving is generated, increasing in its remorselessness day by day, until there REGULARITY OF GRATIFICATION^ 119 is no happiness but in constant indulgence, when at length even that ceases to satisfy, •5,' 1 life is a torture. The appetites, tlen, are to be gratiiSed at stated times, and at none others; they are not to be teased or tempted or stimulated by always having at hand the facilities for grati- fication, but kept in abeyance for fixed oc- casions; those occasions being determined at first by the decided calls of nature, which will then be made regularly, moderately, and continuously, to the end of life. -> ; i c But if the means of gratification are kept at hand, if the mind is permitted to rest on them and cherish them, to look forward to them, to tempt and tease and worry, the in- evitable result will be a morbid appetite, p voracious craving never to be satisfied, ener^ gies wasted, powers prostrated, and an early and irretrievable decay, inducing, in a greater multitude of cases than one in many would iraagina, a depressed and soured life, and a '" • r 120 SLEEP. miserable suicide's grave. If the victim sur- vives incessant tortures, life is but a drawn- out agony. Inordinate indulgence wastes away the physical constitution, the influence of which is perpetuated to all that is born of it; throwing around the hapless victim the slimy coils of a boa-constrictor, which are tightened pitilessly every day, until health and hope, and life itself, mortal and im- mortal, are crushed out helplessly and for- ever. What is said of real but unlawful indulgen- ces, is true of all forms of the artificial ; and ex- cesses in the lawful are not the less pernicious, are not the less destructive of body and health, and heart and soul, than are excesses in the un- natural and the unlawful ; and in this state- ment there is a lesson of the very highest prac- tical importance to every reader ; hence, one of the grounds for the pains taken in these pages to convince the understanding, that as to the appetites of our nature, barriers should be op- RESTRAINT OF APPETITES. 121 posed to the too inordinate and too facile op- portunities of gratification ; and that as to them all, there should be such metes and bounds as the nobler reason may indicate, and as observation and experience may show are proper, healthful and safe. Without wise re- straints, as exp3rienced physicians well know, effects, unsuspected by the sufferers themselves, or by their friends, are sometimes induced, which have a deplorable influence on mind and body; as to the latter, wearing it away into hopeless emaciation and decline ; and as to the mind, inducing an exaggeration of many of the most undesirable characteristics of our nature ; it becomes unsteady, vacillating, fretful, mo- rose and suspicious ; self-respect and self-esteem are lost ; an intolerable depression weighs down the whole man ; hope, and desire, and ambition fail, and relief is madly sought in suicide, the sorrowful verdict being, "Died by his own hand ;" a verdict rendered, oftener than many 11 122 SLEEP. think for, over the doubly dishonored body; dishonored in the manner of the death, and more deeply still by the degrading causes of it. Such being some of the results of over-indul- gences, thoughtful persons naturally seek for some rule of guidance, and we are not left without an index, without some friendly line of right and safety. Kevelation seems to mark out that line, interposes a mete and bound, de- cides the measure of our gratifications in the comprehensive expressions : " Be ye temperate in all things." " Let your moderation be known to all." If this temperance is not ob- served, if this moderation is not practiced habit- ually, persistently, and with a wise, noble, he- roic self-denial, the penalty will not fail to be inflicted, pleasure will first lose its keenness, next, it will pall upon the senses, and ultimate- ly fail. In one direction, the power of sleep has been lost ; in another, the appetite for food has been lost ; and the person becomes the vie- EXTINCTION OF FAMILY NAMES. . 123 tim of ills, physical, mental and moral, which make of life a crushing burden, a miserable failure, and a continual curse. It is to the excessive indulgence of the appe- tite which leisure and easy opportunity affords in large cities, that family names die out so soon. It is rare in Paris, that the grand-child reaches manhood in vigorous health, if at all, whose parents and grand-parents were bom, and lived, and died in that voluptucas capital. The rapid disappearance of family names which were prominent and numerous in New -York in the beginning of the present century, shows that the greatest city in the New "World is not behind the greatest of the Old, in the respect named ; not owing wholly, it is true, to extrav- agant indulgences, but largely owing to that, beyond contradiction. .'..•;> In every direction, idleness and opportunity have led multitudes every where, in the city and in the country, to brutalize themselves. For example, one very common cause of some 124 . SLEEP. of the worst forms of dyspeptic disease, is the not being particularly engaged, while at the same time, some inviting article of food is at hand, in the same room. This has been al- ready referred to ; it is the same in relation to drink, and every other form of indulgence, and there is no safety against any of them, but in the interposition of efficient barriers to too facile gratifications, and the more of these a man can erect, the safer will he be, and thoy are wisest, who use all means for the purpose which can even slightly aid in accomplishing the desired result. The reflecting reader can here form the re- quisite rules of action ; the first great laws be- ing regularity and temperance ; the latter being promoted by not having at hand the easy op- portunity of indulgence ; by putting temptation out of the way ; by cultivating an active and fully occupied life, and by not making it his chief aim and end, to eat, and drink, and enjoy the pleasures which perish in the moment of AVOIDING TEMPTATION. 126 their using, but to live for the high and absorb- ing purpose of human elevation, and of achiev- ing an immortal existence beyond the present scenes. Sight, and propinquity, and touch, hriu^ wants which otherwise would not have sprung up, wants which grow, and strengthen, and overpower, until reason and common-sense are swept away as with a flood, and the reign of unrestraint sets in, to the end of a complete brutalization ; and to prevent such results, or any approach to them, the expedient of the book is proposed, as offering a comparatively easy remedy ; for a quaint writer says : " When a man has once got into the rapids of Niagara, the next thing he will do, will be to go over the Falls. Having once got in, there is no pos- sibility of getting out. The way for him to escape going over, is not to get into the rapids. When a man has once put a spark to powder, he need not clap his hand upon it to keep it from going off. It will do no good. The only way for him to keep it from going off, is to II* 123 SLEEP. keep the spark away from it. Many men can let the cup alone if they keep away from it ; who can not, if they go where it is. Many men can abstain from lust, if they do not go within the circuit of its malaria, who can not free themselves from it, after they have once become infected by it. Many men can control their temper, so long as they avoid every thing calculated to arouse it, who have no power over it, after it has once become aroused. Many of our dispositions must be taker care o:^ beforehand, not » ..;rwards. And when they have led us into wrong courses, our error consists, not in the fact that we could not keep ourselves, but in the fact, that we did not learn enough about ourselves to know that some parts of our nature were not to be exposed; that some parts of our nature must be carried with watching, with vigilant forelooking." The great principle is well put here, that to avoid excesses, we must not put ourselves in the way of a too ei^iy indulgence of what is al- ' EFFECT OF EXCESSES. 127 lowable. If all the evils which arise fronx any kind of over-indulgence, ended in the persons who practice them, it would be, comparatively speaking, a happy thing ; but they are far-reach- ing in their pernicious influences ; they extend beyond those who practice them, and are car- ^ ried into the ages to come, destined to be a blight on generations yet unborn. All excesses beget debility of the organs connected with them, and these organs, whether they be the lungs, the stomach, the liver, or any others, will always, under this excessive action or stimulation, prepare a vitiated, im- perfect material, diseased and monstrous, ac- cording to circumstances. Hence the multi- tude of weakly, sickly, puny persons, in every direction ; muscles flabby, bones slight, face wan, gait unstable, and the whole " physique " an abortion. As to the moral nature, there is a blight over it all — a wanting to be some- thing, without an ability to be any thing— fickle, wayward and unfixed; while in another di- 128 BLEEP. rection, there are low inclinations^ vicioTiS ten* doncies, degrading practices, and a general lack of all that is high, and noble, and ele- vating. As to the mind of those begotten in brutalizing indulgences, it is without strength, without persistence of purpose, and without either the capacity or the desire for high cul- ture and exalted aims. Thus the whole na- ture, physical, moral and mental, is a blight, a blot, a blank. That the characteristics of the future being, in body, and brain, and heart, are colored by those of the parents, which prevail about the time of reproduction, is conceded by scientific men, and demonstrated by facts. A Massa* chusetts state paper, on "Lunacy," reports that four fifths of the idiotic children, were those of parents one or both of whom, lived in habits of drunkenness — indicating that children begotten in the stupor of debauch, will have a vacuity of mind for life. On the other hand, it is known that the mother of IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION. 129 the first Napoleon, for months before he was born, acconpanied her soldier husband in his martial expeditions, and traversed the country side by side with him on horseback, thus sharing in all his toils. Hannah of old, conceived and carried Samuel, while her whole nature was imbued Tivith a deep reli- gious devotion, under the influence of which she consecrated the future piophet to the supreme service of his Maker. It would seem, then, to be a wise forethought, that perpetuation should be accomplished under favoring conditions of mind and body ; the lat- ter in high health, invigorated by a regular, unbroken and refreshing sleep, the blood all pure, by an eight or ten hours' breathing of fresh, luscious, life-giving air ; while the former, fully aroused to a sense of high responsibili- ties, the heart and affections, at the same time, loving and pure, would present a combina- tion of desirable circumstances, which could not possibly be hoped for in any other way 180 SLEEP. than by the expedient which the idea of the book proposes, whereby every thing could be made a subject of deliberate, thought- ful, and rational calculation, and surprise, in moments of mental, moral and physical un- fitness, would be impossible. BUSINESS AND SLEEP. It will not be denied that a night of sound, undisturbed sleep,, is essential to bodily com- fort for the next day, and quite as essential in its renovating influences on the brpin, for the proper discharge of the business duties of each; and it can not be gainsaid that separate apartments greatly proi^ote this end. To provide well for the family, is the first social duty, and it is the absorbing aim of every intelligent and affectionate parent. Such provision falls mainly on the father, and it is of primary importance that when he comes home from the labors of the day, he should be able to retire early, and remain undisturbed BROKEN SLEEP PERNICIOUS. 181 until the morning, that fully refreshed and invigoratad as to body and mind, he may be placed in the most advantageous position possible, for the exhibition of that activity and alacrity which are essential to business success. That in moments of weakness, in- attention, or want of concentration, men have made mistakes, have fallen into errors of judgment foreign to their general character, by which fortune, and perhaps position too, have been compromised, and their families brought to subsequent deprivation and actual d'^stitution, will not be disputed. That there were causes for such transient mental weak ness, is just as true, and that want of suffi- cient rest and sleep is an adequate cause, is patent to all. Certain it is, that battles have been lost, and the fate of nations decided, for less causes than the want of a good night's sleep. In order to secure this to business men and to laboring men, to the fullest ex- tent, they should have rooms, or at least 132 SLEEP. beds, to themselves It is of importance, also, to the wife, but not to so great an extent, because she is always at home, and if her sleep is interrupted from any cause during the night, she can take it in the daytime; but the husband is at his business, and it is impracticable. In very many cases, house- hold duties may not allow the wife to retire at an early hour. Ten, eleven, and even twelve o'clock finds some of them barely able to complete their daily round of duties, in consequence, however — ^in too many cases — of the inexcusable habit of remaining in bed during the precious hours of the early morning. But be that as it may, whether it is actually necessary or not, the effect is the ; same, to wit, to disturb the sleeper in the first ■ sleep, preventing falling asleep again, in many persons, for hours afterwards — ^valuable hours utterly wasted. And as similar results occur • to both parents, while infant children are growing up, it is in place to propose some INFANTS SLEEPING. 183 rules in reference to the same; this is espe- cially desirable for the mother's sake first, and that of the child itself, also ; for if she has her rest broken, it has a most debilitating effect on the body, anr". causes great mental irritability or depression, all of which react on the body and mind of the child through its natural aliment, and in other ways. It may be proper, for the first month or two, that the child should sleep in the same bed with its mother, but ailer that, both will be greatly benefited by separate beds. An infant should not be allowed to sleep for several hours previous to its bed- time, which should be about one hour after sun-down, when it should be fed and put to sleep. When the mother retires, it should be fed again, then if the crib be on the same level with the bed, and close to it wif\ the side ?et down, the mother can place the child in it without straining herself. At the end of several hours, hun- 12 184 SL£KP. ger will wake it up, when it can be nursed replaced in its crib and sleep souDd- \y until the morning, if it has not been allowed to sleep too long or too late in the afternoon, and thus afford the wearied mother a delicious night's rest, to arise in the morning with a renovated system, re- freshed, thankful, and hopeful, and ready to enter on the duties of the day with a light and cheerful heart. On the other hand, in consequence of bad management and a want of system as to the times of eating and sleeping for the nursling, and by keeping it in the same bed with her, it be- comes restless, it wakes up a dozen times perhaps in a night, and each time, by some noise or motion rouses the mother, with the result of depriving her of that rest and re- pose which she so much requires, and the morning finds the body still weary, the mind discouraged and depressed, totally unfitted for the proper discharge of house- NURSING AT NIGUT. 135 hold duties, as is too plainly indicated by the expression of listlessness and sadness which pervade the features. Indeed, a mother can better afford to eat too little than to sleep too little, but by arranging to liave the regularities named carried out for several nights in succession, there will be a happy change in all respects. When a child is six months old, it can safely fest five or six hours if asleep, and, as before, if fed a little before sun-down, it shomld be put to bed a little later, and not be allowed to take any thing more until the mother retires for the night, which may be about ten o'clock, and if nursed then, it need not be repeated until the morning, thus allowing the mother to have her " first" sleep unin- terrupted, a consummation so earnestly de- sired by many an overtaxed wife, but which she is imable to arrange for want of a lit- tle thought, firmness and management. The reader is earnestly requested to make par- 136 SLEEP. ticular note of it, tliat the seeds of a life- time suffering, if not an early death, are sown in the constitutions of children by their own mothers during the nursing pe- riod. Millions of children die before they are two years old, by a wrong system of feeding, originating in the ignorance of the parents. The instinct and the highest plea- sure of the new-born child is to eat, it is the balm for all its cries, it hushes every complaint. The young mother soon finds this out, and putting it to the breast is the panacea for infant fretfulness. But it soon happens that the stomach is overtaxed. A second feeding occurs before the first has been disposed of, the stomach is thus kept working all the time, and soon has not the strength to work any longer, and the food being unactod upon, begins to ferment, turns sour, generates wind and this is the "colic" of infancy. Colic gives pain, pain excites crying, to quiet which, food is given, or FEDDING OF INFANTS. 187 "soothing" syrups are administered, with the inevitable result in all cases, of exaggerating the trouble sooner or later ; and in countless instances, there is a speedy and entire break- ing down of the system, and death ends the outrage, as to the child, but in the mean while, by reason of the child's sufferings, many a night has been passed in sleepless- ness by both parents. Under such circum- stances, separate chambers are a necessity, so that at least one of them may have the repose so much needed in the increased de- mands of the occasion. Under the circum- stances, it is fitting here to append a few remarks, as a means of avoiding nightly disturbances, on the FEEDING- OF INFANTS. 7 For the first few weeks the child may be nursed every two hours, at the beginning of the third week every three hours. When six months old, no good purpose can be 12* 188 SLEEP. subserved by feeding a child oftener than every four hours, and never between. Hence if fed at sun-down when it it should be put to bed for the night, then fed again when the mother retires four hours later, she will not be waked during the first sleep which does so much good, and only once during the night, and long before the child is two years old, she will have brought it into the habit of not requiring food during the whole night, a consummation which many a mother has earnestly looked for, but not knowing how to bring it about, has fallen into irregu- larities of nursing, which in the way already described, have entailed life-long injuries, physical, mental and social. DIFFERENT TEMPERAMENTS SLEEPINa TOGETHER. It is a well-known fact that some persons require more bed-clothing than others; one feels so much oppressed as not to be able CHILDREN SLEEPINa TOGETHER. 139 to sleep witli an amount of covering which leaves another in so chilly a condition as to make refreshing sleep an impossibility. A high hard bolster is essential to the com- fort of one, while another is incommoded by a slight elevation of the head during sleep. There are cases not a few where one person can not sleep with a window up without especial bodily suffering for some time afterwards ; others feel as if they would suffocate, or are in a process of certain poisoning, unless the windows are hoisted to their fullest capacity for the admission of an abundant supply of out-door air. In all these varieties of cases, there does not ap- pear to be a better and an easier remedy than that of separate beds and rooms for CHILDREN SLEEPING- TOO-ETHER. As soon as children reach their seventh year, various good purposes would be sub- served by their sleeping apart; indeed, the 140 SliEEP. neglect of this arrangement lias chenshed feelings, and has ultimately led to early vicious practices, alike destructive of the health of the body and the purity of the heart — to become, years before adolescence is passed, a source of physical and mental maladies sometimes, from which death itself is a welcomed deliverance. Here, a branch of the subject opens a field of investigation at once wide and im- portant, but one which requires so much judgment in the handling, that it is a debatable question, whether or not it should be left unexplored. Some have treated the subject, but with such want of discretion^ that Carpenter, of England, one of the best physiologists of the age, hesitatingly records his opinion and regret at the evil tenden- cies of the publications made. During the later "teens" of youtli, cer- tain debilitating occurrences take place in the early morning hours in the rather un- MORNING EXHAUSTIONS. 141 Bound or dreamy sleep which precedes the waking up, which, if allowed to continue unchecked, waste away the vigor and flesh and strength of the body, eventually impairing the mind itself, causing an unaccountable depression of spirits, a distressing nervous- ness which declines sometimes into a settled stupor or deplorable idiocy ; others again become furious maniacs, according to the various constitutions and temperaments of the persons affected. This malady does not occur to all young or unmarried persons by any means, but it does afflict many to a greater or less ex- tent ; not especially hurtful to any, if it does not occur oflener than two or three times a month ; that much is perhaps a necessity ; beyond that, it soon becomes a disease, with the manifestations already described. - These occurreaces take place as a result of nature's exuberance, or as a consequence of practices, of the ill effects Df which, 142 SLEEP, those who engage in them, are most profound- ly unconscious. These effects are sometimes traced to their legitimate causes by those who are unusually bright or thoughtful, the practices are at once abandoned, and the effects cease to be observed to any special- ly hurtful extent. But multitudes of the young never have the practices nor the de- plorable results presented to their minds as cause and effect, and hence they continue the practices, and thus aggravate the eflfects, atil the bodily and mental condition are alike pitiable and deplorable. Many parents who have grown up virtuously, witness with deep concern the pallid faces of once ruddy children, the trembling fingers, the averted eye, the thinned flesh, and the melancholy features; on inquiry, the feet are cold, the limbs weak, the body chilly, the appetite indifferent, the general system irregular, and pictures of a deep decline, wake up the af- fections in the deepest alarm; but. nothing ia TUE UNrORTUNATE. 148 oomp lined of; there is no pain, no suffering, while both parent and child may be alike unconscious of the existence of the causes of such effects ; and while they are hoping for a change for the better to take place, for the renovating influences of the gladden- ing spring-time, or the bracing power of the coming fall, the malady may have run on to a condition irremediable, and the victim passes to the mad-ho\ist or to the grave. The writer knew a gentleman of wealth, who had two sons ; the elder was sent to a distant institution of learning at the age of eighteen years. He was a youth of manly bearing and of high promise. His attain- ments were unusual for one of his age ; an estate was coming to him at his majority, which would yield him a revenue of twenty - three thousand dollars a year. His health bgaeii to dechne. Th., was traced to prac 144 SLEEP. tices into which, he had been inveigled of which no one could know any thing but himself. He was ignorant of their tenden- cies, and continued them until the morning debilitations became a drain so exhaustive to the vital powers, that he grew pale and thin and nervous. In a few months his bodily elasticity was gone. In place of the habitual court3sy, the high-bred deport- ment, and the joyous abandon which onc« characterized him in a remarkable decree, there was a listlesness of demeanor, a slov- enliness of person and dress, with a settled shade of deep melancholy. A mental de- pression seized upon him, which it seemed impossible to remove by the amusements and diversions which commonly have great attractions for the young. In short, he be- came idiotic eventually, lost the power of speech, and now for nineteen years has not uttered a single word, nor is it at all like- EFFECTS OF BAD HABITS. 145 ly that he ever will, although thousands are spent every year in vain efforts for his re- storation. Some by the same means fall into con- sumptive disease and die in a few years ; others become insane, and spend their weary lives in a lunatic asylum, or, in a moment of frenzied delirium, end their tortures and their exist- ence by a suicide's guilty hand. Standard medical books abound in such deplorable narrations, but no public good could arise from varied repetitions. The causes and the consequences are the same, and the end uniformly deplorable. A very common cause is allowing children to sleep together, and when once the practices are commenced, sleep- ing together nourishes and cherishes them until they become an unquenchable rnd an unappeasable pleasure. There are, however, some so pure-minded, who have been so well brought up by worthy mothers, in being kept away from evil associations, that they 13 146 SLEEP. have never learned the pernicious lessons, and learning them intuitively i^ a bare proba- bility. One of the very best safeguards, in this direction, is never to allow your own children to sleep with the children of others, even for a portion of a single night. Your neighbor may be as pure and blameless as yourself, but never having had the attention directed to the point in question, may have been remiss in the matter of her children's associations, or may have had an overweening confidence in their correctness, by which the taint may have been introduced, and may have grown into a settled habit without any concep- tion of its existence ever having entered the imagination. > Whi sleeping together generally founds the habits in question, on the part of children and youth, sleeping alone affords the amplest opportunity of unbridled indulgence. Hence, if parents observ^ a decided manifestation of symptoms which have been enumerated, very CORRECTING BAD HABITS. 147 especially if connected witli a seeking for solitude, with a desire to be alone, and sleep alone, the best means for ascertaining certainly that such habits exist, and at the same time, without wounding the self-respect, is 'o occupy the same bed for several nights in succession, in wakefulness, and the manifestations will be made in a most unmistakable manner, either as to the habits or the exhaustions. It is barely possible that a week shall pass without such exhibition. In either case, take your child into your confidence, and without blame or accusation, without any charge of crimi- nality, but in an incidental and affectionate manner, say : " My child, I noticed something last night not uncommon with youth, and as you may not know the nature of it, perhaps it might be best for me to tell you all about it, because sometimes persons become deranged by it, or kill themselves." Then make the communication in such a way that your child aiav not feel like a criminal, and at the same time, may be deeply impressed with the nature 148 SLEEP. of the results which will follow a continuance of the practice. If the exhaustions occur without any connection with the practices, as is the case in multitudes of instances, from an exuberance of nature's fires, and hence without an iota of blame to the subject of them, or whether they have arisen from the practices in question, the remedy is the same, which is to adopt such means as will most effectually break up the occurrences, which can be done with comparative ease when the parent and the child work together, without there being any necessity of calling in a physician, which would be more or less em- barrassing to all parties. In using the methods about to be proposed, it is again particularly urged, as an important means of arriving more speedily at valuable practical results, that parents take special pains to show that they do not regard these things as degrading, as the result of criminal influences ; for they are not so, necessarily, but simply as an exuberance of nature or of health, over BOOKS ON "physiology." 149 which the party affected has no control. It will have a good influence in every way, to let it be seen that it is regarded simply as an attack of illness, such as bilious fever, rheu- matism, neuralgia, and the like. In this manner, the self-respect of the party is not wounded, and the way is opened for con- fidences and the interchange of affectionate sympathies, as in the case of other sicknesses, between parents and children, with the result that the means employed will be undertaken with a spirit and hopefulness which would not exist under other circumstances. ■""^ It may be proper here to advise parents of the existence of books of a vile character, which are scattered broadcast over the land, under various names, but the general term, 'Physiology," is used to designate them. Under the pretense of explaining the physiolo- gy of the parts implicated, the passions and the curiosity are stimulated by illustrations and de- *K)riptions, and plates which no person of pro- 13* 150 SLEEP. per self-respect would ever be seen examining, and which can not possibly fail of having a corrupting and a degrading influence. The reading of such books is fraught with unmixed evil. The first design is to effect a sale of the book, the next is to mislead the reader, to work upon the fears, under the guise of " frankness," and "humanity," and when the mind is wrought up to a pitch of frenzied terror of im- possible things, to propose " a remedy efficient and certain in all cases, by reason of the fact that the writer has had a life-time's experience and success, his studies having led him to in- vestigations and remedies, in the prosecution of which a fortunate accident led to a series of discoveries of incalculable value, and that out of sympathy for the misfortunes of the young, this mode of living usefully has present- ed itself." Sometimes, a man constitutes himself a " So- ciety,'' under some other taking designation, "Benevolent," "Humanitarian," and the like, IMPOSITIONS. 151 and advertisements, carefully worded, contain- ing expressions of great charity and disinterest- edness, are scattered every where, carrying with them influences and results of a most de- plorable character. The young are lured by them, first to apply for a circular or a book, sent, sometimes, absolutely free of all cost, with the expectation, but too frequently realized, that the next thing will be an application for advice. The symptoms are inquired for, then comes a letter enlarging upon the " very dan- gerous character of the case, but that, possibly, by prompt and very close attention, the evil may be warded off, although it will necessarily be very expensive." Let it suffice to say, that city physicians are constantly applied to, anonymously, for advice. The general tenor of the letter is, after express- ing, in the most lively terms, the mortification and self-abasement felt, with the strongest self- accusatory confessions, to say that having ex- pended ten, fifty, a hundred dollars, and some- 152 BLEEP. times several hundred, in taking medicines of some individual or society, they find that, if benefited at all, it was but transiently, and that their troubles have returned. But while in correspondence with their wily advisers, great care was taken by them to impress on the mind of their victim the disreputable nature of the ailment, to the following result, in cases not a few: Means have been devised by the victims to procure money in an unauthorized manner ; how many " tills " of employers have been invaded; how many parental treasuries have been surreptitiously depleted ; how many false representations of needs have been prefer- red to indulgent and confiding parents, may never be known; but that these things have been done on an extensive scale, and that it has been the first step towards actual crime in many a youth, only ending in the penitentiary or the gallows, is certainly true; and that the number is multitudinous, can not be rea- sonably questioned for a moment. It could THE WILES OF DECEIVERS. 168 not be otherwise; the youth is alarmed, and sensitive as the young are to such develop- ments, it is not wonderful that their brains are literally racked with devices to procure the ways and means for meeting the remorseless demands of the "practitioners" named; and that those who have no means of making or earning money, should resort to subterfuges, and to untruthful representations, or to conduct actually criminal, in order to raise the requisite amount, requires no special stretch of the imag- ination to conjecture. Hence, the judicious use of the suggestions of these pages may save, and will save many a youth from a fate worse than that of death itself. . . " . i • . j / These pernicious books, with a great show of frankness, give various formulas for making the requisite medicines to be taken ; but these are, for the most part, known to be inert. This is adroitly done, for the victim in all cases will cer- tainly try what can be done, in the hope of avoid- ing the necessity of a confession or exposure, or 154 SLEEP. the payment of a considerable fee. When, how* ever, the means prescribed fail, the next impres- sion is that it must be a very aggravated and threatening case, and at once the way is pre- pared for a consultation and the subsequent de- mand for a high fee. Let it be distinctly remembered there is no absolute cure for the exhaustions in question short of marriage, old age, or death. There are some remedies which repress them while they are taken, and for a short time after, but the trouble returns, and with it the necessity for renewed applications for advice and reme- dies, and with them renewed extortions. No medicines should ever be used by the persons themselves, on their own judgment and responsibility ; nor should they be advised by any but the educated physician. Hence, there will be proposed in these pages only such remedial and moral means as can be employed with perfect safety and with an infallible good efifect, more or less decided, according to the SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS. 165 fidelity with which they are attended to, and according to the force of character and will of the person employing them. ^* Let it be remembered that these early morn- ing exhaustions often arise in debility, without any other cause, as swollen feet and ankles arise from debility from various causes, and do not exist of themselves as an evidence of the last stages of consumption, although it is a symptom which generally attends the last stages of that disease, but it is not a " sign" of it, for it exists in other cases of debilitating dis- ease when the lungs are not at all consumptive. The occurrences in question, when excessive, are of themselves simply a "sign" of debility, but greatly aggravate it, and thus they react on one another. Debility produces them, they increase the debility, and in process of time a single occurrence so depresses mind and body, that for hours and even days afterward, the mind is utterly incapable of concentrating it- self properly on any business, while the body 166 SLEEP. is absolutely unfit for any efficient ciuployment, except at a sacrifice of its well-being. But there is another enormity to which at- tention is specially invited. The remedies em- ployed, which are repressive, are believed by many intelligent medical practitioners to be hurtful if injudiciously used ; that is, used too largely, or too long ; hurtful to the extent of a lifelong disablement; and it is easy to con- ceive that a young or inexperienced, or reck* less, or unprincipled practitioner may be tempt- ed, by a variety of selfish considerations, or be led by actual incapacity, to employ these medi- cines to the hurtful extent named. Nor is this all. In the event of failure of success, men have been found vile enough to advise as the only means of cure, when marriage was imprac- ticable, unlawful associations, which is but the opening of the flood-gates of vice, leading to the ruin of all that is noble and virtuous and pure ; and how greedily the mind would lay bold of the excuse of the necessity of the UNLAWFUL INDULGENCES. 157 thing, backed by the counsels of a medical adviser, all heedless of the utter selfishness of an act which brings a mere conjectural good to self, at the expense of an irreparable ruin to another 1 No one, it is repeated, can fail to see how willingly the mind would lay hold on such an apology as a satisfactory reason for greedily embracing the tempting alternative. It was in this connection that one of the most eminent medical writers has expressed his "regrets to be obliged to remark that some recent works which have issued from the medical press, con- tain much that is calculated to excite, rather than to repress the propensity, and that the advice sometimes given by practitioners to their patients is immoral ns well as unscientific." And it may be said without exaggeration, that of all the rash and reckless and demented (for the time being) creatures in the universe, the greatest, the highest in the scale is the person who allows a single indulgence out of honor- able and legalized wedlock; for one error in 14 168 SLEEP. this direction is but the opening of flooc! -gates as resistless as an Alpine avalanche ; it is the lighting np of desires as unsatisfiable and as remorseless as the Norwegian Maelstrom. And not only so, a single error, committed in a much briefer time than is sufficient to express the sentiment, has been followed, in literally millions of cases, by the most revolting of hu- man maladies, which, when even cur^d as far as external indications are concerned, still bur- rows in the system, poisoning the whole blood, and liable at any time to break out again like the smothered fires of a hatch closed ship, to eat the flesh away, rottening even the bones, until life becomes a drawn-out torture. And in all cases when the system has been once im- pregnated with the virus, it never being eradi- cated, however perfect the health may seem to be, the effects are perpetuated to the offspring, to grow up with a worm at the root of life, a p ison at the fountains of health, which sends out disease to every fiber of the system, cor nOKIlOIlS OF INFECTION. 159 rui^ting tlie blood and vitiuting the whole hody to such an extent, that it never knows an hour of pure health during its entire existence, although it may drag itself in weariness to the verge of three-score yearo and ten, literally years of sorrow and suffering 1 Such are some of the dangers to which the young are deliber- ately counseled to expose themselves, in the numberless cases where the medical adviser finds that all his vaunted remedies fail of even a temporary cure, and in recklessness and des- peration, he counsels the passing of the Rubi- con, with the results to the victim just de- scribed. And that under the circumstances, and with these views, which are true without exaggeration, it is the duty of every parent to know the position of his child in these regards, can not for one single moment be questioned by any rational mind. Sometimes mc, inical devices are employ- ed, which, while they are grounds for greater 160 SLEEP. chai'ges, do but increase the mischief in the end, although their certain efficiency and their harmlessness are insisted upon with the most plausible arguments imaginable. " Eings " have been used to a great extent. Enlarge- ment always precedes an exhaustion, which occurs in a state of unsound slumber, early in the morning, when the sleep is nearly out and very little suffices to waken up ; if the sleeper is wakened up, the thing is avoided. The ring interferes with the enlargement, and causes pain, and this pain wakens up. But, suppose the sleep to be so sound that there is no waking up, this mechanical interruption of the flow of the blood being still applied, there may be a rupture of important blood-vessels, of internal arteries, causing life-long and irre- parable injuries, if not death itself, for any one knows that if the blood be too long arrested in its flow at any point in the body, it must result in dangerous congestions, or in PERNICIOUS INSTRUMENTS. 161 depriving the part of its natural amount of nourishment, which if continued, must result in its disability or death. But the wise physiologist will see in an instant, that while its immediate efficiency is undoubted, its ultimate result can only be to increase the evil labored against — thus : during the night water always accumulates in the bladder, and with this, there is the double stimulus of heat and distention, occasioning an increased flow of blood to the parts, which of itself is a powerful excitant ; and this blood being detained by the ring, feeds and prolongs the excitemenf, intensifies it, and hence its inevitable effect is to aggravate the very trouble striven against. In process of time, however, the parts become accustomed to the presence of the ring, become callous to the waking-up pain which was occasioned by it, and it is powerless to waken up any more, hence it is utterly useless, but in the mean 14* 162 SLEEP. time its employment has generated a habit of increased flow of blood to the parts, and with it, an increase in the frequency of the debilita- tions, and the body is left helpless against its destroyer. In all these cases there is a want of vigorous general health, and the very first step, as well as one of the most indispensable, is the em- ployment of means for its improvement, for the very essence of the ailment is debility, which debility it increases, and thus they feed on one another, and grow in power while the body weakens and wilts away under the malign influence. The strictest personal cleanliness must be observed. The whole body shoulc. be scrubbed with a brush, soap and warm water, once a week at bed-time, with a cold instantaneous shower-bath im- mediately after, which shower-bath should be repeated every morning, whether in winter or summer, the very firsu thing after getting out EATING REGULARLY. 163 of bed, the whole operation to be completed within five minutes ordinarily, and in winter, within two minutes, if practicable. Next to personal cleanliness, is the necessity of eating, regularly and temperatciy, plain, nourishing, well-cooked, unstimulating food, using absolutely nothing as a beverage or a drink, but cold water, and that not in quan- tities greater than an ordinary tea-cupful at meal-times, and none within an hour after eating; at other times, as much cold water may be drank as the appetite calls for. If a person is easily chilled, or has not much stamina, it would be better to take, in place of a half-glass of cold water at meal-time, a tea-cupful of hot milk and water, with or without sugar. Nothing whatever should be eaten between meals under any pretense whatever. Break- fast should be made of the drink above named, with cold or well-toasted bread and butter and baked apples, and nothing else, except, as an 164 SLEEP. occasional substitute, one or two soft-boiled eggs, or some fish, or a piece of well-broiled fresh meau of any kind. Dinner, take what- ever the appetite calls for, of plain food, without sauces or spices or condiments of any kind, using as a dessert baked or stewed or ripe apples, or in their place — ^in their season, — melons, berries, oranges and the like. Sup- per, that is, the last meal of the day, should be taken not later than an hour after sun-down, and should consist of nothing but some cold bread and butter with a cup of hot milk and water. An arrangement of this kind will seldom fail, within a week, of causing a vigor- ous appetite for breakfast and dinner, while by taking but little supper, the stomach is allowed to rest while the other part of the body is doing the same thing, and more undis- turbed and refreshing sleep is a natural con- sequence. To promote the restoration to more vigorous health still further, two or three hours in the OUT-DOOR ACTIVITIES. 165 forenoon and one or two in the afternoon should be spent in the open out-door air, in moderate bodily activities, in some employment which involves muscular motion, and if com- bined with mental interest of a pleasurable character, so much the better. Very little good need be anticipated from mere mechan- ical exercise, which involves no other interest than that of accomplishing a specified amount ; the mind should be engaged, not merely pleasurably, but in a manner which shall in- terest it, to the extent of calling out its power in some degree, and thus diverting it from the intention of the thing, as well as from the bodily conditions, which these exercises are intended to change or remove or favorably effect. Hence if it is at all possible, consider- ing what human nature is, the activities should be pecuniarily remunerative, and if liberally so, it is that much the better. But to be more fall as to the means of improving the general health, which indeed is the safest and surest 166 SLEEP. way of removing a variety of bodily ailmenta, it may be well to treat in detail as to Bating, Drinking, Sleeping, Regulating the Bow- els, and Attention to tue Feet. EATING". Before a man becomes hungry, watchful nature has calculated, in her way, how much nutriment the body needs, and provides as much of a liquid substance as will bo neces- sary to prepare from the food which may be eaten that amount of sustenance which the system may require. When this is stored up, and all is ready, the sensation of hunger com- mences, and increases with the steadily increas- ing amount of the digesting material just re- ferred to, and the very instant the first mouth- ful of food is swallowed, this "gastric juice" is poured out into the stomach through a thousand sluices ; but no more has been pre- pared than was necessary, for Nature does nothing in vain ; so that if a single mouthful SOUR STOMACH — HEARTBURN. 107 more of food has been swallowed than the un tempted, or unstimulated appetite would have called for, there is no gastric juice for its solution, and it remains but to fret and worry and irritate for hours together. If the amount eaten is much in excess, the stomach, as if in utter discouragement at the magnitude of its task, ceases its attempts at digestion, and forth- with commences the process of ejecting the un- natural load by means of nausea and vomiting in some cases ; in others, it remains for an hour or more like a weight, a hard round ball, or a lump of lead, an uneasy heaviness ; then it begins to " sour," that is, to decompose, to rot, and the disgusting gaa or liquid comes up into the throat, causing more or less of a scalding sensation from the pit of the stomach to the throat; this is called "heartburn." At length, the half-rotted mixture is forced out of the mouth by the outraged stomach with that horrible odor and taste with which every glutton is familiar. In some cases the stenchy mass is passed out of the stomach downwards, 168 SLEEP. causing, in its progress, a gush of liquid from nil parts of the intestinal canal, to wash it, with a flood, out of the system ; this is the "Diarrhea" which surprises the gourmand at midnight or in the early morning hours, when a late or over-hearty mojil has been eaten. When sufficient food has been taken for the amount of gastric juice supplied, hunger ceases, and every mouthful swallowed after that, no gastric juice having been prepared for its dissolution, remains without any healthful change, inflaming, and irritating, and exhaust- ing the stomach by its efforts to get rid of it, and this is the first step towards forming "dyspepsia," which becomes more, and more deeply fixed by every repeated outrage, until at length it remains a life-time worry to the mind, filling it with horrible imaginings, and a wearing, wasting torture to the body, until it passes into the grave. The moral of the article is, that the man who " forces " his food, he who eats without an inclination, and he who strives bv tonics, or WORK OF THE STOMACH. 169 bitters, or wine, or other alcoholic liquors, to " get up " an appetite, is a sinner against bodj and soul — a virtual suicide I The stomach has two doors, one for the en- trance of the food, on the left side ; the other, for its exit, after it has been properly prepared for another process. As soon as the food is swallowed, it begins to go round and round the stomach so as to facilitate dissolution ; just as the melting of a number of small bits of ice is expedited by being stirred in a glass of water; the food, like the ice, dissolving from without, inwards, until all is a liquid mass. Eminent physiologists have said, that as this liquid mass passes the door of exit, where there is a little movable muscle, called the Pyloric Valve, (a faithful watchman,) that which is fit for future purposes gives a tap, as it were ; the valve flies open and it makes an honorable exit. Thus it goes on until the stomach is empty, provided no more food has been taken than there was a supply of gastric 15 170 SI.EEP juice for. If a mouthful too much has been taken, there ia no gastric juice to dissolve it; it remains hard and undigested ; it is not fit to pass, and the janitor refuses to open the door ; and another and another circuit is made, with a steady refusal at each time, until the work is properly done. Boiled rice, roasted apples, cold raw cabbage cut up fine in vinegar, tripe prepared in vinegar, or souse, pass through in about an hour; fried pork, boiled cabbage and the like, are kept dancing around for about five hours and a half. After, however, there has been a repeated refusal to pass, and it would appear that any longer detention was useless, as in the case of indigestible food, or a dime, or cent, or fruit- rttone, the faithful watchman seems to be almost endowed with intelligence, as if saying : "Well, old fellow, you never will be of any account ; it is -not worth while to be troubled with you any longer; pass on, and never show your face again." WEIGHT OR LOAD ON STOMACH. 171 When food is thus unnaturally detained in the stomach, it produces wind, ciuututions, fullness, acidity, or a feeling often di'scribcd as a "weight," or "load," or "heavy." But nature is never cheated. Ilcr regulations are never infringed with impunity ; and although an indigestible article may be allowed to pass out of the stomach, it enters the bowels as an intrut en* within less than five hours' ^ntcival. The heart itself is at rest more than 5^ 174 SLEEP. one third of its time. The brain perishes without repose. Never forcB food on the stomach. All are tired when night comes; every muscle of the body is weary, and looks to the bed ; but just as we lie down to rest every other part of the body, if we, by a hearty meal, give the stomach five hours' work, which, in its weak state, requires a much longer time to perform than at an earlier hour of the day, it is like imposing upon a servant a full day's labor just at the close of a hard day's work; hence the unwisdom of eating heartily late in the day or evening; and no wonder it has cost many a man his life. Al- ways breakfast before work or exercise. No laborers or active persons should eat an itom, later than sun-down, and then it should not be over half the mid-day meal. Persons of sedentary habits or who are at all ailing, should take absolutely nothing for supper beyond a single piece of cold stale bread and DRINKING AT MEALS. 175 butter, or a sLip-biscuit, with a single cup of warm drink. Such a supper will always give better sleep and prepare for a heartier break- fast, with the advantage of having the exercise of the whole day to grind it up and extract its nutriment. Never eat without an inclina tion. Quantity. — It is variety which tempts to excess ; few will err as to quantity who will eat very slow. Take no more than a quarter of a pint of warm drink, with a piece of cold, stale bread and butter, one kind of meat, and one vegetable, or one kind of fruit. This is the only safe rule of general application, and allows all to eat as much as they want. Cold water at meals instantly arrests diges- tion, and so will much warm drink ; hence, a single tea-cup of drink, hot or cold, is sufficient for any meal. For half an hour after eating, sit erect, or walk in the open air. Avoid severe study or deep emotion, soon after eating. Do not sit 176 SLEEP. down to a meal under great grief or surprise, or mental excitement. DRINKING. Man is the only animal that drinks without being thirsty, swallowing whole quarts of water when nature does not call for it, with the alleged view of "washing out" the system. When persons are thirsty, that thirst should be fully assuaged with moderately cool water, drank (in summer time or under great bodily heat or fatigue) very leisurely, but not within half an hour of eating a regular meal. Emi- nent physiologists agree that drinking at meals, dilutes the gastric juice, diminishes its solvent power, and retards digestion, especially, if what is drank is cold. Persons in vigorous health, and who work or exercise a great part of every day in the open air, may drink a glass of water, or a single cup of weak coffee or tea, at each meal, and live to a good old age. But it is very certain that sedentary persons and in* BAD EFFECTS OF ICE-WATER. 177 valids can not go beyond that habitually, with impunity. The wisdom of such consists in drinking nothing at all at the regular meals be- yond a swallow or two at a time of some hot drink of a mild and nutritious character. Fee- ble persons will be benefited by hot drkiks, be- cause they warm up the body, excite the circu- lation, and thus promote digestion, if taken while eating, and not exceeding a cupful. Cold water ought never to be drank within half an hour of eating; for the colder it is, the more instantly does it arrest digestion, not only by diluting the gastric juice, but by reducing its temperature, which is near one hundred de- grees. Ice-water is something over thirty-two degrees, and, when swallowed, mixes with the gastric juice, and lowers its temperature, not to be elevat'jd until heat enough has been with- drawn from the general system ; and that draft must be made until the hundred degrees of warmth sfce attained ; but some persona have so 'ittle vitality, that the body exhausts itself in 178 SLEEP. its instinctive efforts to help the stomach, from which its life and strength come ; and the per- son rises from the table with a cold chill run- ning down the back or over the whole body. Sometimes, these drafts upon the body for warmth to the stomach are so sudden and great, that they can not be met, and instantane- ous death is the result. Many a person has dropped dead at the pump or at the spring; such a result is more certain if, in addition to the person being very warm at the time of drinking, there is also great bodily fetigue. A French general recently fell dead from drink- ing cold water on reaching tl>e top of a moun- tain over-heated and exhausted in the effort of bringing up his battalions with promptitude. Under all circumstances of heat or fatigue, the glass of water should be grasped in the hand, held half a minute, then, taking not over two swallows, rest a quarter of a minute ; then, two awallows more, and so on, until the thirst is riearly assuaged. Tt will seldom happen that a ALCOHOLIC J)RINKS. 179 person is inclined to take over half a dozen Bwallows thus. No case is remembered in the practice of a quarter of a century, where malt liquors, wines, brandies, or any alcoholic drinks whatever, Lave ever had a permanent good effect in im- proving the digestion. Apparent advantages sometimes result, but they are transient or de- ceptive. If there is no appetite, it is because nature has provided no gastric juice ; and that is the product of nature, not of alcohol. If there is appetite, but no digestive power, liquor no more supplies that power than would the lash give strength to an exhausted donkey. If torture does arouse the sinking beast, it is only that it shall fall a little later into a still greater exhaustion from which there is no recovery ; so with the use of liquor and tobacco as whetters of the appetite, when, at length, the desire for the accustomed stimulus ceases, and the man " sickens ;" there is no longer a relish for the dram and the chew, and life fiides apace, either 180 SLEEP. in a stupor from which there is no awaking, or by wasting and uncontrollable diarrhea. SLEEPING. Inability to sleep is the first step toward madness, while sound and sufficient sleep im- parts a vigor to the mind, and a feeling of well- ness and activity to the body, which are be- yond price. To be able to go to sleep within a few minutes of reaching the pillow, and to sleep soundly until the morning breaks, and to do this for weeks and months together, is per- fectly delightful. How such a thing may be brought about, and kept up, as a general rule, is certainly well worth knowing, and will be appreciated, even by those who have lost but half a night's sleep. The reader can study out the reasons of the suggestions at his leisure. Both in city and country, the chamber should be on the second, third, or higher floor; its windows should face the east or south, so as to have the drying and purifying influences SLEEriNG ArAllTMENTS. 181 of the blessed sun-light; there should be no curtains to the bed or windows, nor should there be any hanging garments or other woven fabrics, except the clothes worn during the day each article of which should be spread out by itself, for the purpose of thorough airing. There should bo no carpet on the floor of a sleeping- room, except a single strip by the side of the bed, to prevent a sudden shock by the warm foot coming in contact with a cold floor. Carpets collect dust and dirt and filth and dampness, and are the invention of laziness to save labor and hide uncleanness. Ordinarily, mattresses of shucks, chaff, straw, or curled hair are best to sleep upon. For old persons and those of feeble vitality, there is nothing better than a clean feather-bed. No one can sleep well if cold. Have as little cov- ering as possible from just above the knees upwards, but cover the legs and feet abundant- ly, for by keeping thera warm, the blood is 16 182 SLEEP. withdrawn from the brain, and to that extent dreaming is prevented. There should be no standing fluid of any de- scription, nor a particle of food or vegetation or any decayable substance allowed to remain in a bed-room for a moment ; nor should any light be kept burning, except from necessity, as all these things corrupt the air which is breathed while sleeping. The entire furniture of a chamber should be tlie bed, two or three wooden chairs, a table, and a bureau or chest of drawers. Every arti- cle of bed-clothing should be thrown over a chair or table by itself, and the mattress remain exposed, until the middle of the afternoon ; not later, lest the damps of the evening should im- pregnate them. From morning until aftemooa of every sunshiny day, the windows of the chamber should be hoisted fully. The fire- place should be kept open, at least during the night, thus affording a draught from the crevices of doors and windows. As foul air is lightest NOXIOUS GASKS IN CHAMBERS. 188 in warm weather, it is beat that the sash should be let down at the top several inches, and the low(T one elevated quite as much ; by tliis means the pure and cool air from without enters and drives the heatedj impure air up- wards and outwards. In a very cold room, without a good draught or ventilation, carbonic acid being generated by the sleeper, becomes heavy and falls to the floor; this gas has no nourishment for the lungs, and to breathe it wholly for two minutes is to die ; it is this which causes suflfocation in descending some wells. In summer it goes to the ceiling, in winter to the floor ; hence it is more important that a sleeping room should have a very gentle current of air in winter than in summer. • Never go to bed with cold or damp feet, else refreshing sleep is impossible; but spend the last five or ten minutes before bed-time, at least in firetime of year, in drying and heating the feet before the fire, with the stockings off. In- .^v^ v^, v.^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 11.25 150 ^^^" MSI HlUu m 1.4 il.6 P ^ /i ^;j 7 ^5. Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 145S0 (716)872-4503 ^ 184 SLEEP. dians and hunters sleep with their feet towards the camp-fire. Difierent persons require dilferent umounta of sleep, according to age, sex, and occupa- tion. Nature must make the appointment, and will always do it wisely and safely; and there is only one method of doing it. Do not sleep a moment in the day, or if essen- tial do not exceed ten minutes, for this will refresh more than if you sleep an hour, or longer. Go to bed at a regular early hour, not later than ten, and get up as soon as you wake of yourself in the morning ; follow this up for a week or two, and if there is no ac- tnal disease, nature will always arouse the sleeper as soon as enough sleep has been taken to repair the expenditures of the pre- ceding day, a little more or less in propor- tion to the amount of bodily and mental effort made the day before. Commonly there mil be but a few minutes' difference for weeks together. It is not absolutely neces- franklin's aik bath. 186 Barj to get up and dress, but only to avoid a second nap. Sometimes it is advantageous to remain in bed until the feeling of tired- ness, with which most persons are familiar, has passed from the limbs. It is safest and best for all to take breakfast before going out of doors in the morning, whether in summer or winter, most especially in new, flat, or damp countries, as a preventive of chill and fever. If from any cause you get up during the night, throw open the bed-cloihes, so as to give the bedding an airinj^, and also with the hands give the whole body a good rub- bing for a minute or two ; the effect will be an immediate feeling of refreshment, and a more speedy falling to sleep again. This was Franklin's remedy in case of restlessness at night. When it is remembered that one third of our whole time is spent in our chambers, and that only uncorrupted air can complete 16* 186 ST.EEP. the process of digestion and assimilation and purify the blood, it is most apparent that the utmost pains should be taken to secure the breathing of a pure atmosphere during the hours of sleep; and that the most diligent attention in this regard is indispensable to high health. REaULATINa THE BOWELS. It is best that the bowels should act every morning after breakfast ; therefore, quietly remain in the house, and promptly attend to the first inclination. If the time passes, do not eat an atom until they do act ; at least not until breakfast next day, and even then, do not take any thing except a single cup of weak coffee or tea, and some cold bread and butter, or dry toast, or ship-biscuit. Meanwhile, arrange to walk or work moderately, for an hour or two, each fore- noon and afternoon, to the extent of keep- REGULATING THE BOWELS. 187 ing up a moisture on the skin, drinking i\B freely as desired as much cold water as will satisfy the thirst, taking special pains, as soon as the exercise is over, to go to a good fire or very warm room in win- ter, or if in summer, to a place entirely sheltered from any draught of air, so as to cool off very slowly indeed, and thus avoid taking cold or feeling a "soreness" all over next day. Eemember, that without a regular daily healthful action of the bowels, it is impos- sible to maintain health, or to regain it, if lost. The coarser the food, the more freely will the bowels act, such as com (Indian) bread eaten hot; hominy; wheaten grits; bread made from coarse flour, or "shorts;" Graham bread ; boiled turnips, or stirabout. If the* bowels act oftener than twice a day, live for a short time on boiled rice, farina, starch, or boiled milk. In more ag- gravated cases, keep as quiet as possible on 188 SLEEP. a bed, take nothing but rice, parched brown like coffee, thea boiled and eaten in the usual way; meanwhile drink nothing what over, but eat to your fullest desire bits of ice swallowed nearly whole, or swallow ice-cream before entirely melted in the mouth ; if necessary, wear a bandage of thick woolen flannel, a foot or more broad, bound tightly around the abdomen ; th:*s is especially necessary if the patient has to be on the feet much. All locomotion should be avoided when the bowels are thin, watery, or weakening. The habitual use of pills, or drops, or any kind of medicine whatever, for the regulation of the bowels, is a sure means of ultimately undermining the health, in almost all cases laying the foundation for some of the most distressing of chronic maladies ; hence all the pains possible should be taken to keep them regu- lated by natural agencies, such as the coarse foods and exercises above named. COLD FEET REMEDIED. 189 ATTENTION TO THE FEET. It is utterly impossible to get well or keep well, unless the feet are kept dry and warm all the time. If they are for the most part cold, there is cough, or sore throat, or hoarseness, or sick headache, or some other annoyance. If cold and dry, the feet should be soaked in hot water for ten minutes every night, and when wiped and dried, rub into them well ten or fifteen drops of sweet oil; do this patiently with the hands, rub- bing the oil into the soles of the feet particularly. On getting up in the morning, dip both feet at once into water, as cold as the air of the room, half-ankle deep, for a minute in summer; half a minute or less in win- ter, rubbing one foot with the other, then wipe dry. and if convenient, hold them to N 190 SLEEP the fire, rubbing them with the hand until perfectly dry and warm in every part. If the feet are damp and cold, attend only to the morning washings, but always at night remove the stoclrings and hold the feet to the fire, rubbing them with the hands for fifteen minutes, and get immediate- ly into bed. Under any circumstances, as often as the feet are cold enough to attract attention, draw off the stockings and hold them to the fire ; if the feet are much inclined to dampness, put on a pair of dry stockings, leaving the damp ones before the fire to be ready for another change. Some person^' feet are more comfortable, even in winter, in cotton, others in woolen stockings. Each must be guided by his own feelings. Sometimes two pair of thin stock- ings keep the feet warmer than one pair which is thicker than both. The thin pair may be of the same or of different mate- DRY AND WARM FKET. 191 rials, and that whicli is best next the foot should be determined bj the feelings of the person. Sometimes the feet are rendered more comfortable by basting half an inch thick- ness of curled hair on a piece of thick cloth, slipping this into the stocking, with tlie hair next the skin, to be removed at right and placed before the fire to be per- fectly dried by morning. Persons who walk a great deal during the day, should, on coming home for the night, remove their shoes and stockings, hold the feet to the fire until perfectly dry, put on a dry pair, and wear slippers for the re- mainder of the evening. Boots and gaiters keep the feet damp, cold, and unclean, by preventing the escape of that insensible perspiration which is al- ways arising from a healthy foot, and con- densing it; hence the old-fashioned low shoe is best for health. 192 SLEEP. But coming to more direct agencies for pre- venting morning debilitations, and recapitulat- ing somewhat in reference to the procurement of sound sleep, in view of its primary import- jince as a remedial means, as an aid in making it sound and connected, it being known that the exhaustions occur m the unsound sleep of the later part of the morning, often during tlie " second nap," ps it is called, it may be added that persons who sleep in the daytime, and thus render the sleep of night less deep, are more troubled with these things. By going to sleep at a regular early hour, say not later than ten o'clock, by not sleeping a moment in the day- time, and by being regularly waked up at the end of seven hours, which is about as much as persons usually require, the sleep would, gener- ally, in a week be sound, deep, connected, and refreshing, up to the last moment of waking ; and thus, by removing the chance of unsound sleep, the occurrence would be broken up with- out further effort, in cases not particularly ag- SECOND NAPS. 193 gravated. The aid of an alarm-clock may bo necessary sometimes to waken up persons, but within a week or two, nature loves regularity so much she would waken up the body within a few minutes of the time, if only the habit were persistently followed of getting up at the very first moment of waking, or at least, by a strong exercise of the will, avoiding a second nap ; for it is this, by the unsoundness of the sleep, which gives rise to dreams, that precipi- tates the trouble, in a very great degree. Pains should be taken to keep the mind en- gaged during the day in the important affairs of life, and to avoid exciting subjects of thought and feeling at the close of the day. As urinary accumulations during the night are sources of unhealthful stimulation, the bladder should be emptied the very last thing on going to bed ; and if the person could be waked up about two o'clock in the morning, or every third hour, to do the same thing, it would very 17 194 SLKKP. greatly promote the objoct in view. This is aa important suggostioa. The bed-chamber sliould be hirge and well ventilated, and every thing done to promote coolness of the body; a hard bed, with 'lair or strav/ mattress, is indispensable, with as little covering on the upper portion of the body as consistent with comfortable warmth, while from the middle of the thighs downwards, there should be an abundance of covering, so that by keeping the feet quite warm, the blood will be diverted thereto, and thus be productive of important results. If these things do not avail, it is recommended to sleep on the floor, with nothing under the person but a " comfortable," or a common blanket and sheet doubled. When these things also fail, there remains but one of two safe alternatives, either marriage or the consultation of a physician of known ability and of high character; but the latter aid can only benefit to the extent of a temporary ex])«)- SAFEOUAHD OF MAUIilAQE. 195 dii'iit, and Hbould be regarded aa a means of gainiii.; time for a better preparation for mar- riage, wbieh, after all, is tbo great purifier, the (livifioly-appointed means for bappifying hu- manity, and for perpetuating tlie race in healtb and vigor and prosperity, and vvliicb every pru- dent and wise })arent siiould use all practicable means for encouraging at an early age, not later tlian twenty-five ; it is the honorable safe- guard against many ills, and one which every affectionate and considerate parent should en- deavor to throw around the young as a matter of high duty, imposed by the very nature of things. That all the pains named should be taken by panmts for the correction of the troubles in question, it ought to be a sufficient, an over- whelming argument, that mental aberration in some form is a frequent result of a neglect of the same, either lunacy or the more terrible condition of being a hopeless, driveling idiot. On the seventeenth day of July, eighteen hun- 196 SLEEP. dred and sixty, a man died in the hospital in Jjublin, Ireland, which was founded by Dean Swift, (himself crazed in later years, and with great certainty, as a result in one way or an- other of not having married in early life,) at the age of one hundred and six years, having been an inmate of the institution since May the twenty-eighth, eighteen hundred and two, a period of fifty-eight years. It is literally terri- ble for a parent to contemplate the possibility of his child, so loved now, spending more than half a cencury in the dreary walls of an asylum, behind grates and bars of iron, in cold, cheer- less, and dreary apartments, never enlivened in all that time by one single smile of parent, brother, friend I And how often in the mean while to be neglected, to be maltreated, to be brutalized over by hired oflGlcials, upon whose hearts pure pity never made an impress, who can say ? Aftei all, one of the most efficient aids in breaking up the occurrences in question is force / >. \N FOROK OF WILL. 197 of will, an iron determination to compel the mind to subjects and objects which are of so much interest as to direct the greater flow of the nervous energies to the brain, or to engage in severe manual labor. Really great students and hard workers in mechanics, handicrafts, and fields are not much troubled in this direc- tion ; those most suffer who have idle time on their hands, or whose employments permit sev- eral hours of leisure, sufficient to allow nervous influences to be directed to unmeet subjects. Mere manipular occupations are not the best, such as writing, or other exercises, which can be performed while the mind can run riot in other directions. Let it be remembered that in any successful treatment this force of will, strength of character, mental diversion will be found of very great advantage. And when the serious nature of the ailment is taken into con- eideration, and the large bearings it has upon the happiness and well-being of those who are ander its influence, all means should be resorted 17* / 198 SLEEP. to which will have even a slight influence in breaking up the evil. Sleeping on the back increases the trouble ; hence whatever means are used to promote sleeping on the side, should be adopted, which, indeed, ought to be done, for the benefits to be derived in other directions. It is believed that no one has nightmare who sleeps on the side. If one falls asleep on the right side, it favors the passage of the food from the stomach, which there opens into the lower bowels, repre- sented by the greater ease with which water is removed from a bottle by holding it upside down, than if, when held in its natural position, it is drawn upwards. On this principle the ex- pedient of attaching a ball or block of wood to the back has been adopted by some. To compel the exhaustive use of the moans named, no medicine is advised. In the rai'c cases where drugs are necessary, consult an honorable and educated physician. As to "oomy apartments, it is well to record some NEW PLANS FOR HOUSES. 199 tinn-rrostious as to the propriety of introducing dwelling-houses in the larger cities of the United States on the European system, in reference to which J. R. Hamilton, of New- Y'ork, has said that " The very great difficulty experienced by families of moderate means, in attempting to obtain economical and convenient residences, easy of access, in the lity of New- York, is felt and acknowledged by so large and respectable a portion of the community, that I hope the importance of the subject will be a sufficient apology for my venturing to intrude upon your valuable space. " After devoting long and serious attention to this matter, I have prepared a plan which I take the liberty of submitting to your inspec- tion, and which, I think, will be found capable of supplying, to some extent, what has been so long desired. I claim no especial novelty for my scheme ; nor should it be considered in the light of an experiment, for it is simply an adap- tation of the well-known and convenient system of living in what are called 'y?ate,' so common among families of the best standing in Paris, 200 SLEEP. Edinburgh, and most of the large cities of Eu- rope. " You will observe that although there is but one general entrance and grand central stair- case to my building, the inmates have each a private entrance-door and vestibule from the common landings on each floor, and are conse- quently as much cut off from all communication with nch other as if they really inhabited houses Ui.der separate roofs. The main entrance and staircase, which are intended to be as pri- vate and well-kept as those of any private man- sion, (and there is nothing in the exterior to dis- tinguish it from that of any first-class private residence,) are, nevertheless, to those who enter, nothing more than a continuation of the side- walk. On arriving at their destination, be it on the first or fourth flooi, visitors will come to the private vestibule entrance of a gentleman's house, and will have to ring the bell before gaining admission, precisely as they would have to do in the street. This is what forms the es- sential difference between such a building as I propose, and associated houses of any descrip- tion hitherto erected in New- York — at any rate, to my knowledge. By my plan there can be .J Hamilton's house plan. 201 no intrusion whatever upon one's piivacj, no unpleasant and inevitable commingling of fam- ilies, any more than among people living next door to each other on the same block. " If you examine the plans, you will find that, upon an ordinary double lot of fifty feet by one hundred feet, I give to each dwelling or fiat, of which there arc eight in my building, (two to each floor,) the following accommodation : A large front parlor, four good bed-rooms, dining- room with china-closet, kitchen, and kitchen pantry, bath-room and two water-closets, a wide covered piazza in the rear, abundance of closets and every other household convenience, and my rooms are all thoroughly ventilated, and lit by direct lights. In the rear I have provided a staircase inclosed by brick walls, not only for thorough security in case of fire, but giving ac- cess from each dwelling to a separate laundry and coal-cellar provided for each in the base- ment, and having direct access to the back- yards. In the basement are also rooms for the janitor and his family, and two large double offices which would rent well to physicians and others in any good locality. The kitchen de- partment is so arranged that fuel can be brought 202 SLEEP. Up by a lift from below, and all kitclien refuse descend to one common receptacle (to be daily removed by the janitor) without the necessity of any one going down a single step. The building is calculated to be thoroughly supplied with all the usual modern improvements of our best dwellings. "After a careful calculation of the cost of such an edifice, including tiie ground, I am prepared to prove that with rentals varying from five hundred dollars for the first to three hundred dollars for the fourth floor, such a building would yield, if erected in one of our best neighborhoods, a profit of at least ten per cent upon the outlay. I shall be glad if, through the instrumentality of the press, the attention of some of our builders and capitalists can be seriously and practically directed to this import- ant question. I think it can clearly be shown that whoever undertakes to supply the demand to which I have alluded, will speedily find his account in it among hundreds of our citizens of the highest respectability, who are at this mo- ment undergoing all sorts of annoyances and inconvenience in vain attempts to obtain pri- vate, economical, and suitable homes for tlieir familier^" :d griscom's ventilation. 208 In the same direction the author of that ex- cellent treatise on the " Uses and Abuses of Air" has communicated to the editors of the Scientific ATnerican an improved method of ven- tilation, and which has been introduced into* the dwelling of one of the prominent citizens of New-York, in reference to which the editors remark : " This plan for ventilating houses, suggested and put in execution by Dr. J. H. Griscom, of New- York, received the sanction of the Third National Quarantine and Sanitary Convention, held in this city. It pertains to the chemical method, the motive power of the air being heat, but requiring no extra expenditure of fuel, the heat used for the purpose being only the waste heat of the furnace by which the house is warmed. The arrangement consists in. the construction of independent ventilating flues in the walls of the house, in proximity to the hot-air tubes, so that the two may be con- nected together by means of a lateral or branch' tube, by which a current of hot air may, at any desired moment, be transmitted from the hot air 204 SLEKl'. tube to the ventilating flue. By this means, the ventilating flues, which terminate in the o;)en air like an ordinary chimney, will be warmed by the hot air from the furnace, when the ordi- nary hot-air register is closed, as at night in a dwdtling, or in a school -house after school hours. " If properly constructed of brick or smooth stone, the walls of the flue will, after a current of hot air has passed through it a short time, become sufficiently heated to rarefy the air within, thus giving the flue a good ventilating power, even after the current of hot air has been withdrawn. For example, if the hot-air register of a parlor be closed at ten o'clock at night, and the heat, instead of being thrown back into the furnace, is allowed to pass through the lateral tube into the ventilating flue, and so continue till six the next morning, it is evident that, during those eight hours, the interior oP the ventilating flue must become thoroughly heated, so that the next day, when the current of hot air is restored to the parlor, the heated sides of the ventilating flue will continue to rarefy the air within them for many hours, and perhaps even days afterwards. VENTILATING REGISTERS. 205 " There being no danger of a reaction of the air of the flue through the ventilating register, (as is the case when voiitihiting openings are made in ordinary firc-fliics,) connections with the apartment to be ventilated may bo made at any point, and even carried to the opposite side of the house, between the beams of the ceiling, to ventilate distant apartments. Dr. Griscom's method has the advantage of being applicable to all edifices warmed by hot air furnaces of any description, which, in general, are those most needing ventilation. This arrangement may be introduced into many houses already erected, by connecting the hot-air tubes with such of the ordinary chimney-flues as are not used with fire. " One of the principal advantages appertain- ing to this plan, is the capability of having a large number of ventilating flues put in connec- tion with the furnace. In fact, the number may correspond with the number of hot-air registers, and thus any desirable amount and extent of ventilation be obtained." Some have gone farther in their benevo- lences than to advocate roomy and well- 18 206 SLEEP. ventilated sleeping apartments for their fel« low men. The interests of the noble horse are thus pleaded for by a recent writer : "Most stables are built low 'because they are wanner.' But such people forget tluit warmth is obtained at a sacrifice of the health of the animal and pure air. Shut a man up in a tight, small box. The air may be warmed, but it will soon lay him out dead and cold if Jae continues to breathe it. If stables are tight, they should have high ceilings ; if they are not tight, but open to the admivssion of cold cur- rents of air from all directions, they are equally faulty. A stable should be carefully ventilated, and one of the cheapest of modes is to build a high one." The whole subject finds a powerful il lustration, in one direction at least, in the discoveries which the celebrated traveler, Doctor Krapf, has recently made in the in- terior of Africa, where he has found a na- tion of people of whose existence the civil- ized world never heard, until the year eighteen hundred and fifty -nine or sixtyj SLEEl'ING IN PUnii AIll 207 showing that with social habits of the most degrad(}d and brutalizing character, " dis- eases arc never known annong them; they die only of old age, or through the assaults of their enemies." The only redeeming cir- cumstance, the only great influence antag- onistic of unheard-of degradations as to social habits, and which can at all account for the fact even in part, that " sickness is unknown, " is in the declaration that they have neither houses nor tents, have no cov- ering but the trees and the sky. To make it more satisfactory, the exact words of the traveler are given ; " To the south of Knffa and Susa, there is a very sultry and humid country, with many bamboo woods, inhabited by the race called Dokos, who are no bigger than boys of ten years old; that is, only four feet high. They have a dark, olive-colored complexion, and live in a completely savage state, like the beasts ; having neither houses, temples, nor holy trees, like the Gallas, yet possessing something like 203 SLEKP. an idea of a hi<^M»er being called Yer, to whom in moments of wrotchcdness and anxiety they pray — not in in an erect posture, but reversed, with the lioad on tiio ground and the feet sup- ported upright against a tree or stone. In prayer they say : * Yea, if thou really dost exist, why dost thou allow us to be slain? We do not ask thee for food and clothing, for we live on serpents, ants, and mice. Thou hast made us, why dost thou permit us to be trodden under foot?' The Dokos have uo chief, no laws, no weapons ; they do not hunt, nor till the ground, but live solely on fruits, roots, mice, serpents, ants, honey, and the like, climbing trees and gathering the fruits like monkeys, and both sexes go completely naked. I^hey have thick, protruding lips, flat noses, and small eyes; the hair is not W(>nll3'^, and is worn by the women over the shoulders. The nails on the hands and feet arc allowed to grow like the talons of vultures, and are used in digging ants, and in tearing to pieces the serpents, which they de- vour raw, for they are unacquainted with fire. The spine of the snake is the only ornament worn round the neck, but they pierce the ears with a sharp-pointed piece of wood. A SINGULA It RACE. 209 " The Dokoa multiply very rapidly, but have no regular maiTJa^es, tli(! intercourse of the 8ex( s leading to no 8elect(.'d homo, each in per- fect independence g. by opening the upper saah, because the hot ventilatxMl air, which always ascends upwards towards the ceiling, can escape more easily. The wind dries damp linen, because dry wind, like a sponge, iinbihea the particles of vapor from the surface of the linen as fast aa they are i'ormcd. "The hottest place in a church or chapel is the gallery, because the heated air of the build- ing ascends, and all the cold air which can enter through the doors and windows keeps to the floor till it has become heated. Special atten- tion should be given to the ventilation of sleep- ing-rooms ; for pure .air, and an abundance of it, is more necessary when we are sleeping than when we are awake. Sleeping-rooms should be large, high and dry, more especially in warm latitudes, and in situations where the windows have to be kept closed at night on account of malaria." VENTILATION OF SHOPS. "Few things," says a foreign writer, "are more insidiously undermining the constitution and vital stamina of many 'young people' than the want of shop ventilation, particularlj^ in the evening, when the gas is lighted. VENTILATION OF SHOPS. 237 ••There arc many traflea, the occupation in which is very light, and requires little or no exertion. Statiotu^ra, fiincy wool, top-shops, and tiu; likc^, nearly all keep tlunr doors closed 'because it is so cold;' the result is, that tho burning gas vitiates the air in the shop; and the assistatits inhaling this, the circulation of the blood is lowered, and the outward cold is felt all the more. Again, there are some shops the contents of which naturally yield emanations of an unhealthy kind when a free current of air is excluded. Who, for insta. jc, can go into a shoe-shop, the doors of which are kept closed, without at once being conscious of the unplea- sant odor of old and new leather ? The same may be said of a ready-made clothing depot ; the peculiar odor of the cloth and fustian, the burnt gas, and the confined breath of the people serv- ing therein, make it exceeding disagreeable to a stranger on entering out of the fresh air. If a remark be made by .a purchaser that the shop 'smells close,' the assistant is almost sure to reply that ' they don't notice it.' What, how- ever, they do notice, is headache, languor, loss of appetite, ennui, .ability, pallor of the fjvee, blotchy skin, redness of the nose, and white face, 288 SLEEP. All unheeded warnings to ventilate the dwelli^^g- place, which, if not attended to, produce worse results. " Many drapers' shops are badly ventilated ; some, where they drive a good trade, have been enlarged by the addition of neighboring houses, all the fireplaces have been removed, and but one or two entrances are left to the whole build- ing. There are, on the other hand, many trades where the door is always open ; the result is that all engaged in it are healthy, and never complain of being cold. Look at the butcher- boy, blooming and healthy; furniture- dealers, tavern keepers, and many other occupations are, as a general rule, healthy, because of the free ventilation of the shops or places of trade. " The nose is the gate to the lungs, and what- ever is indicative of unpleasantness is unhealth- ful, and should be shut out. Instead of closing the doors to keep the shop warm, it is better, if the cold is severe, to wear warmer under-cloth- ing — half gloves, thick stockings, warm jackets, and woolly neckerchiefs. In winter, dress ac cordingly in warm clothes, and plenty of them. Arising from well known causes, cold air, par- ticularly fresh air, warms the person that BWKA'IIIING DUST. 239 breathes it more than warm air. It is proverb- ial that persons sitting quietly in a room * feci a draught' from every cranny. 'The key-hole blows enough to turn a mill ;' though they ' creep into the fire,' and roast themselves, they have always one side cold ; yet a little exertion in fresh open air would put them into a glow. " As gas burns, and people breathe, water is produced and exhaled ; if this steam has been condensed on the inside of windows, you may be sure the shop wants ventilation. Dust of every kind should also be avoided with scrupu- lous care. Every morning when the shop is dusted, doors and skylights should always be wide open, so as to clear away the dust as it flies about. It avails but little to dust without getting rid of it out of the premises ; to make a dust with a brush in one place for it to settle in another, is labor in vain. Persons who take a morning or evening draught of dust are sure to be troubled with air-tube complaints. This, then, is another reason for ventilating the shop. "Those observations apply not only to the tradesman's shop, but also to the workshop or factory. The fearful decadence of the health of such towns as Manchester, Oldham and Shef- 240 SLEEP. fiold, whicli are in truth but congregations of workshops, is notorioup ; the pale, wan faces of the dwellers there too truly tell the want of pure, clean, fresh air. " Passing now from the private shop to pub- lic institutions, we are compelled to admit the same radical fault — the want of that element which is ' the breath of life.' "In the churdies, schools, and assemblies, people who go there suffer more or less from this evil. It is proverbial how persons, young and old, suffer from colds, bronchitis, and influ- enza, all of which are said to be * caught ' when they return from some public place of assembly. The question naturally arises, how is this? The answer is, that it is caused by the sudden change which the body undergoes in passing from a heated, impure air to that of the natural temperature, containing also its proper propor- don of elements. Man requires for his health one gallon of air every minute of his life ; the individuals of a church congregation are rarely, if ever, supplied with a quarter of that quantity. Only at the cathedrals is the air space in pro- portion ■'d the worshipers. A man of large lungs inhales about twenty-five cubic inches of VITIATED AIR OF CROWDED ROOMS. 241 air at each respiration ; lie breathes eleven times a minute, and thus requires nine and a half cubic feet of air evGry hour. Now when there are a thousand persons under one roof (some of the metropolitan churches and chapels contain twenty-five hundred personii) for a couple of hours, it is evident that twenty thousand cubic feet of air are required to supply that which is necessary for existence to those thousand per- sons in a pure atmosphere, so that, of course, a much larger quantity than that is required in order that a current can be established to remove the effete matter of exhalation. " The evils of vitiated air are also more to be guarded against, because persons can live in it without being aware of its danger, so far as their sensations are concerned. When we enter a crowded assembly on a cold day, the air is, at first, repulsive and oppressive, but these sensa- tions gradually disappear, and then we breathe freely and are unconscious of the quality of the air. Science, however, reveals the fact that the system sinks in action to meet the conditions of the impure air, but it does so at the expense of having the vital functions gradually depressed, and when this .is continued disease follows. No 21 242 SLEEP. disease can be thoroughly cured when there is a want of ventilation. It is related that illness continued in a family until a pane of glass was accidentally broken, and then it ceased; the window not being repaired, a plentiful supply of fresh air was admitted." BURYING- UNDER CHURCHES. "The practice of building sepulchral vaults under the churches was fraught with the great- est evil to the health of those who went into the edifice for sacred purposes. But, with few exceptions, it is now interdicted by the legisla- ture ; still a great deal has to be done. Nearly all the churches in the empire require some artificial means of ventilation to render them physically fit receptacles for the body during a prolonged service. The Sunday-schools, also, as I a general rule, are very ill-ventilated, and in the second hour the lessons arc far worse ren- dered than in the first, solely arising from a semi-lethargic coma that comes over the pupils breathing a carbonic air, which has already done duty, and been inhaled by others several times. However it is to be regretted, it is yet true that people will sometimes sleep during BURYING UNDER CHURCHES. ^43 the sermon. Now, the minister must not be twitted with this, for with the oratory of a Jer- emy Taylor or a Tillotson, people could not be kept awake in an atmosphere chaiged with carbonic gas, the emanations of a thousand listeners. The church-wardens should ventilate the churches, and see that the congregations liave sufficient air for breathing; if people go to sleep, the church-wardens are more to blame than the preacher." VENTILATION AS INFLUENCING- HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. In a public lecture on this subject, Br. E. Y. Robins, an indefatigable worker and an able and scientific writer on subjects allied to venti- lation and general hygiene, said that air was the prime necessary of life ; that we could live more days without food than we could minutes without air. The purpose of our breathing was, first, to supply the blood with oxygen, which is the life-sustaining principle of the air, and second, to free the blood from carbonic acid and other impurities. The air which we breathe is found, on expiration, to have lost a large part of its oxygen, and to be impregnated with car- 244 SLEEP, bonic acid gas — that substance which often proves fatal to persons who descend into wells, and which is the active agent of death in cases of suicide by burning cliarcoal. It produces death whether retained in the blood or inhaled into the lungs — the poisoning process in both cases being precisely the same. To produce death by that agent, it was by no means necessarv that it should be breathed in a pure state. Dr. Carpenter had ascertained that air containing five or six per cent of car- bonic acid gas would produce immediate death, and that less than one half that quantity would soon prove fatal; and Dr. T. Herbert Barker had ascertained by experiments with this sub- stance, that an animal in an atmosphere con- taining only two per cent of carbonic acid would die in about two hours. Now the air which we exhale from the lungs contains, ac- cording to standard authorities, ab< at five per cent of carbonic acid, and hence if exactly the same air were remhaled it would quickly prove fatal. It is a substance that is constantly ac- cumulating in the blood, and if it is not as con- siantly removed it will speedily produce death. The process of breathing is but the instinctive VENTILATION AND LONGEVITY. 245 eflfort of nature to free herself from the presence of this poison. But air which has once been in the lungs, will no longer perform this office, being already saturated with carbonic acid. Hence the necessity of inhaling fresh air at every breath. The importance of this was illustrated by Dr. Southwood Smith, who said : " Stop the respiration of an animal, or confine it to air which has already been respired, and carbon accumulates in the venous blood and mixes with the arterial blood. In half a minute the blood flowing in the arteries is evidently darker; in three quarters of a minute it is of a dusky hue, and in a minute and a half it is quite black. Every particle of arterial blood now disappears, and the whole mass becomes venous, sensibility is abolished, the animal falls down, and in three, or at most in four minutes, the heart entirely ceases its action, and can never again be excited." Now, if effects are proportioned to their causes, and if an atmos- phere impregnated with five per cent — or one twentieth part of its volume — of carbonic acid, will thus produce death in a few minutes, what must be the probable effect of breathing, for iwenty or forty years, even the much minuter 2r 246 • • SLEEP. proportions which must be present in every in* habited room where there is not a constant in- gress and egress of air? It must lower the standard of health and shorten the duration of life. But not only is the air in a close room thus constantly being impregnated witli cai- bonic acid gas to the amount of about twenty- eight cubic inches per minute for each adult man occupying such room, but there is also, ac- cording to the best authorities, constantly being discharged by the lungs and pores of the skin, an equal amount, by weight — that is, about three or three and a half pounds in twenty-four hours — of effete, decaying animal substance, in the form of in&c'nsible vapor, which we often see condensed in drops upon the windows of crowded rooms and railroad-cars. Those drops, if collected and evaporated, leave a thick, putrid mass of animal matter. The breathing of these exhalations is believed to be quite as efficient in producing disease as carbonic acid itself. But there is still a third deterioration produced in the air by respiration, and that is, the loss of its oxygen. Oxygen is the vital and life-sup- porting principle of the air, and it is found that, when the air enters the lungs, the blood absorbs AIK OF CLOSE BOOMS. 247 about forty per cent of the oxygen which it contains. It is upon this we live ; and the air that is exhaled being deficient by almost one half in this vital element, of course can no longer support life. And as we inhale about five hundred cubic inches of air every minute, we of course deprive that quantity of air of ' forty per cent of its oxygen each minute. The Creator has provided for the constant and com- plete removal of these poisonous exhalations by causing the expired air to rise, by its increased warmth and consequent levity, quickly above our heads and beyond the reach of a second in* halation, and by sweeping it away by the winds; but by our impervious ceilings and tight walls, we obstruct the operation of this beneficent law, and prevent these poisonous exhalations from escaping. Hence the air of a close room, though occupied but by a single person, becomes, from the very first moment of occupancy, im- pregnated with these impurities, which accu- mulate more and more, the longer it is occupied without vontiliititju, and the more it is crowded. It would certainly be difi&cult to over-estimate the importance to life and health of the purity of the air we breathe, and it would ali^o be diffi- 248 SLEEP. cult to determine to what period of duration human life might be prolonged, did we and had our ancestors always broatlied a perfectly pure atmosphere. A most remarkable and convinc- ing illustration of the effects of the quality of the air we breathe upon health, is to be found in the experience of the armies of England and France during the late Russian war. England, out of a total force of ninety-three thousand nine hundred and fifty nine men engaged in the campaign in the Crimea, lost thirty-three thou- sand six hundred and forty-five, of which num- ber only only two thousand and fifty-eight were killed in action, and one thousand seven hun- dred and sixty-one died of wounds, while no less than sixteen thousand two hundred and ninety-eight died of disease at the seat of war, and about thirteen thousand were sent home on account of sickness, many of whom, no doubt, afterwards died. To every one taken to the hospitals on account of wounds, twelve were taken there on account of disease. The chief destroyer was typhus fever. M. Boudens, Sur- geon-in -Chief of the French army, in a letter written home during the war, says of this disease: "It is engendered by crowding and VENTILATION OF SCHOOL-ROOMS. 249 want, either in hospitals, prisons, or on board of vessels. The disease may indeed be called forth and removed at will." And he adds: "The first remedy is pure air and powerful ventilation." The great mortality in the Eng- lish army was during the early period of the war. After the Sanitary Commissioners ar- rived and commenced their operations by secur- ing greater ventilation, the sickness was i lid, and finally disappearv The great panacea was fresh air. In the French army, where no sanitary reforms were introduced, the great mortality continued and increased, thus showing clearly that the changes made by the Sanitary Commissioners in the English army were the sole causes of the decrease of mortality where they labored. Recurring again to the condition of our buildings here, the lecturer said : In our school-rooms the matter is still worse ; while in our railroad-cars we have actually less breath- ing room than the wretched prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta — they having had about forty cubic feet per man, while in our cars we have only an allowance of about thirty cubic feet. In addition to this, the lighting of our rooms in the evening is a source of great con- 250 SLEEP. tamination to the air— cacli giis-burner buing cstirnuted to generate as much carbonic acid gas as the respiration of four peraons, or more tlian one hundred cubic inches per minute. Every gas-burner should liave a ventihiting tube to carry off the products of combustion, and con- vey thorn entirely out of the room, as is tlie case in the Houses of Parliament, and many other public and private buildings in England. In conclusion, he stated his belief, that by due attention to sewerage and ventilation, the mor- tality of this city would be decreased ten thou- sand every year. The lecture, which occupied about an hour in reading, was listened to with great satisfaction by all present. When the lecture was concluded, Dr. Harris stated that the next lecture would be delivered on Monday evening. " In answer to a call, Dr. Halliday referred to recent visits he had made to the houses in this cit}'' in which a number of families lived to gether. He said that the Italian residents here, especially, were in the habit of living several families together, in one comparatively small room. He also mentioned that in a single block he found forty-five families, not a single one of MJjkM RICIIAIIDS ON VENTILATION. 261 whom had a child living. When he asked for their children, the answer generally was : * God has taken them away to lieaven.' This terrible infant mortality was caused by want of cleanli- ness and ventilation in their residences." The best, the ablest, and most successful weekly publication of its kind in the world, ia the New- York Scientific American. One of its special correspondents, E. M. Richards, writes on the same important subject of ventilation : " Many persons have remarked the languor and sleepiness that are apt to creep over them after sitting for an hour or so in a crowded church. Many persons refer this to other than the real cause — to dullness of the discourse, bodily derangement, etc. — while really, in mcJst cases, it is solely to be attributed to a deficiency of vital air. On first commencing the religious services, the supply is generally sufiicient ; but before the close, it becomes totally inadequate. Many sick stomachs and bilious headaches are thus inflicted on devout but physiologically ig- norant worshipers. . , , ',1 " Our schools are little better than ' mephitic 252 SLEEP. dens/ in which the poor children are almost poisoned, and their brains stupified, by the im- purities they are obliged to take into their sys- t ices or destitution. The per centuj^e of deaths in New- York is greater than in Phila- delphia, because there are more underground, crowded apartments, whose inmates are poisoned by noxious gases, and from which deadly efllu- via aseouds to loftier habitations. " The results of vitiated air on the mind are as palpable and awful as on the body. If the brain, the organ of thought, is supplied witli unvitalized blood, the order and activity of the mind's thoughts can not be sustained. Hence all school and study rooms should be amply supplied with pure air. Bad air ' takes off the cliariot-wheels ' of thought, pinions the wings of iinaginatioD, • bewilders reason, dissipates memory, makes a general wreck of the intel- lect, and distracts all the passions and instincts of man's nature." " Few persons," says another writer, " imagine that their luugs are inseparable from their thoughts. Not that the pulmonary structures and functions occupy the heart of thoughts ; but that as a man inspires the physical atmosphere, 80 does his mind conduct itself as to thinking, willing, and wishing. For example : If a hu» lum being should be imprisoned in a small 276 SLEEP. room, not properly ventilated, and not replen- ished with freali air from without — so that hia breathing would be confined to the same atmoa» phere for a great number of hours each day — the consequence would unmistakably be ex- hibited in the mental operations of the victim. He would tliink in a circle, because he would breathe in a circle, and his dig' '> y /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 278 SLEEP. it gives DO strength, imparts uo nourishment, until the air has acted upon it. We sit down to a dinner ; in five hours, what wo ate has been converted into a homogeneous substance called ''chyme;" it then passes out of the sto- mach into the smaller intestines, and becomes a sweetish milky fluid, in which state it is ab- sorbed and carried into the heart, into which it falls the moment the blood falls into it, which has come to it throug].t the veins from its cir- cuit of the body, all which is impure and black. This black blood and light-colored nu- trient chyle are mixed together in the heart, and^sent direct to the lungs, where it is contained in numberless minute vessels or channels, the sides of which are so thin that the air breathed passes its life-giving virtues through the sides of these vessels, and is at once incorporated into the mixture of milk-like chyme and the impure black blood, and when these three meet, and not before, a transformation is effected with the rapidity of lightning ; the red blood of life LIFE IN THE BLOOD. 279 is formed, and the very next instant, full of nutriment and vitality, it passes back to the heart, to be instantaneously dashed to the remotest ends of the system, imparting instant animation, renovation, and strength to every fiber of the body ; and in proportion as the air is impure in quality or deficient in quantity, this strength, renovation, and animation are imperfect. Without air, pure and fresh, thus supplied to the lungs, in vain would we seek for rest and renewal in sleep on beds of down ; in vain look for manly vigor from the richest, purest food, and the best ever placed beOre a hungry man 1 So that, whether in eating or sleeping, the pure air of heaven is essential to existence itself, essential to health of body and to activity of mind ; for it feeds, invigorates, and regenerates both, bringing us back to the felt necessity of having the purest air possible in our chambers, where we spend at least one third of our entire existence. It has been shown, then, that pure air and a 280 SLEEP. plenty of it during the hours of sleep, is indis- pensable to our well-being ; that all adultera- tions of it tend to destroy health, and eventu- ally life itself; that one of the most constant, general, and fruitful sources of atmospheric impurity, is found in the practice of two or more persons sleeping in the same bed, or in the same small room, and that consequently the habit should be abandoned in every case where it is at all practicable ; the reader being charged to remember, however, that any neces- sity which may seem to exist for its contin- uance, does not alter the nature of the evil, or diminish its amount ; consequently, if it be in truth a necessity in any case, it ii an unfortu- nate one. EXCESSIVE CHILD-BEARING-. However numerous a household may be, the parent does not feel willing to spare any one of the children, and there is a prevailing sentiment, more pious than true, that if Frovi dence sends children, he will in some way pro- EXCESSIVE CHILD-BEARING. 281 vide for them. It will not be deDied that many children die of neglect and want; the neglect arising from the criminality of parents, and the want from their idleness, improvidence, or nn thrift ; and fuither inquiry will satisfy the reflecting, that whenever a family is overbur- dened with children, it is di" itly owing to the fact that the parents have brought the evil on themselves by an unwillingness to observe a proper self-denial, the very key-stone of prac- tical Christian character ; precisely as it is the want of self-den*' il which leads many into bankruptcy and degradation .and crime, the self-denial which would have enabled them to have lived within their means. That many a woman sinks into a premature grave as the result of bearing children too rapidly, and that, as a consequence, those she has left behind her are, in multitudes of cases, nejilectcd, and grow up uncared for, to become a burden to society afterwards, is beyond denial. It is just as plain that these evils could have been prevented 24* 282 SLEEP. wholly, by a simple restraint on indulgence, and wliich the measures proposed in these pages would make comparatively easy of ac- complishment, as it is less difficult to resist hunger when food is not seen than when it is spread out before the eye and within easy reach. These suggestions will bear more con- sideration than the short space allowed them would seem to entitle them to, and they are not matters of minor importance, for they affect the happiness and well-being of those alive and of those yet unborn. Denials from two days before until eight after the periods, with a second's cold sitz-bath the instant after each occasion, are thought perfect eflSicients. CLOSE ROOMS AND CON- SUMPTION. It is stated on good authority that "in England one person in forty-five dies every year ; in France, one in forty-two ; in Austria, one in thirty-three, and in Eussia, one in twenty- CONSUMPTION FROM BAD AIR. 283 eight. About one sixth of all the deaths in civilized countries are caused by consumption, and this notwithstanding tlie fact that in some countries it is absolutely unknown, and in others prevails very little. Where it does pre- vail it is really 'the great destroyer.' One third of all the deaths in England are from tuberculous diseases. The advantages of the ec[uable climate there are more than counter- balanced by the excessive humidity of the at- mosphere. More females than males die of it in some places ; more persons in sedentary and in- door life than among those of active out-door pursuits. The disease is scarcely known among the savage races of men. It prevails most and is most fatal in low situations, where the air is surcharged with moisture and is less frequently changed by the wind. In fine, all the facts go to show that the great cause of consumption is lack of pure and vitalizing air. " Miss Nightingale has such faith in the heal- ing and restorative powers of the air, that she makes a full and free supply of it, night and day, the first condition of successful hospital treatment. In the English hospitals the space allotted to each bed is twenty-one hundred 284 SLEEP. cubic feet, and Misa Niglitiiigale insists tliat this is not sufficient for a single night without con- stant change by ventilation. If this be so, what must be the effect of sleeping, as half the people in this country do, in little eight by ten bed- rooms, with the windows and doors tightly closed, and perhaps the heat of a furnace or stove for warmth besides, in the winter ? The French hospitals provide for the complete re- newal of the air of a sick room every hour. We sleep in about a thousand cubic feet of air for six or eight hours, without renewing it at all — and sometimes two or three persons in that confined space. The fetor of a chamber that has been thus occupied is a sufl&cient demonstra- tion of the unfitness of exhausted and stale air to be received into the lungs; and the pallor, headache, and lassitude experienced in the morning by those who sleep ih these close rooms show very clearly that the repose which should have renewed the vital powers has only been the occasion of poisoning them. What won- der that the lungs, denied their natural aliment, and fed on poisonous malaria, refuse to perform their functions and go to premature decay I We have no doubt that this one sin aojainst na- SLEEPING WITH CONSUMI'TIVES. 286 turo of sleeping in impure air is the great source of nearly all the lung uiseases which sweep so many to early graves in what should be the bloom and vigor of life. Tlie ilea that the night-air is hurtful is a mere piejudice. It is the dead air of our sleeping-rooms, laden with foul animal matter, that poisons us, corrupts our blood, and destroys our vitality. " There are other minor causes of consump- tion, such as the breathing of air filled with dr.ot or unwholesome vapors, as in some of the mechanic shops and chemical laboratories. But with a little ingenuity properly applied, most of *:hese exposures might be obviated. Even so simple a thing as the carpet sweeper, by pre- venting the filling of our rooms with fine dust, is a great relief to the lungs of the women of the household. Consumption is not considered contagious in the ordinary sense, but there can be no doubt that sleej^ing in a close room with a consumptive person is decidedly unhealthy, and the destruction of whole families by this disease may be quite as much due tc this as to any inherited pravity of blood." It may not be amiss still further to impress 286 SLEsr. tlio reader's mind with the truth that pui*e, fresh air is essential to health, and that the very existence of humanity is as much depend- ent on it as that of the fish on water. These impressions may be most agreeably and in* structively made by showing how pure air acts on the blood in the lungs, and b^ *vhat laws these actions are regulated. The lungs themselves are a multitude of air- cells or bladders, of all sizes, from the twen- tieth part of an 'nch in diar.ieter downwards. These are filled ani emptied through the wind pipe and its branches at every in and out- breathing. These air-cells are made of the thinnest kind of membrane, on the sides of which multitudes of blood-vessels are spread out ; so while the blood-vessels are full of blood, the air-cells are full of air, the air pun*, the blood full of impurities ; but the blood and the air never come in actual contact ; two mem- branes intervene, the membrane of the blood- vessels and that of the air-cells : neverthelesH BLACK BLOOD. 287 the life of the air passes into the blood as it were, and the death, the impurities of the blood are transferred to the air in the lungs, and the Vreuth which was an instant before all purity, becomes in that instant so impure, that it is utterly destitute of sustenance ; so much so, that if re-breathed the moment it passes from the mouth, without any admixture of other air, immediate suffocation would be the result. It is known by actual observation, visual inspec- tion, that when the blood goes to the lungs it is dark-colored, called "black blood;" on coming from the lungs it is of a bright, sparkling red, and that if a person does not breathe, it remains black. The fair inference is, that this change is made by the air taken into the lungs at each breath, and it is easy to see that this change of death-blood into life-blood is more or less per- fect according to the purity of the agency which effects it ; that is, according to the purity of the air. And so necessary is it that this change should take place, that if it is inter- 288 HIiKKP. niptcd for a single miimto, wo die. For a fow minuica an impure air may not make any very decided change in the bodily feelings or condi tiotirt; but if it is continued during the sleeping hours, which amount to one third of our lives, its efrects must be as pernicious as they are wide spreading. Hence the rcaso is for the sug- gestions of those pages, the design of which is to uso all practicable moans for furnisliing a pure air to sleepers, and to remove all the causes, which it is practicable to clo, of deterior- ation, of which small and crowded sleeping- apartments are among the chief. But to show more clearly that the air which is breathed into the lungs is the agent of blood purifioatior and of attendant health and vigor, it is further proven as follows : If the black blood of an animal is put into a bladder the moment it is drawn, and the bladder is sus- pended in a cool, pure atmosphere, the blood next the membrane will soon be seen to bo changing to a redder color. This is explained POISON MADE IN SLEEP! .a. 289 by the fact that the air is composed of two con- stituents — oxygen and nitrogen — the former is the life giving principle, the latter contains no life whatever, so that it is the oxygenical con- stituent of the atmosphere which renovates the blood. Again, the principal constituents of the impurities of the blood are carbonic acid and water. All substances in nature have their likes and dislikes, their affinities and their re- pulsions. The affinities seek each other, the re- pulsions stand oflf or retire. The oxygen of the iatmosphere has such a liking, such an affinity for the blood, that it breaks down, as it were, the thin barriers of the air-cells and blood- vessels, and is embraced, absorbed by the blood. On the other hand, the carbonic acid con* tained in the blood has such an affinity for the nitrogen of the atmosphere which was left be- hind, all alone in the lungs by the oxygen, that it also rushes from the blood-vessels, dashes through the two thin membranes into the arms of the nitrogen, forming the union so well 25 290 SLEEP. known under the name of '* bad breath ;" and the more impure the blood is, the greater the degree of that bad breath. The curious reader will find an analogous exhibition of the more hidden properties of matter, of chemical affinities, by leaving a mix- ture of alcohol and water in an uncorked bottle ; the alcohol having a greater affinity, a greater liking for the air than the water has, begins at once to pass out of the bottle and mingle with the air of the room, as will be known by the odor of the apartment, and will continue to pass out until there is nothing left in the bottle but the water. But fill another bottle with a similar mixture, and place a thick membrane over the mouth ; in a few days all the watei will be gone, while the alcohol remains. '^L^hese experiments illustrate the doctrine of chemical affinities, by the laws of which the air we breathe has such an important influence in pu- rifying the blood, tbas giving strength to the body, vigor to the brain, and purity to thfj CHEMICAL AFFINITIES. 291 heart ; and to stint ourselves for a third of our entire existence in the supply of agencies upon which these all-important characteristics de- pend, is "unwise, unnatural, and degenerative.". Another illustration of this doctrine of chem- ical affinities is found in the experiments of Lewis, of London, in the examination of the ex- terior of twenty two thousand leaden coffins, and the contents of a large number in the church- vaults of the British metropolis, showing " that nitrogen and carbonic acid gases, holding animal matter in suspension, unperceived, but steadily penetrate through, and escape from the pores of leaden coffins, and disappear in the air ; so that by the end of fifty or one hundred years, noth- ing but dry bones remain ; and this escape may go on, though the coffins are uninjured. It is a rather ghastly thought that, of so many coffins breathing out their contents to mix with the air of the world overhead ; and the merry Lon- doners breathing in the sublimated remains of friends and progenitors, supposed all the while 292 SLEEP. to be, * after life's fitful fever,' sleeping well I Another authority, Mr. K. V. Tuson, believes that in manv instances there is a corrosion of the leaden coffins from within, forming a pecu- liar anhydrous carbonate of lead, and often destroying the leaden plates to a mere shell. Both recommend a discontinuance of burial- cases of this material." CHAMBERS FOR THE SICK. Florence Nightingale, after a wide per- sonal observation and experience, says of the rooms which the sick occupy : "It is very desirable that the windows in a sick-room should be such that the patient shall, if he can move about, be able to open and shut them easily himself. In fact, the sick-room is . very seldom kept aired if this is not the case — so very few people have any perception of what, is a healthy atmosphere for the sick. The sick man often says : ' This room, where I spend twenty-two hours out of twenty-four, is fresh- er than the other, where I only spend two. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. 298 Because, liere I can manage the windows myself.' And it is true. ^ " Do you ever go into the bed-rooms of any persons of any class, whether they contain one, two, or twenty people, whether they hold sick or well, at night, or before the windows are opened in the morning, and ever find the air any thing but unwholesomely close and foul ? And why should it be so ? And of how much importance is it that it should not be so ? Dur- ing sleep the human body, even when in health, is far more injured by the influence of foul air than when awake. Why can't you keep the air all night, then, as pure as the air without, in the rooms you sleep in? But for this, you must have sufficient outlet for the imp'ire air you make yourselves, to go out ; sufficient inlet for the pure air fiom without, to come in. You must have open chimneys, open windows, or ventilators; no close curtains round your beds; no shutters or curtains to your windows ; none of the contrivances by which you undermine your own health, or destroy the chances of »'ecovery of your sick." As proof, if more is needed, of the impure stete of the atmosphere of a chamber, or, in- 25* 291 SLEEP. deed, any inhabited room, the fact is given, that a pitcher of ice-water placed therein, will absorb all the gases of the apartment by its power of condensing, and, as it were, attracting them by its greater coldness, and thus becomes too filthy for use. A single pint of water will absorb a pint of carbc lic acid gas and several pints of ammonia witho increasing its bulk, and carbonic acic gas and ammonia are the constituents, in great part, of the air that comes direct from the lungs; hence, while ice- water purifies the air of a chamber or sitting-room, it becomes utterly unfit for drinking or cooking purposes, or even for washing the face and hands. These things being true, water which has stood exposed in any human habitation for a single half-hour is too disgusting for use whether for drinking or cooking. In fact, Etagnnnt water anywhere begins on the instant to become corrupi. Nothing containing moisture should be al- lowed to remain in an inhabited room. Ke- ccntly, a gentleman in perfect health, without POISONOUS ROOMS. ' 295 exposure of any sort, became suddenly nausea- ted in the middle of his meal, and remaining so vrithout improvement, notwithstanding entire abstinence from food, he concluded the cause of it remained in existence and on close inves- tigation, ascertained that a pastecup had been inadvertently left in his sitting apartment, emit- ting a most sickening odor. An analogous case occurred in England. In eighteen hun- dred and fifty-four, a man in perfect health was placed in a room in London, and in a few days died of putrid fever. The next, and the next, and the next occupant became successively ill. At leng ,h, the authorities ordered an examina- tion of the premises, when the cause was found in several pounds of paste and wallpaper which had been covered up out of sight, the decomposition in progress, throwing out the destructive gases. Another English house be- came so notoriously unhealthy that no one would live in it free of charge ; the cause was found in new paper having been pasted on the old for successive generations perhaps. 296 SLEEP. LIGHT AND AIR. It is an encouraging sign of the times that the editorial mind of the country is waking up to the importance of breathing a pure atmos- phere. And for the sake of presenting an im- portant idea in every variety of phase, the various extracts have been given in the preced- ing pages, to which may be added another from the Boston Transcript : " Our parlors have become simply furniture warerooms ; not ' show-rooms ' even, for light is essential to a good show of any sort; they are mere places for the storage of carpets, pictures, and chairs that have cost money, and have, no doubt, a money value, but whose office is a sinecure, as far as making a comfortable home is concerned. On calling to see a 'riend, we are shown into an utterly dark and airless room. After a long time she appears, or some- thing appears, of which we can dimly discover the outline. If she is very amiable, she remarks, by waj'' of conversation, ' this room is rather dark,' and raises one of the various coverings of the window about an inch. There- CHEERLESS PARLORS. 297 upon comes in a light streak of sickly hue, that makes the previous darkness more visible. You have the pleasure of hearing her voice, without the slightest notion of her color, expression, or looks generally. After you escape into the cheerful brightness of out of doors, she steps back into the room, drops the shade closely again, and trips up a darkened stairway into another dark room, there to sew, read or write, all the time straining her eyes to the utmost, in her efforts to see in the dark. Her eyes ' trouble her very much ' — she * has constant pain in her eyes and head ' — she has been to this oculist and to that, and has paid large sums of money, and ' is nothing better.' They all tell her one thing — she ' must rest her eyes' — she 'uses them too much,' and so on. No part of this is true, as she has never used her eyes in any good sense, though she has always abused them. About every third person of her acquaintance is affected in the same way, and ' Oh ! dear, what can the matter be ?' Hei grandmother — all their grandmothers in ' point of fact' — at eighty-two, could sew the nicest and most exact seam, and read the finest print in the evening, with the aid of the usual glasses. 298 SLEEP. She lived all her long life in rooms whose shutters were never closed save at night, and curtains of any kinds, there were none. The sun in her day did not harm the rich Turkey carpets that covered the floor, or the ' portraits by Copley' that hung upon the wall. Uer aunt, at seventy-one, can make as elegant a button- hole as eyes ever saw ; can embroider muslin and cambric in beautiful style, and in fine, plain sewing has few equals. Her mother, at sixty, could see to mark her own name in full, eighteen letters, with her own hair, on the finest linen-cambric handkerchief; and, at sixty-nine, can do almost any thing that can be done with a needle, in the most workmanlike manner. These three ladies spent thirty years of their lives in full view of Boston harbor, and the use of a spy-glass was one of their almost daily recreations. These are not exceptional cases. Any lady can recall similar facts among the circle of her friends between the ages of sixty and eighty years. But our modern lady is * troubled with her eyes ;' she has, in fact no soundness in her. From the crown of her head to the sole of her foot, she is a bundle of ailments, produced by broken laws. Horace VKNTILATION OF CHAMBERS. 299 Mann lias well said, that people who shudder at a flesh wound, oi- a tinge of blood, would confine their children like convicts, and compel them, month iii'ler month, to breathe quanxities of poison. It can not but greatly impair the mental and physical condition of children, to send tliem to breathe, for six hours a day, the lifeless and poisoned air of some of our school-rooms. Let any man who votes for con- fining children in small rooms, and keeping them on stagnant air, try the experiment of breathing his own breath only four times over ; if medical aid be not at hand, the children will never be endangered by his vote afterwards." VENTILATION OF CHAMBERS. In cases where there are no windows which can be used for purposes of ventilation, or where, from any cause, the door must be kept closed, a fire, burning in an open fire-place, answers an admirable purpose. But if a fire makes a room oppressive, an artificial light should be kept in iJie fire-place — such as a candle or two, or a large lamp, or, better still, a jet of gas, conducted 800 SLEEP. from an ortlinary burner by means of a flexi- ble tube. By tliis expedient a eonsiderable draft may be ereated tlirougli the fire place and upwards at a small cost, and without adding to the heat of the apartment. This would be au admirable ventilator for sick-chambers ; and in cases not a few, would do more to promote res- toration to health than all medicines; for pure air is the best convalescent in the world. VENTILATION OF DINING-ROOMS, DRAWING-ROOMS, AND FAMILY APARTMENTS. Any xoom, closed even for a night, whether in winter or summer, acquires a disagreeable closeness, perceptible on the instant of entering. Many drawing-rooms are not opened until ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, when, espe- cially in cities and large towns, passing vehicles have filled the atmosphere with dust, making it Tinadvisable to open the windows. In such cases, and othei'S similar, the jet of gas in LOW-DOWN fl HATES. 801 the flre-pluco will answer a good purpose. But above all tlie devices whioli will answer most perfectly in warming single rooms, is the "Low- down Grate," patented several years ago by the Messrs. Andrews & Dixon, of Philadelphia, in reference to which, Hall's Journal op Health for October, two hundred and twenty- sixth page, volume seven, says : " In cheeiful comfort there is nothing equal to a blazing wood-fire, on a commodious hearth. The very thought of it carries us backwards to days of unbridled gladness and joyous youth and genial sunshine. For purity of atmosphere and consequent hcalthfulness, there can be no superior to the old fashioned fireplace, 'and- irons,' back logs and fore-sticks, with the broad bed of flaming red coals 1 " Next to the wood fireplace, is the ' Low- down grate,' of recent introduction, suitable for burning every kind of fuel ; wood, soft coal, anthracite, red ash, bituminous, Liverpool, Cannel, any thing. It is in reality a ' fire-plnce ;' the fuel is placed flat on the hearth, on a level with the floor, the jambs are broad and flaring, 26 802 BLEKP. there is but little use for a poker or 'blower,' and hence no dust. The aaliea fall through a grating into a receptacle wliieli may bo emptied daily, or are conveyed through an iron pipe into a ch^se brick chandler in the cellar, to be removed once a year. By this contrivance the feet are easily warmed, and are kept so ; there is no danger of the coals falling on the floor or carpet, and the fire is made to burn more or less fiercely as easily as in an air-tight stove. This is written after a winter's trial. At an expense of less than three tons of coal, or two hundred and forty bushels, the thermom- eter on the wall opposite to the fire place, in a room two hundred and fifty feet square and twelve high, was kept at sixty-five degroes when the mercury was in the neighborhood of zero without, the heat being derived from a bi .J bed of glowing coals over two feet long. I'l'ese coals being on a level with the floor, keep the feet delightfully warm. The air for com- bustion is obtained from the cellar or the street ; hence the atmosphere of the room is simply pure air warmed, and has the genial heat of a wood-fire ; hence, also, there is none of the feeling of heaviness, sultriness, and oppression v:nE ON THE HKAiiTir. . 808 which is instantly experienced on entering a furnace or stove-lieated apartment. We cer- tainly feel that the perfection of house-warming in our countiy at present, is to have a low- down grate in each sitting apartment, while the extra heat is (jconomizod, to be thrown into chambers, suflicient to take off the chilliness or dampness when retiring or rising in the coldest weather. If families are so constituted that there must be additional heat, at least in cases of sickness, or company, or extra severe weather, when it may be desirable to modify the atmosphere of the halls between the tem- perature of out-doors and that of the sitting- rooms, Andrews and Dixon's furnace answers the purpose most admirably, which, by being placed in the hall or cellar, and so contrived that the warm air given out can not come in contact with red-hot iron, supplies an atmosphere for breathing which is pure and exhilarating. Such waM our practice last winter, the fire being kindled in the portable furnace in the lower hall only for seven days during the whole season, and these were, not at times when the weather was the coldest, because then the air was purest, driest, and most bracing, but r 0^ SLEEP. for the days coming after the coldest ones, when there was an ugly damp chilliness in the air, which, by abstracting the beat rapidly from the body, produced a stronger impression of coldness than when the weather was twenty degrees colder, but sti.l and dry, for it is not in the very coldest weather, when zero is hugged by the mercury, that 'colds' are so much taken, but when the air is raw from being satu- rated with dampness. It is in thawy weather that furnaces should be heated up, if ever. By this arrangement there was scarcely a cold in the family, varying in age from five to seven- ty -five, during the whole winter. " The several sizes of the low-down grate are furnished and slipped into the ordinary fire-place at a cost of from thirty to fifty dollars each, except when finished off with German silver and although these cost from ninety to a hundred and fory dollars each. Southern gen- tlemen are not deterred by the price, in conse- quence of the conviction of their superiority in the direction of healthfulness, cheapness, and tbeir special adaptation to house-warming pur- poses where furnaces are never needed — where transient fires are so often desirable. ANDREWS AND DIXON's GRATE. 805 " A gentleman of taste and observation, near Natchez, having used these grates for sev- eral years, and is now building one of the finest rjsidcncos n Mississippi, has introduced into it rineteen of these grates, six of which are of the costliest kind, as in his estimation nothing hitherto devised is equal to it, not only as regards a cheerful, balmy warmth, but for the purpose of a thorough ventilator, whether for the drawing-room, the parlor, or the cham- ber." As an evidence of intelligent appreciation of the low-down grate, nearly every prominent physician in Philadelphia uses one or more of them. As to durability, there is no reason why they should not l«st half a century, need- ing no repair the mean while, exjpting that of replacing half a dozen fire-bricks in the course oC years. Under all the circumstances it seems to be the perfection of house-warming, for up to this time it has not in any known instance failed to give comfort and satisfaction, and generally has exceeded expectation, and what is of un- 26^ "' 806 SLEEP. thought of importance, an ordinary grate can be taken out, the low-down slipped in and be ready for use in half a day, winter or summer, unless in cases where the ashes are to be con- veyed into the cellar, when a longer time is required, several days perhaps. When the ashes are to be received into a pan and are not conveyed into the cellar, a blower is needed to kindle the fire. There is a growing disfavor against warm- ing houses by furnace heat. No plan has ever yet, in this country, overcome the well- taken objections to this method of heating family dwellings. It is costly, insufficient in very cold weather, especially in exposed situations; the furniture and the wood-work of the building itseli is invariably injured, necessitating frequent repairs and renewals, and, more than all, an insufficient ventila- tion, with a close, oppressive and pernicious atmosphere prevails, which being heated, and the chambers being in the upper stories, the baker's HOUSE-WAltMING. 307 effect is to give the sleepers tte warmest and most impure air in the whole estab- lishment. T^^^ grave objections to hot-water pipes have ;en already named, and are insuperable. Under these circumstances, pub- lic attention has been directing itself to the application of steam, as a house-warming agent. It will perhaps be acknowledged by those best acquainted with the nature of steam, that it is capable of being made the most efficient, manageable, and economical of all agents yet known for communicating and distributing artificial warmth. It occu- pies the same superiority of position in the heating department that illuminating gas does in the department of artificial light. Being of about the specific gravity of gas, and of an elastic and volatile nature, it is peculiar- ly calculated to flow to the desired point, even through long and circuitous sections of small pipes. It expands seventeen hun- dred fold over the bulk of water from 808 SLEEP. which it is generated, and in returning to water, imparts one thousand degrees of heat to the air, which in water and in an un- condensed state would be latent and un- available. It admits of the most compact form, both as regards the space occupied for its generation, and the surface employed to heat the air. But to construct a steam- warming and ventilating apparatus which shall be simple and substantial, not liable to get out of repair, and entirely secure under the care of common domestics, is the great desideratum. William C. Baker, of the House of Baker, Smith & Co., of New- York, has for a number of years directed his attention to the subject, and has pub- lished several monographs in reference to it. Under his auspices a manufactory has been established, and is now in successful operation, for the exclusive object of warm- ing and ventilating private dwellings by the agency, not of hot air nor of hot water baker's steam- heating. 309 but of steam, which has been hitherto looked upon as being only a motive power. In the hot-air furnace, which is the most common method for heating, the fire is not' within the dwelling' apartment, hence thore is but one reservoir for the heated air which- is conducted by tubes to the different parts of the building. These tubes must be of different lengths, both in their horizontal and perpendicular courses, the longer lateral' tubes sometimes not conveying Jiny heat, while the shorter horizontal and the longer ' perpendicular ones may have the concen-: trated heat of the whole furnace. Further,' within one brick inclosure, there are the fur-" nace with its red - hot heating surface, the' fire, the ashes, the smOke, and all the noxious gases sot free by the consumption of fuel, while the only intervening partition be- tween these and the hot air we are to breathe, is a single thickness of frail cast iron, with the numerous joints, already opened by al* 810 SLEEP. ternate expansion and contraction, to admit of the discharge of the above - named gasea and other impurities into the air in process of heating, to be thence sent to the dif- ferent apartments to be breathed by the occupants. Baker's plan claims to obviate these objections by having several reservoirs. His boiler has a simple self regulating at- tachment which controls the draft and the accumulation of steam to a nominal pressure. This boiler, with its gases, ashes, chiders, etc., is located at some remote point from the warming surfaces, and from this, instead of one, there are several steam ducts lead- ing to the different warm - air chambers, which are in the cellars, but directly be- neath the registers or points of exit for the warm air to be conveyed into the dif ferent apartments. Exterior air is supplied to the different warm-air chambers through one main trunk, branching off to the dif ferent points. The temperature of the steam- •cSat WARMING BY STEAM. 811 heated surface is always kept at one low unvarying point — that is, at about two hun- dred degrees, which is below the boiling point, instead of being from three hundred to two thousand degrees, as is the case with the hot - air furnace. The fire requires to be fed, to keep up an even supply of heat, but twice in twenty-four hours. A fresh fire will seldom need to be built. There are no valves or dampers whose adjustment depends upon the care and judg- ment of any one. Only the simple and all- important items of fuel and water are re- quired to be supplied. The supplying of these must, under any circumstances, be de- pendent on human intelligence. The habit of the common domestic in the kitchen, of supplying with punctilious regularity, every morning, the water to the tea-kettle, and the fuel to the stove, amply qualifies her to attend to this duty — no more skill, judg- ment, or trouble is required in one case ^hun in the other. 31^ SLEEP. The simple act of shutting off or letting on the heat, by turning the registers, when- ever agreeable to the occupants of any part of the house, does, of itself, regulate the fire, the accumulation of steam, and the amount of air to be warmed. CROWDING, DEMORALIZATION AND DEATH. . * The Rev. H. W. Warren, of Bofstori, in a valuable article on the intimate connection between " good morals and good health," re- ports on good authority : " Of the children born on Beacon Hill, Boston, not oile third as many die the first year, as of those born on Broad street, near Fort Hill. The former are the children of the richest people in the city; the latter, those of the pborest. The former have feeble constitutions, but good care and medical attendance; the latter have, for the most part, rugged constitutions, but perish : some for want of attention, some from CROVVDLNG DEMORALIZES. 818 deliberate design. Carelessness and ignorance can not account for the vast disproportion of deaths among children born within a mile of each other. The state of morals has much to do with it. In one place, all is outwardly moral ; in the other, all is immoral, outwardly and inwardly. Children of passion have a perilous future. Passionate themselves, they contend with furious parents — a most unequal contest. Living evidences of shame, they are more the object of hate than of love. The tender care which they require, is displaced by unreported neglect and abuse, which no legisla- tive enactment can remedy. Immorality forms for itself all manner of destructive habits. Late hours come to be the rule, and seasonable retiring the rare exception. Intoxicating drinks follow, and, as a matter of course, treble crime, because they influence the passions, and bereft of reason, the victims find their gratification in haunts where consum- ing disease has made its home — the body is left 27 814 SLEEP. a wreck, the mind in ruins." Thus docH the reader return to the proposition with which tho subject opened — that crowding degrades indi- vidually, as in communities, weakens the body, impairs the mind, and corrupts the heart ; that roominess, with pure air and the blessed sun- light, elevates, energizes, and refines ; and these having been demonstrated, the book may very appropriately here close, by merely adding that only the few will practically apply the sugges- tions of these pages. But there must be a be- ginning in all things. Tl' ame may come when higher principles will prevail ; when there will be more moral courage, more force of character, more strength of will ; when to a greater extent than has ever yet been seen in the world's history, the masses will act with a motive founded in wisdom, purity, and benevo- lence in the conduct of life ; when humane and generous and loving self-denials will be the rule, and selfishness and indulgence the rare, the very rare exceptions. May the good day coming speed on right quickly I APPENDIX. SLEEPING WITH OTHERS. While tlieso pa^os weru jKissint; throutjli tlio press, the following case came iiiuler the author's attentiuii : " My little son, eight years old, is lively anrl well ill all respects, as fur as I can judge, in the day, but at night he wakes up and screams in the most dis- tressing manner, lie awakes frighUMied almost every night for a year. He has been subject to this for several years, but it is getting to be a distressing case. I almost dread to go to sleep. JI(; sleeps witli me, and once every night, sometimes twice, he springs as (piick as I'ghtning, screams the most soul-piercing screams, and I take him in my arms, and he looks back, with horror on his face. I could not, unless you saw it, give you an idea of how distressing it is. lie is strong and lively, phiyful, and full of fun and life, until he gets to sleep. This happens every night, and often it so shocks me I can not go to sleep for a long time. He takes diimcr at one, su})per at sun- down, of cambric tea with a piece of bread. All my other children are entirely ditferent ; they are lively, hearty, and chet^rful, and so is he, otherwise." The directions given wei'e on the presumption that these eifects in the child were caused by sleeping in the same bed with the father, habitually. In two months, the report was made that " he had not waked up frightened for a long time." The national troubles at this point put an end to the correspondence. It may be instructive to know under what bodily symp- toms the father had been laboring for some years, but whom the author succeeded in restoring to " better health than had been enjoyed for seven years." Age, thirty-seven; hight, five feet seven; broad-shoul- 316 SLKKl'. dcred, dark nlvin, blm^k ('y(\s, uiid had rciimrkablo health, .str('nad. Just before, the child had complained of being ijhilly, that Ve felt sick, would not take any break- fast ; during the night he became exceedingly restless. Ilis little sister was also seized wiih convulsions, followed by violent screaming and copious discharge of the bowels. The boy soon fell into a collapsed state, and died thirty-eight hours after the com- 324 SLEEP. ; » mencement of the attack. Arsenic was found in the stomach, liver, and intestines. On inquiry, it was ascertained that the children had been playing seve- ral days in a small room covered with green flock- paper; the flock brushed olf readily. The quantity of the poisonous pigment was equal to one third of the weight of tlie paper. The coroner and his son experienced headache from sitting in a room hung with such paper. The verdict of the jury was, that the child had been poisoned by the inhalation of arsenical fumes from green paper, and that the manu- fjxcturer was guilty of very careless and culpable conduct. There is ground for the statement that the death of Prince Albert was the result of an illness caused by occupying a[)artments, the atmosphere of which was contaminated by foul exhalations. Three years before, fevers of a typhoid type were prevalent at Windsor, and even in the royal apartments at the Castle. A tliorough investigation was made by com- petent persons as to the drainage of the locality. This drainage was found most defective at those parts of the Castle where the fever appeared. This defect- ive drainage was at the two extremities of the pile of buildings, the cloisters and the stables, for tney were connected with the town sewers ; the middle portion of the building had a drainage of its own, in good condition. The royal family occupied thi? middle portion and escaped the fever; and it is quite tirobable that the Prince, who was an accomplished lorseman and a great lover of horses, would natural- ly be drawn to the stables, and thus drew "into his nostrils the breath " of death ! the more easily as his constitution was not of that vigorous nature calcu- lated to repel diseased influences. A single hour's breathing of an atmosphere loaded with miasmatic exhalations may produce deadly effects, as wiU ap* TEMPERATURE OF CHAMBERS. 826 pear from the following incident in another royal family, but a short time before the death of the hus- band of Victoria the First. It is stated in a letter from Lisbon, in reference to the death of the young King of Portugal : " It seems the terrible malady to which the unfor- tunate monarch, and two of his brothers, fell victims, was caught during a visit to Alemtojo, where the air is impregnated with some miasma exceedingly dan- gerous to strangers. On the evening of his arrival there, the landlord of the house where the royal party had put up, came in to inquire at what hour his majesty wanted breakfast next morning, adding that it could not well be before eight, as it was very unsafe for persons not used to the air of that country to go out early, at least before sunrise ; even the in- habitants never venturing abroad until the sun had dispelled the putrid vapors that arise during the night from tl»e soil. Unmindful of this warning, the King was at his window at six next morning, asking fur breakfast." TEMPERATURE OF CHAMBERS. Human life would be prolonged, and an incalcula- ble amount of disease prevented, if a little fire were kept burning on the hearth during the night, winter and summer, if the doors and windows are kept closed. One great advantage would be. that a con- stant draft would be kept through the room, fire- j)lace, and chimney, making a gi-eat degree of at- mospherical vitiation impossible. There is a bale- ful error in the popular mind as to tlie nature and effects of pure air, warm air, and cold air. Warm air may be as pure as that of the poles ; and although cold air is almost a synonym of pure air, and although it is healthful to breathe a cold air asleep or awake, yet 826 .t'' SLEEP. f ; I the breathing of cold air is healthful only to a certain extent. It is not true that because it is healthful to sleep in a cool room, it is more healthful to sleep in a very cold room, not only because, as has been pre- viously stated, carbonic acid becomes heavy under a great cold, and falls from the ceiling to the floor and bed of the sleeper, but because also a great degree of 3old in a room where one is sleeping is very certain to cause dangerous and even fatal forms of conges- tion in the brain and lungs. The same ailments re- sult from keeping sitting or sleeping apartments over- heated. In midwinter, the heat of a sitting-room should not exceed sixty degrees of Fahrenheit, five feet above the floor. In the chambers of the sick in French hospitals, the directors are careful that there shall not be a greater heat than sixty degrees or about fifteen centigrade. The temperature of a sleeping apartment for invalids and for children in health should range about fifty degrees in cold weather, and not run lower than thirty -five ; there is no advantage in sleeping in a colder atmosphere. Five hundred cubic inches of pure air should be de- livered to invalids and sleepers every hour, as is the custom in the best-regulated French hospitals. NERVOUSNESS, DEBILITIES, ETC. : The nervous fluid is manufactured from the blood ; the nerves themselves are nourished and repaired by the blood. The whole nervous system may become diseased in three ways : first, by sudden shocks ; sec- ond, by excessive action ; thir(T, by an unnatural con- dition of the blood for a long time. That mental shocks, as from fear, or bad news, may prostrate the nervous system, destroy the mind, and life itself^ needs no argument. That hard work, insufficient sleep, too great a press of business, or too much time NERVOUSNESS, DEBILITIES, ETC. 827 Spent in study, with errors in eating and neglect of exercise, may impair the nervous system, by calling the nervous fluid into action or use, before it is fully "ripe" or matured, is an often observed fiict. The remedy, and the only remedy for these is, an avoid- ance of their causes ; and it is as useless to look for relief in medicines, while the causes are in opciation, as to prevent the finger from burning as long as it is in the fire. The cure in the latter case must begin with taking it out of the fire. If there is excessive use of any part of the nervous system, whether of the thinking portions or of the propensities, the remedy is rest ; non-indulgence in the first place, and then ex- ercising the thoughts and propensities in another direction, to the extent, if possible, of an almost en- tire forgetfulness of previous studies and appetites. If, for example, a man has studied himself into a dis- eased condition ; if he has had such weighty respon- sibilities resting on him, that the draft upon his brain is such that he can not get sufficient sleep, and he either becomes deranged or is on his way to the grave by nervous prostration, there is no more safe and certain means of perfect relief, than that of send- ing out the nervous influence, or "stores," or accumu- lations, in a different direction — that, for example, of absorbing and pleasurably interesting out-door activi- ties. For the nervous fluids are constantly being gen- erated, as steam in a locomotive, when the fire is kept burning ; and if that steam is not expending itself on the driving mechanism, it must be let out upon the air. Destruction is inevitable, unless it finds vent somewhere. Hence the process of cure for all thoso nervous maladies which arise from over-use, is not merely a cessation of such uses, which is rest, but an employment of the influences in a different direction ; because, without such employment, there is no per* feet rest, as from mere force of habit these influenoea 828 SLEEP. will go out through the accustomed channels. To prevent a country from being devastated by a rising river, not only must a dam be built, but an outlet must be opened in another direction. A Russum nobleman, childless, was banished to Siberia. His wife was permitted to share his toils and privations. They were compelled to live on the plainest fare, to live m a miserable hut, and work nard every day. At the end of fifteen years, they had a house full of healthy children. In this case, the power of reproduction was lost through those excessive indulgences which are inseparable from a life of idleness and voluptuous ease. Hard-working peoples are the most prolific, as witness the Israelites in the laborious service of Pharaoh. In a recent census taken in one of the towns of Massachusetts, it appeared that although the foreign population was less than the native, a smaller number of Irish fami- lies gave more births in one year than a larger num- ber of American. An Irishman docs more hard woi-k than an American. Idleness predisposes to an excessive indulgence of the propensities, and this very indulgence increases the desires; thus being over-used, they become powerless, inefficient; that upon which they thus feed inordinately, destroys them. A state of labor is the natural habitual state of man ; animal indulgences, incidental, occasional ; and in proportion as this law is reversed, in such proportion does it tend to the extinction of the race. Ihe object '^^ this extended statement, is to im- press on the mind that the natural, safe, and efficient means of correcting all nervous derangements, is to give more rest to the parts deranged or disturbed, and so to change the modes of life as to send out the nervous power constantly being generaced in the sys- tem through other channels, thus giving those which are overworked time for recuperation. It would be NERVOUSNESS, DEBTLTTIES, ETC. 820 tho same if a man were dyin^ with excessive physical exertion. Let tlie body rest, and give him something to engag<; his tliouglits j)leasantly ; send the nervous system out of the body, tlirough tiie brain. Next to over-indulgences as a cause of nervous disturbances, is an imperfect assitnilation of food, I liat IS, indigestion, known as dyspe})sia, which is tiio failure of the stomach and otiier parts of the digestive apparatus to convert the food into perfect, that is, health-giving blood; for if the blood is imperfect in quality, the nervous influence whicli is made out ol that blood must also be imperfect, not of a suitable character, hence does not manifest itself naturally, fails to effect the objects intended by nature. When a man is dyspeptic, that portion of the nervous fluid ■whicli is sent to the brain is not of a proper quality ; and whatever part of the brain is in the habit of greater exercise, is more particularly disturbed, be- cause more of the imperfect blood, or more of the imperfect nervous fluid is sent there. Suppose the moral organs, at the top of the head, are most con- stantly exorcised, as in the ease of a clergyman, his teachings will diverge from the right line, will be unfaithfully lax, or morbidly rigid, painfully exact, Tiiisympathizing, vituperative, dealing in epithets and invectives, with not a tithe of the forbearances which characterized the Master. If he be more of a theo- rizer, more purely intellectual or imaginative, hia discourses will tend to what is airy, impractical, and absurd. If he be " domestic," a great lover of his wife and children, devoted to their welfare, the effect of bud blood on this part of the brain is to revolu- tionize this sentiment, and he becomes insufferably cross, complaining of tlie very things done for his comfort and welfiire, overrunning with a multitude of utterly groundless suspicions, imagining slighta and inattentions where they were never intended, 880 SLEEP. and perverting every thing said and done. If such a person, or exceedingly uitectionate parent, or otiier relative, becomes actually deranged, the liie of the child is sought, or of the kindred most loved. It is thus that mothers are not unfroc^uently known to murder their own children, the infants of their bosom. If a man loves to eat over-much, the imperfect, the bad blood excites the stomach to inordinate appe- tites. The man is never satisfied ; he is always eat- ing, always hungry, can not wait for his meals with any kind of comfort or patience — hence eats when- ever he is hungry, giving the stomach no time for rest; thus it is over- worked and the main difl&culty is increased. It is precisely so with the great propensity of our naturp "^he nervous energies are sent out through pro* aproper indulgences ; the imperfect blood r ^jsia, or bad blood from whatever cause, goes o parts in excess, and has one of two effects : it auords no nourishment, or excessive ; desire dies, or is morbidly great. The first step is rest ; the second, to supply a pure blood, which is best done in im- proving the general health by perfect cleanliness, regular daily bodily habits, regular eating thrice a day, feet always dry and warm, sleeping in a cool, well-ventilated apartment, sleeping only seven hours, being in bed only seven hours of the twenty-four, and that all at the same time — seven consecutive hours spent in sleep, so as to insure its soundness In addition to these, and without which the others can not be expected to be efficient, the n(M'vous influ- ences must be sent out of the body through another set of channels; must be expended in physical exer- cises, steady, hard, remunerative work, calling into requisition, the while, all that force of will which can .'O^ NERVOUSNESS, DEBILITIES, ETC. 881 possibly bo b luffht to bear in compelling the mind into a (lilU'Tcr cTianncl. The proof oi the tnithfulnoss of the principle pre- sented niiiy be caHJIy demonstrated in j»ny half-hour. Move the arm up and down continuously, until mo- tion becomes })aiuful or impossible ; tln^n running can be (hme as vigorously as if the arm had not been moved so. After running for some time, and resting the arm, it recovers its entire strength. It is precisely HO with every other muscle or set of muscles in the system, its glands or manufactories. A man may think until the brain seems scarcely to work at all, yet he can go out and work as hard as before he be gan to think, and after a while can go to b'; study and think to advantage again. To administer medicines to stimulate any power into wonted activity, is only the stimulus of the lash to an exhausted donkey ; it either kills outright, or induces an unnatural effort, which can only be exerted temporarily, with the certain effect of falling into greater exhaustions. Precisely so is it with the tonics and other remedies more powerful and more destructive, when employed to " invigorate." Ap proof, the universal testimony is, " It seemed to do good for a while." The recognition of this simple truth would prevent the blasting of many a fond liope, would save many a dollar to those who can ill afford its expenditure, would prevent the rob- bery of many a till, would save his integrity to many a (heretofore) noble-minded yc \ Ignorance of that principle has allowed multiiudes to precipitate Miomselves into wrong-doing, and into vices which have ultimated in ruin to body, soul, and estate. 832 SLEEP. FALSITIES. Designing persons have perverted facts, witli a view to impose on tlie young and inexperienced, thus : The instantaneousness of the acme of propensity is given as proof of an unfortunate debility. But keen- ness of appetite after long fasting, is no proof that there is no ability to enjoy food, no proof of debility of the digestive apparatus. The colt kept long in the stable, bounds away like a deer as soon as the door is opened. All the appetites of our nature are keen aftr^^ long disuse, or if infrequently gratified. The very keenness of enjoyment of a favorite dish, is the strongest proof possible of the power to enjoy, and of the healthfulness of the parts involved. The absence of the capability of enjoyment is the proof of diseased conditions. As to every taste, appetite, and propensity of our nature, the three great rules are. Temperance, liest, Diversion. In this connection a " Society " has been in operation for a number of years. One of its late announcements is of " new remedies " of vaunted powers — the strongest acknow- ledgment of the inefiiciency of the old. This alone is most suggestive to the reflecting. That self-called " Society " of one, if possessed of any intelligence, would naturally employ all the means suggested by the medical literature and experience of the world, and the bare notice that it had *'new remedies" was simply a confession that up to A.l). 1862, there was no cure of the nervous affections to be found in any medicine known to that date. It is then clearly the dictate of common-sense, that if those o'eally af- flicted can find no relief in the judicious and persist- ent attention to the suggestions above of rest, tem- perance, and diversion, the next resort should be to a known physician of intelligence, experience, and honorable standing, simply because he has direct LOSSES. ETC. 833 and immediate access to all the medical discoveries of the civilized world ; hence no stranger, or charla- tan, or pretender can possibly be ahead of them, can possibly know any thing which they do not know. "LOSSES," ETC. As to those " losses " which result from early habits learned from evil associations, one impression is here sought to be made on every reader, that no medicine known can by any possibility repress or " stop " them permanently, except such as endanger the power of the system and life itself. ■ Repressing a thing of this kind is no more a "cure" than it is a cure to drive in measles, nettle-rash, tetter and the like. The most uninformed know that the striking- in of measles and such ailments can never be done with impunity, that life is always endangered there- by. So with the monthlies, and so with the subject in question. Nature will find a vent or make one in some way, as to the unmarried, once or twice a month or even thrice ; if these bounds are not ex- ceeded, it is not unhealthful. In proportion as they are exceeded, there is debility, nervousness, etc., as named in previous pages. To give some idea of the power it requires to repress, the remedies ordinarily employed are not only poisons, but those of the m^st virulent character, a grain or two of which cause immediate and certain death, such as strychnine, gelsemin, igiiatia mara, nux vomica, etc., but in order not to excite apprehension, less formidable names are appended to the prescriptions. If this is not suffi- cient to deter from medicinal remedies, or any reme- dies from any one except the family physician, it may be enough to append a letter received April 5th, 18H2, one of a class innumerable received by city practitioners : " These habits were contracted 834 SLEEP. at an early age ; they left distressing consequences. I took various medicines, and after exhausting all my means I am a confirmed invalid, and my physi- cian tells me there is no help for me, that J can not get well." These habits acquire such a sway over the young sometimes, that at the early age of twelve the sub- jects of them are as powerless of resistance as is the most inveterate drinker or opium-eater at the age of fifty years. Within a few months standard medical journals report two cases in California of eleven and twelve years, where only a terrible surgical operation could (but did) break up the habit, and save from clearly approaching idiocy. The American Journal of Medical Science reports a case of a child not twelve years old, " of a gentle and engaging disposition, and endowed with a considera- ble degree of intelligence, so powerfully influenced by the fatal pas-.ion which dominated, while it un- dermined its existence ; this child at length became an object of horror to the parents and the friends, and soon after died with all the symptoms of brain disease," and which, on further examination, was found to have extended to ihe whole spinal column, involving the spinal "narrow ; the cerebro-spinal fluid having become yellow matter " instead of a clear transparent fluid, as it is in health. It is not, therefore, by any means strange that in a case known to the author, a manly youth, born to a for- tune, in one of the loveliest and happiest families of brothers and sisters in the land, has been for seveial years the inmate of a lunatic asylum, hopelessly idiotic, never speaking a word. As such results are not infrequent, and any family is liable to the mis- fortune in st)rae of its members, it is considered pro- per, wise, and humane to press the subject on the attention of the judicious and the reflecting. It is LOSSES, ETC. 885 particularly desir.'^hle to disabuse the mind of a pre- valent impression, that the physical " losses " neces- Barily involve moral guilt, or are the result solely of improper practices, for they will always occur nriore or less to the most virtuous and to the married, if from home a short time. Nature will force an outlet to accumulations when the channels of her own ap- pointment are in any way closed. But she must have the cooperation of temperance, cleanliness, in • dustry, and force of will, moral and intellectual ; a force of will worthy of a man, in order to keep her in healthful bounds ; these are safe and efl&cient : medicinal means are always uncertain, inefficient, unsafe, or dangerous. The practical view to be taken of nervous affec- tions in general, is, that they are an effect ; and whe- ther it be called neuralgia, nervous debility, nervous prostration, or any other name, and in whatever part of the body it is located, the immediate cause is in the condition of the blood, for it is upon the blood the nerves feed, it is by the blood tney are nourished, and from it they derive all their power. If the blood is not supplied in sufficient quantity, in- anition is the result, a general prostration ; if the blood is too rich, there is abnormal actioi ; if the blood is impure or imperfect, there is nervous irrita- bility ; the mind is fretful, peevish, unstable, the body is weak, restless, and invigorous ; if the blood is over abundant, there are aches and pains, neural- gias, which are literally " nerve-aches," in any and every part of the system. There is beside these, a nervous debility, which arises from the part being exercised beyond the strength given by the natural amount of healthful blood sent to it, and that part oecomes exhausted temporarily ; if rested, it returns to its natural condition; if called into excessive action soon again, rest will enable it to regain its 886 ' SLEEP. usual strength; but that rest must be longer, each succeeding exhaustion requiring more time for recu- peration, until, eventually, the power of recuperation is lost. This is destructive excess, not only to the part itself, but to the whole system, because the malady spreads as naturally and as certainly aa the fire in a burning building, and ceases not until the ruin is complete. If the brain is exercised too intense ly, whether in perplexing study, in incessant anxie- ties, or in the vortex of business, it soon begins at length to lose its elasticity, its power of concentra- tion, its continuity of thought, and the mind goes out in darkness, the body in death, or both body and mind together wilt and wither away. But even this condition of things is found in an unnatural state of the blood, brought about by the brain consuming more than its share of the nervous supplies ; hence the stomach and other portions of the digestive apparatus have loss than their share, perform their duties im- perfectly, and make an imperfect blood, bringing us again to the point arrived at before, to wit, that in the cure of all nervous difficulties, rest to the parts is the first essential; the absolutely indispensable step; the next is to supply the parts with a better quality of blood, a blood which is perfect, pure, and abun- dant. Nothing can purify the blood without pure air ; nothing can make it perfect and life-giving but muscular exorcise, sufficient, yet not excessive, not exhausting, the whole expressed in three words, " MODERATE OUT-DOOR ACTIVITIES," always safc, al- ways permanently efficient, and will always cure, if cure is possible, when conjoined with all the sleej) the system will take at night in large, well- ventilated chambers, having a constant supply of pure out-door air steadily introduced. SLEEP. 337 As to the debilitating which take place in the latter hours of a night's sleep, even the married sometimes complain, not only of the debility, but of various other things, as pain in the back, listlessness, want of concentration of mind, bad memory, des- pondency, and easily tired ; but none of these are necessarily the symptoms of what they have been led to believe by reading mischievous and demoral- izing books. In nine cases out of ten, these symp- toms have no real existence ; they are the creations of a morbid sensibility. The best cure for this state of things is to exercise manly courage and resolution enough to drive them away from the mind, by en- gaging in some active, invigorating, useful, and pro- fitable business ; one which will allow no time for useless and idle moping about. The early morning debilitations are certainly a reality, but if not connected with present vicious habits, and they do not occur half a dozen times a month, they can not have any specially disturbing ill effect of long continuance. But these debilita- tions do occur to the virtuously married, and all ought to know it, without any moral guilt, but from one of two directly opposite causes — too frequent or two infrequent marital indulgences ; the mean, pro- per to each individual, must, like sleep, be ascer- tained by an intelligent observation. AH rules in this regard would be as ridiculously absurd as those which prescribe how much each man should eat, or work, or sleep ; each constitution, each system should have the amount proper to it, and any excess or de- ficiency will always and inevitably result in decided and permanent harm to the whole body, if persisted in. The only possible method of determining wisely, safely, and certainly what each requires, is the exer- cise of an intelligent observation on effects from a greater or lesser number. Generally, if healthy, 888 SLEEP. grown persons sleep less than seven hours in twenty- K)ur, they are apt to be "dull" during the day ; if they sleep nine or ten hours out of the tweuty-four, they are also " dull," because, in attempting to get so much sleep, to force on nature more than she requires, the who^e amount of sleep is imperfect ; the faculties are imperfectly nourished and recreated, hence are " dull " also. Precisely so in the case in hand ; the " debilitations" follow an excess or a de- ficit. Begin with a weekly restraint of fifty per cent, and if these debilitations diminish in frequency within a month, then excess has been the cause ; and vice versa. Let the married so regulate the matter, that there shall be no debilitations from one year's end to another. The whole subject is a delicate one, and the reader's sympathy is claimed in the contem- plation of the difficulty of the endeavor to convey most important practical information, needed in every family, and at the same time to avoid pandering to depravity. The city practitioner is often consulted by persons laboring under distressing apprehensions of indefinite calamities, from that prolific source of ills, pernicious reading, as found in books which they would. not care to have it known they pos- sessed. A lightish-colored, glairy substance, resem- bling somewhat the white of an egg in appearance, consistency, and color, is observed to follow a pas- sage from the bowels or urination, sometimes leaving a stain. This is uniformly represented in the pub- lications referred to as a most momentous affair, a symptom which threatens enormous ills; and being a symptom of no special importance, easily rectified, if necessary in a few days, by trifling remedies, it serves at once as a foundation for exorbitant charges, and the gaining of considerable credit for the skill and ability of the charlatan engaged in the uefarious deceptions. There are not three cases in a SLEEP. 839 thousand where these things are any more than a running at the nose on the taking of a cold, a simple inflammation of the mucous membrane of the parts, not worth while doing any thing for, unless for the mere purpose of allaying the groundless apprehen- sions of the nervous, as they might exist for a life- time without any appreciable ill result ; and, nine tinnes out of ten, will cure themselves at a proper period, if simply let alone. Standard medical writ- ers, known the world over, write in this view of the subject, and their testimony is so positive, their rea- sonings so conclusive, their observations so nume- rously corroborated, that it is not necessary to make any quotations or to cite any authority. In conclu- sion, in reference to this whole class of subjects, the never-failing remedies are temperance, a high moral sense, a manly force of will, and a life of steady, active, useful, and absorbing industry. As men begin to be about fifty yejirs old, espe- cially if of sedentary habits, the feeling on rising in the morning is as if they had not gotten enough sleep, not as much as they used to have, and as if they would like to have more, but they can not get it. They look upon a healthy child sleeping soundly with a feeling of envy. But it is curious to observe that there is a bliss to all in the act of going to sleep, a bliss we become cognizant of only when we hap- pen to be aroused just as we are falling into sound sleep ; and there are strong physiological reasons to suppose that this state is a counterpart of that great event which is to come upon all, the act of dying. In fact, those who have in rare cases been brought back to life when on its extremest verge, and in several cases as to those who have been recovered from drowning and other modes of strangulation, or simple smothering, called "asphyxia" by physi- cians, the expressions have been, on coming to con- 840 SLEEP. sciousness : " IIow delicious I" " Why did you not let me go?" An eminent name, thus brougnt back, represented that the last-remembered sensations of which he was conscious were as if he were listening to the most ravishing strains of music. Let us aU then cherish the thought that our approach to the sleep of the grave is the strict counterpart of the approach to sleep, of which some nameless writer has beautifully said : " It is a delicious moment ; the feeling that we are safe, that we shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past. The limbs have been just tired enough to render the remaining in one position delightful, and the labor of the day is done. A gentle failure of the perceptions comes slowly creeping over us; the spirit of consciousness disengages itself more and more, with slow and hushing degrees, like a fond mother detaching her hand from that of her sleeping child ; the mind seems to have a baln^.y lid closing over it, like the eye, closing, more closed, closed altogether ! and the mysterious spirit of sleep has gone to take its airy rounds." May such be tlie physical " bliss of dying" to you and to me, reader, with the spiritual added, ten thousand times more ineffable. . ■-»? THE YOUNG SUICIDE. 841 THE YOUNG- SUICIDE. Beoently, a young collegian of twenty, who had the love and respect of his teacher and his class- mates, for his diligence in his studies, his high classi- cal position, and his generous nature, was found in his Dcd-room dead, the arteries of his arm having been severed, and his throat cut from ear to ear ; an empty vial was found on the floor, labeled " Poison." A note on the stand read thus : " Forgive me, my dearest parents, for this dread- ful deed, but I am unworthy and unfit to live. May God forgive me I Farewell." There are scores of such deaths every year, and the inquiry arises in every thoughtful mind : " What could have been the reason for such a terrible act?" This youth was the only child of rich parents ; and the uninitiated vainly look around for an adequate motive for a deed so dreadful. A physician, espe- cially a city physician, and more particularly the editor of a journal, treating of health and disease, ia at no loss to unravel the mystery. The key to the sad history is found in the three facts, the victim was a man — ^young, unmarried. Medical editors and phy- sicians are constantly receiving letters like the fol- lowing: "Can you save me from an ignominious grave ? God I that some one would give a cure for those unfortunates who have been so foolish. Will vou, in God's name, give a cure in your next issue f and you will have the prayers of thousands." A day or two later came the following: " Dear Sir : In the midst of despair, I earnestly address you, thinking that perhaps my sorrow may by your skill be turned into joy. I have by indulgence ruined myself. I have applied to many without permanent benefit ; hence the cause of despair. Now I feel the consequence of my crime to a very great extent men- ^42 SLEEP. tally, in consequence of which I have been obliged to give up all employment and do nothing, and of late I am totally unfit for any thing. I have now before me a copy of your Jouiinal of Hkalth, volume nine, for October, 1862. Hence I address 3?ou, hoping you may be able to suggest some means for regaming health and happiness. I feel as if I would surely die, if I do not obtain some active and immediate remedy." While supervising these lines for the press, a letter is received from a young gen- tleman of high position, untarnished reputation, and of high moral worth, active, energetic, and faithful in all the offices of trust in which he has been placed, and which he has never failed to fill with honor to himseli^ and credit to his friends. Such an one writes : " I am satisfied that hell is my portion in robbing Na- ture and robbing God, my Creator. My mind is giv- ing way to despair. I am ashamed of myself before my fellow-men and before God. And if I am dealt with according to my deserts, I am doomed." The practical question, and one which very nearly con- cerns every parent who has an unmarried son over fif- teen years of age, is. What can produce such states of mind ? They arise in all cases from a vicious read- ing ; from perusing books which are sent gratis and post-paid by cart-loads, to all parts of the country every year, through the agency of the newspapers, with advertisements headed in this wise — taking a city daily, at this present writing^ — and which are copied, for large "consideration," by the country- press, (nor are all of our religious papers guiltless of this damning iniquity:) "To the Unmarried," "Mar- riage Guide," " rhvsiology," " The Benevolent As- sociation," " Physiological Inquiries," "Young Man's Book," "Warning to Young Men," "Manhood," "Physical Debility," with a variety of other head- ings. These publications have the same aim, object, THE YOUNa SUICIDE. 848 ftnd end, and the midnight depravity which indites them stands out in every pa^e. It is not necessary here to enter into minute details, but to make use of the general facta Tl\e programme marked out by all of them is essentially the same. First, to pander to the vitiated curiosity of boys and youth, not only by the " pictorial illustrations drawn from life," but by speciousness of argument and reasoning and state- ments, to mislead the mind, inflame the imagination, corrupt the heart, and eventually degrade the whole character. It is an often remarked fact, that among the young gentlemen who attend a first course of medical lectures, there are a large number who im- agine themselves the victims of each successive dis- ease, as it is presented in course by the lecturer. And any person not versed in medicine can scarcely read any book on any disease, without beginning to im- agine that he has more or less of its symptoms. In fact, medical biography abounds with notices of the deaths of men from the very diseases, the successful treatment of which made them famous ; leaving us to suppose that imagination has something to do in causing, or at least in aggravating, some human maladies. It is not surprising then, that youths in their teens, or just entering manhood, in reading a treatise strongly depicting the ultimate effects of cer- tain symptoms, alleged to be connected with certain conditions of the system, should run riot in their fears, and throw themselves helplessly into the hands of those who seem to know so much on the subject, and by their own accounts have had such remarkable success in their line. In every one of these books, without exception, certain symptoms are mentioned (not peculiar to any one disease, but common to a number, or which may exist, and if let alone, would In time disappear of themselves) as peculiar to a state of the system indicative of " a want of capabilities." S44 SLEEP. • Among these the most stereotyped are, dimness of vision, loss of memory, incapability of mental con- centration, no steadiness of purpose, depression of spirits, etc. Then certain physical appearances are noted as corroborative of the existence of the malady in question. The youth, not havin<^ opportunities of comparing himself with others ; not knowing that a good many of these very appearances are natural, or are not incompatible with perfect health, be- comes alarmed, and in his fright appeals to the author of the book he has been reading, to save him by all means from the impending ruin and disgrace. A fee is extorted, which is up to the utmost ability of the victim to raise. Kemedics are used. They do not change the condition of things ; simply because the conditions are in many cases not unnatural ; but the patient is made to believe that it is because the case IS more desperate than was imagined, and that more powerful and more expensive remedies must be used. These are alike unavailing ; meanwhile, weeks and months pass away ; the victim has spent all the mo- ney he can " rake and scrape," " beg, borrow, or steal " literally, and then writes to some known physician in the strain of the letters already quoted, to make at least one more attempt at rescue ; or if he does not this, he settles down in the despair which leads to suicide. But there is sometimes a more dreadful ending so far as mental and bodily sufferings are concerned ; we say more dreadful with design ; for it is more so in proportion as it is more of a calamity to die on the rack than by a cannon-ball. When the sharper has obtained all the money possible from its victim, and wishes to get rid of him, he says in plain language : " There is no help for you but in marriage." But often this is an impossible remedy, and even if it were practicable, the patient has such a view of his THE YOUNG SUICIDE. 846 condition, that ho would consider it dishonorablo and even infamous to impose himself upon a confiding woman. The sharper is prepared for this, and with practiced depravity, advises an illegal connection, not only as a test of capabilities, but as a remedy for cer- tain symptoms observed to occur in the early morn- ing, or at the close of certain natural actions. Human nature can seldom withstand the motives presented in cases like these. Six months ago a gentleman a)plicd for advice under the following circumstances, e had been led, by reading a book on " physiology," to believe that in connection with certain practices a deplorable state of things was induced, lie placed himself under the care of the writer of the book in question, and in two or three years had expended a considerable amount of money, without adequate results. He was then told that he must form a crim- inal liaison, which he did with inconceivable loathing, and which he maintained until he found himself ihe victim of a degrading disease, showing itself on the face and hands. To escape the inquiries of relatives and friends, he left home and came to us, the embodi- ment of despair, the mind hopeless, the body ruined, the constitution a wreck. This disease the writer has never treated in a single case ; and it is always turn- ed over to other hands, the usual advice being, when there is any hope of restoration, to have recourse to the family physician at home, who would be more likely than any other to take a deep interest in th • case, and exercise those sympathies which are so re- quisite under the circumstances. Cases of this kind are of daily occurrence, and are constantly coming under the notice of city physi- cians, by hundreds and thousands every year. Some practical lessons of an importance which can not perhaps be over-estimated, may be drawn from this subject: 846 SLEEP. 1. Allow no paper or magazine to enter your house whicli offers, by advertisement, to send any book on health and disease free of cost. No man can afford to print a book for nothing, and then to pay postage on it, unless he afterward finds his pay m the manner above described. 2. Let all parents encourage the early mamage of their sons ; as soon after twenty-one as circumstances will permit ; it is a less evil than to be exposed to the dangers above referred to, by putting it off to the more physiologically appropriate age of twenty- five. 3. Let no youth of intelligence ever consult a man at a distance, for the ailments which have been alluded to, or the supposed symptoms of impossible things. It is a thousand times better to consult the family physician at home ; him you can trust v/ith safety, as to body and reputation ; a thing which is never to be done by men who send books free of charge, which treat of any form of disease. As tq the symptoms and debilitations of the early morning, and which have such a depressing influ- ence on mind and body, second only to those of dys- pepsia, nothing can be more certain than that there is no remedy safe and certain in drugs ; but it must be sought in the diligent following out of some active industrial pursuit, force of will, and the cultivation of a high and manly moral power, which looks with angry and impatient contempt on all that is vicious, corrupting, and degrading, whether in deed or word or thought ; this is the only efiicient, the only infal- lible remedy, anv . is worthy of the mature reflection of every high-minded and generous-hearted youth. :.* . ■ ' • t INDEX TO SLEEP, A.ir Deadly, ,.. .., 11 " Breathing Bad, 86 " Stintof,.... 61 '* Crowded Rooms, 5Y •' Taints, 91 *' Loxious, 183 " Batii, 186 •' Country, 219 •' Pure and Impure, 225 *' of Close Rooms, 247 *• of Chambers, 265 " and Thought, 2Y4 Abodes of the Poor, 74 Appetites Compared, 11'' Avoiding Temptation, 126 Alcoholic Drinks, 179 Andrews k Dixon's Grate, 806 Black-Hole of Calcutta, 9, 41, 99 Bodily Emanations, 69, 72 Bad Habits, 146 Burying under Churches, 243 Breath of Life, 277 Black Blood, 287 Crowding, Effects of, 20, 23, 73, 87, 97, 249, 312 Canary Bird, 26 'IJonvulsions of Children, 26 Capacity of Lungs, 27 s* IL INDEX. PAOI \7harcoal Fumes, 87, 95 Chambers Vitiated, 65, 183 Consumption and Dust, 63 " and Close Rooms, 282 Children's Fits, 26 " Sleeping Together, .... 147 Cottage and Hovel, 88 Country Air, 219, 268 Chemical Affinities 291 Deadly Emanations, 15 Dnst,.. 32, 69, 61, 63 Debilitations, 141 DokoRace, 207 Dark Parlors, 262, 297 Emanations, ". 16, 69, 93 Electrical Influences, 108 Eating, 166 Excessive Child-Bearing, 280 Franklin's Air-Bath, 186 Force of Will, 197 Fire on the Hearth, 303 Furnaces, Andrews and Dixon's, 803 Grotto del Cone, 17 Griscom's Ventilation, 205 Gas Burning, 289, 27<; Howard, John, 44 Human Effluvia, 69, 71 Hovels and Cottages, 88 Health Invigorated, 163 Heart-Burn, i67 Uamilton's Ilouso-Pliin, ) 99 nn>Bx. Ui. PAQI House«~Warining, 229, 807 '* Baker's Plan, 809 Infant Convulsions, 26 " Mortality, 61 " Sleeping, 188 •* Feeding, 137 Inherited Infirmities, 65 Instinct and Reason, H3 Important Considerations, 128 Infection, 159 Invisible Impurities, 258 In-Door Life, 267 Kitchen Ventilation, 233 Lungs Capacity, 27 " Office of, 39 " Described, 286 Londonderry Steamer, 97 Light is Curative, 260 Life and Blood, 279 Low-Down Grate, 301 Moderation, 112 Marriage a Safeguard, 295 National Hotel Disease, 13, 49 Nursing at Night, 135 Out-Door Life, 266 Pontine Marches, 16 Pure Chambers, 19 Prison Horrors, 48 Physiology, Books on, 149 Papered Rooms, 216 Pernicious Instruments, 161 If, INDEX. rial Plans for Uouses, 199 Poisonous Rooms, 296 Roominess and ITcalth, 67 Reason and Instinct, 113 Ruined Youth, 143 Second Naps 193 Simoons, 81, S3 Sunlight a Ventilator, 269 Sun for Children, 264 Sleeping Together, 180 " withtheOld, 6, 210 " with Consumptives, 109 ** Different Temperaments, 138 " ChUdren, 139 " Soundly, Ill, 116 Sick-Chambers 292 Tenement Houses, 79 Thames Tunnel, 93 Town and Country, 268 The Proposition Proven, 314 Ventilation of Court Rooms,. ... , 46 " RandaU's Island, 47 «* ., Griscom's, 206 ♦• Stables, 206 «♦". Kitchens, 229 ' ** . Shops, 234 <} . .*!.... Longevity and, 245 '** School-Rooms, 249 •* Chambers, 299 •* Sick-Rooms, 800 Vitiated Rooms 249 1 ■■• vO «4