The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-06-20

votion TO their Church, Catholic colleges, now
at standstill. would be going backward for
the want Of means TO compete with other in
situations in the advantages Of education.
This cannot long continue after attention has
been called to it., and then we may congratu-
late the country on the general and generous
progress. ~assnt
A fewyears moro Of growth such as we have
recently Witnessed will not leave the advan-
tages of college education open to such free
discussion. Mental training can be united in
our colleges with much practical instruction,
and in few years more each student will
pursue special curriculum adapted to his
position in life, his plans for the future and
his mental and other capabilities. The ''prac-
teal man" will then have to forego his pleas
ant and congenial duty of bowling at the
colleges, and collegiate education will not
circumscribe men to the narrow limits Of pro-
fessional and scientific callings.
Public Baths and Public Health.
A series Of highly interesting experiments
was recently made at St Petersburg, which
have an important bearing in sanitary sci
ence The object of the experimenter was
to determine the precise effect of suppressing
the excretion Of the skin, and the results pow
erfully corroborate the long known physiolog-
ical fact TINT. if tho skin Of animals be painted
over with some material impervious to gases
or vapors death soon ensues.
It is the boast OF civilization to utilize the
discoveries of science, in meeting the wants
of the race; and the facts lately brought to
light by the Russian physicist, Socoloff, re-
vive, in augmented force, the old appeal for
public or free baths. Eminent scientific OBJ
servers have often suggested that the scarcity
of water, in the dry and heated term, is the
main cause of great mortality in our large and
busy metropolitan cities; and it is not i'm
probable if one-half the pains and money
now squandered upon street cleaning-never
half done-were devoted to furnishing free
baths for the poorer classes, who toll and
sweat the year round, the decimating fever,
sunstroke and other Summer diseases would
be more directly reached and their powerful
spread efectually checked. @
1t is well understood that the human body
may endure excessive heat from without, and
its temperature, SO long as cutaneous perspira-
ton remains free, continue moderate and
healthy. Physicians have often exposed
themselves in dry air, with thermometer
ranging above two hundred degrees Fahren-
heit, and felt no evil consequences; but the
power of maintaining nearly their original
temperature is due to the cooling effect of
rapid perspiration. If the body is immersed
or exposed in highly humid atmosphere-as
we find it is in our seaport cities in Summer,
especially when the streets are drenched with
watek, to be instantly evaporated by the fiery
sun-the exhalation from the skin is suddenly
checked, and the temperature of the over
worked and overheated body feverishly rises
four or six degrees higher than that of the hot,
humid air. Under such circumstances the
body becomes exposed to the most dangerous
infammatory secretions within and liable to
be instantly overcome. The poorer classes,
living in crowded tenement houses, with
scarcely water enough to allay thirst and no
possible means of enjoying the luxury Of q
daily bath, at the first exposure to violent
exercise, under fierce sun succumb to its
power, while the infant population is left to
perish in filth and squalor.
There is no sanitary movement of recent
origin which surpasses in importance the
benefcent design, now agitating, for remedy
ing this great want of the thousands who
annually perish through lack of the real
water cure. In remote periods of history the
bath was regarded as luxury peculiar to the
rich. The old Roman baths of Diocletian and
Titus, the royal baths Of Mexico and those Of
the Peruvian Incas Of solid gold, supplied by
silver conduits, are among the most splendid
relics Of the past. But we have it in our
power to leave more honorable and enduring
monuments to posterity in the construction of
such public works as will offer healing and
health-giving Siloams to the poorer classes of
the people. If any municipal institution can
Justly be called charitable and Christian it
would prominently be this. Cannot some
Of our municipal authorities devise the ways
and means for testing it on practicable and
economical scale?
The Changers Moving.
Western exchanges continue to report the
doinos of the pafrons of hushandrv or farrpars,