Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-01-25
Golden Rules for Health.

DR.. B. W. Richardson, the English
writer and lecturer on sanitary topics,
has been giving the people of Croydon,
England, "a few golden rules fer secur-
ing health at home" In the first place,
whether the house is large or small, he
would say, "Give it light There was
no house so likely to be unhealthy as a
dark and gloomy one. In every point
of view light stood forward as the agent
Of health. A few hundred years ago it
became the fashion, for reasons it was
very hard to divine, to place sick people
in dark and closely-curtained bedrooms.
The practice. to some extent, was con-
tinued to this day. When a person went
to bed with sickness it was often the first
thing to pull! down the blinds Of the
windows, to set up dark blinds, or, If
there were Venetian blinds, to close
them. On body and soul alike that
practice was simply pernicious. 1t might
he we'll, if light was painful to the eyes
of the sufferer, to shield the eyes from
the light, or even shut the light of from
them altogether; but to shut it out of all
the room, to cut off wholesale Its precious
influence, to make the sick room a dark
cell in which all kinds of impurities
might be concealed day after day, was
an offense to nature which she ever re.
buked in the sternest manner. In sick
ness and in health-in infancy, youth,
middle age, old age--in all seasons, for
the benefit of the mind, and the welfare
of the body, sunlight was bearer and
sustainer of health.
Dr.. Richardson next adverted to the
subject of sleep, and observed that arti.
fetal lights are very injurious The
lever hours after dark that are spent in
artificial light the better and the sooner
they went to rest after dark the better
They required in the cold season of WIN,
ter, when the nights were long, much
more of sleep than they did in summer
On the longest day in the year, seven
hours of sleep was sufficient for most
men and women who were in the prime
of life; on the shortest day nine hours
was no. overmuch, and for persons who
are weakly ten or twelve hours might
be taken with real advantage. In
winter children should always have ten
or twelve hours OF sleep. 1t was not
idleness to indulge to that extent, but
an actual saving, a storing up of invigor-
ated existence for the future. Such rest
could be obtained only by gong to bed
very early-say at half-past s o'clock OF
8. 1t was wrong at the present season
that they should be at that meeting rob-
bing themselves of sleep. 1t was as
wrong as ever it could be that our legis-
lature should often be sitting up as they
did, night after night, trying against life
to legislate for life. 1t was foolish, too,
that public writers and editors should be
called on to exercise their craft at time
when all their nature was calling out to
them crest" He might be accused of
folly in saying these things, but he was
standing by Nature and speaking under
her direction.
Turning next to the question of beds
and bed rooms, the president insisted on
the necessity of separate bed for each
person, and said the bed should be Meth
er very soft nor very hard, while the fur
niture of the room should be as simple as
possible. A great experiment had been
tried on this question with most striking
results. At the Industrial schools at An
erly every scholar had his or her own bed,
and the wise authorities there-who had
improved the health of the children I'M
der their charge until the mortality was
reduced to three in one thousand annual
ly-told him that few things had contri-
buted so much to the grand results
they had achieved as the one prac-
tice of having separate bed for
every child. A daily bath with cold
water in the summer and tepid water in
winter was necessary for the
health of every person. Every effort
should be made to maintain all equal
temperature in the house-a temperature
OF sixty degrees Fahrenheit being the
test-and there should be a system of
complete household cleansing once year.
He would leave his colleagues to descant
on ventilation, good food, good air and
other accessories to health, and though
nv r. cir J,nited efforts thew miOht not pc