The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-01-07
Foul Air.

If mauklnO W0f0 StucTouy o"at0 VI
the effects of the diseased radiati0ns
and exhalations of invalids, popular
lecturers and preachers, and favorite
dramatists, and negro dancers, could
hardly induce the convocation of the
crowded audiences that they now do,
and people would be as particular in
the air they breathe as in the water they
drink. The use of stagnant waters
could not be more deleterious to the
nervous and vascular systems than the
inhalation and absorption of vitiated
air. Still most people are regardless
of the latter, while they throw out with
disgust glass of water which has odor,
sediment, or color. And how many
fastidious men and women would suffer
almost any punishment rather than 60
in bathing in bathing house, crowded
with all sorts of people as thick as they
can stand or swim! They would con-
slider tho water unfit to enter, and so
with reason they might think, but these
same persons do not seem to imagine
when in crowded, and even odorous
car, omnibus, or lecture-room, that they
are in fact bathing in the same air
Will oil Iu6 CuOy
are crowded with, and not only
that, but breathing it, too. Your cloth
ing does not protect your skin from the
effluvia passing off from the besotted
and tobacco saturated man who sits
against you on one side, nor your veil
from breathing the same air which has
been inhaled and exhaled by the woman
with decayed teeth, catarrh, and bad
breath on the other side. Men return
ing from their business, and women
from shopping, do not seem to realize
that they bring home with them to their
parlors some of the essential parts of
men and women whom they would not
allow to enter their back doors. This is
no fling at poor people, but at those
whose habits and designations have rem
dered them not only filthy, but diseased.
1t is, indeed, amusing sometimes to see
how an aristocratic individual will turn
his or her back upon, or leave a seat
contiguous to, some plainly dressed per-
son, though the latter be glowing with
health, and seek contiguity with quite
an opposite character, whose counte-
nance bears every evidence of disease,
UuG WuOSc puy luli AlGiOS ot0 al
most concealed by the tailor or dress
maker and the perfumer. Better at
any time seat yourself in public vehicles
beside men whose clothes are soiled
with honest labor, but whose skins are
red with the glow of health, or next to
women in plain, cheap, calico, with vi
vacity in their eyes and sweetness in
their breath, than to haughtily squeeze
yourself between two well-dressed in
valids. The former impart to you the
of health, while the latter
absorb your vital magnetism, and cor
rupt the air about you. By one your
stock in health is enriched by the other
it is impoverished. Fish swim in water
you swim in air; look out for its
purity. And parents, have an eye to
your children who rely upon your judg-
ment and care. Horace Mann, abiding
to ill-ventilated school-rooms, said:
d" To put children on a limited supply
of fresh air is as foolish as it would have
been for Noah during the deluge to put
his family on short allowance of water.
Since God has poured out an atmos-
phere of fifty miles deep, it is enough to
make miser weep to see our children
stinted in breathing. "-Medical Common
Sense.