Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1882-05-25

means. Ii 10 not . qutstiou
and o merry enc, without restral1'
Cherries ssceticism. The song and dance
the music and the fiowers-the joyous laugh
| and sounds OF joyial frolicking are heard
and seen among Hygeia's followers.
The cry of pain, the wailing OF the
sorrow-stricken-tears, agony, despair,
the gloom Of death, among those
who have denied her. Let the eh,lo
learn the simple laws Of health n the
man will live responsive to them as auto-
matically as the musician ooeys tns iaws
of harmony. Ineulcate in the youth mat
his ambition should be the possession OF Q
healthy p~hysique-on the maiden that no
art can rival the charms with which nature
will deck her unblemished form-tnat
however lowly the station or humble the
home, he and she may proudly vie with the
cions of the richest aristocracy IN mat
yigor of body, that strength OF MIND, tnat
exquisite refinement Of the emotional ma
tuIe which constitute the perfect thinking
feeling, loving, living man and woman
that the blue blood, which is derived from
titled ~progenitors. however many Their
ouarterings, is cold and sluggish In the
veins beside the red blood, which has been
transmitted from ancestors who have
known no stain Of disease.
What are these simple laws OF
health? The first and greatest and
that which comprehends all others
is Hygeia's mandate to be clean.
1t is not an idle saying that cleanliness Is
next to godliness. 1t is its nearest kin
as filth is the parent of disease and sinful.
ness. Let US see what it means to be clean,
and first realize that one.h half the mortality
| of the very centres of ciyilization-the great
| cities of the ~world-wherein are gathered
the wise and learned, is due to ~preventable
l.-oo.o npabalf tho DEATHS that are at
this moment being mourned throughout
the land need moi, ought not, would not have
| happened had this law of cleanliness been
obeyed-for ~preventable diseases are eN-
pressiyely, il coarsely, named filth dis
| eases, and filth is all that which defles, mo
merely the outward surface, the person and
attire, the dwelling place and sleeping
apartment, but penetrates within, entering
the body as food and drink, and befoullng
the air, which fills the lungs, poisons the
blood, permeates the tissues, and
carries its nocuous influences to
| the minutest cell in the remotest
| organs. The unclean skin, the unksmpt
hair, the sordid garment, the bestial den
and disgusting viands offend the senses OF
all but those whom ignorance and want
have made lower than brutes But the
foulest of all foul things, and that which is
more insidiously deadly than them all.
| IQuI dlI-DeCduSt uuSCCi, 10 W
gentle lady and learned pUndit without q
| shudder and without fear. Th clean and
the unclean sit side by side, the delicate
woman drawing into her lungs the disease.
laden emanations of some unfortunate
honeycombed by disease. Could these
curling clouds of noxious fumes be made
visible, what horror would we have Of
them! An idea of it may be obtained IN a
| public conveyance on q frosty winters day,
when the condensed vapor Of the passen:
gers breaths may be seen circling out OF
| ones mouth and nostrils to be drawn into
another's' and what is there feebly Illus
trated takes place in every badly ventilated
| theatre, church and school house, Go
upon the densely populated berth.deck OF
a passenger ship, or man-of-war, and what
the eye cannot distinguish is soon made
manifest by the other senses--by the sick
ening odor, the mawkish taste, which indi-
cate the saturation of the air with the pro-
ducts OF human waste, the poison OF Och.
lesis, the poison of o~vercrowding, which,
intensified, destroys life quickly-which.
in every railroad car, in every crowded
vessel, in every place where human beings
are congregated, here in this very hall, is
present in q more or less diluted, but al
ways dangerous form.
Among the myriads of travellers who are
hourly being transported about this cOun-
try, how seldom will one be found to scan
the ventilators and other air apertures pro-
vided in our railway cars, and if one there
be hardy enough to open the window be-
side him to feed his famished blood with
fresh air, how general will be the maledic-
| ton of his ~neighbors at his ~endangering
their lives by draughts. Through fear OF
draughts, every window of the confined
apartment is closed, and the would.be
guardian of his health deliberately
poisons himself and his neighbors,
befoulipg them with an indescri6able
nastiness that the stomach resentS until it
becomes paralyzed into insensibility, and
against which the aching head makes in.
dignant and persistent protest. Few OF us
would care to enter the bath which has
already served a predecessor, yet the water
possibly were less Extensively soiled than
the air Of the apartment into which we
plunge with reckless indifference. The
nausea which assails you in the confined
cabin below the water line or in the musty
pestiferous sleeping holes of a Pullman car,
disappears when you have access to the free
air, as does the drowsiness which possesses
you in church, and which you have ascrib-
ed to the prosy sermon. When the public
can be made to realize that one half the
men, women, and children, who are falling
dead around us, have died before their time
from ~preventable diseases, and that
most Of these are directly or indirectly
due to impure air, they will appreciate
how momentuous is this problem Of keep.
| ing clean the air we breathe. Yet air as
deadly may be found in the s%umptuous
palaces of princes and m~illionaires. Men
build costly mansions and heedlessly fit
them with contrivances designed to aid
that Incidence of luxury which spares the
faccid muscles the slightest effort, and
which, through their unsanitary construa-
ton, destroy their children and themselves.
| The victims of typhoid and diphtheria
| sleep without waking on satin cushions in
rosewood %coffins. Our own children 60 to
ill.ventilated schools by day and sleep in
il%l-ventilated rooms by night. The invalid
teacher, fretted by the cares OF her voca.
ton, enfesbled by her ~sedentary life and
cherries solitude, tries to supplant her
failing heat producing powers by closing
windows and doors and building fires, until
the crimson which the sunlight hal painted
ON the child's face fades, and she
too shivers at the touch Of the fresh
air. You, also, suffer headache
from foul air-you are tired and l~istless
from foul air-you sleep disturbed and
awaken unlefreshed from foul air-ten in
every thousand of you die yearly from foul
air. Happier by far to sleep on a rude pal,
let in a garrett, through whose matched
roof the stars twinkle, than on the DOWN.
est couch in the allowed recess Of a palace
chamber. whose heavy hangings stife the
still air, which curtained windows have i'm
prisoned and fire and sewer have poisoned
Better SILVER as they do in Europe around
a porcelain calorifere than drouse in leth-
argic stupor from breathing the mephitic
atmosphere of an apartment overheated by
the furnaces and fues by which modern
ingenuity contributes to the defile-
ment of the air, accomplished by
coal gas, illuminating gas, sewer gas, and
human e%xhalations. The one gift Of which
nature has been 50 munificent that peasant
and prince alike can boast a boundless
wealth OF 1.-THE one whose purity she has
so carefully provided that it can only be
polluted by combining it-that Of all Others
most essential to the healthy maintenance
of the body, is fresh air. Chief food of the
well-most potent of remedies for the sick.
Place the conyalescent where the bright
sun-warmed air can kiss her pallid cheeks;
lead the careworn man from the mirky re-
cesses OF his office to the seashore, where
the fresh breeze comes skipping over the
waves; send the swarms Of feeble, emacia-
ted children from the dark, damp courts