The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1892-07-01
COMFORT IN SUMMER.
PLENTY OF FRESH AIR THE FIRST
REQUISITE.

Endurable and summer Affiictive-How
to Mitigate Midsummer Discomfort.
Especial Correspondence
CINCINNATI, June 27.-There is story
Of Russian family who engaged lodgings
ut a Swiss watering place and changed
their rooms so often that their landlord be-
gan to suspect their mental sanity till &C.
cident revealed the fact that the restless
strangers were Calmuck STOCK breeders
descended from race of nomads who for
a long series of ages had shifted their
camping grounds about once week.
A similar influence of hereditary tenden
cies might explain the climatic prejudices
of our countrymen. From the Gulf of st.
Lawrence to the Rio Grande America has
been settled chiefly by the descendants of
Northlanders whose comfort depended on
almost constant precautions against the
risk of cold weather, and whose grand
children are still haunted by that sanitary
bugbear the dread of fresh air. All our
domestic arrangements are ingeniously
contrived to make winter more endurable
and summer more affective Our streets
admit the full glare of the noontide sun,
but obstruct the breezes that sweep free
through the shady arcades of the forest.
For millions of city jewellers the martyr
dom of existence reaches it's maximum at
the very time of the year when the chill
dren of nature celebrate life as festival,
and it is even possible that the influence
of that change may have something to do
with our departure from the myth of the
ancients who represented hades as an
oh11 10 Of Ior or,1 Inn, af
extreme physical misery date no longer
from shivering December, but from swell
tering July.
Philosophers have indeed predicted the
advent of a time when our houses will be
cooled in summer by artificial contrivances,
as we now warm them in winter. We shall
have ice air registers and municipal re-
frigeration companies, with pneumatic
forcepumps and network of underground
pipes; but there is no doubt that the value
of such inventions will be modified by in
dividual prejudice, and it is equally GER
tain that the discomfort of present ar
rangements can be greatly mitigated by
private common sense.
Every family enjoying the blessing of
exemption from the tyranny of fashion
should give themselves the benefit of that
advantage by reducing their summer dress
to the minimum compatible with decency
and the protection from troublesome in
sects. The long lived races of eastern Eu-
rope would laugh at the idea of flannel
underwear at a time of the year when
every superfluous garment becomes an
equivalent of the hair shirts by which the
self torturing monks of the Middle Ages
tried to expiate their sins on this side of
the grave
Shade trees in front of a house are
blessing that can hardly be balanced by
such objections as their tendency to ag-
g1avate dampness and exclude sunshine,
since their leafy screen opens just at the
time when sunlight becomes pleasant;
and statistics prove that in the scale of
longevity even country parsons are out
ranked by the north European forest
keepers, who generally transmit their
trust from father to son, and whose dwell
ings are often completely hidden in the
depths OF the greenwood shade.
Savannah, Ga, with it's fourfold rows of
magnificent shade trees, enjoys a remark
able Immunity from climatic diseases, in
spite of it's proximity to the rank swamps
of river delta, and the real motive of the
the protest against tree shade has probably
less to do with our love of sunshine than
with the dread of dew drenched foliage
and the popular fallacies concerning the
origin of "colds." 81 shall not try to ex-
plain" says Benjamin Franklin, "why |
damp clothes produce colds rather than |
wet ones, because doubt the fact. | sus- |
pect that the causes of catarrhs are totally !
Independent of wet and even of cold"
But at all events let us rid ourselves and
all our reason blest friends of that ne plus
ultra of sanitary decisions the night air
superstition. Like the dread of cold water
and raw fruit, ETC., that preposterous fall
lacy is founded on our traditional mistrust
of our natural instincts, and next to the
stimulant habit, is perhaps the most pro-
life single cause of impaired health,
though the subsection of common sense to
hearsay could hardly go further. "Be-
ware of the night air, close all your doors
and bedroom windows after dark"-in
other words sicken your organism with
the gaseous excrements of your own lungs,
breathe the same vitiated air 5000 times
over again, and bar out the cool, pure
breezes which since the day of creation
have been inhaled with impunity by count
less millions of different creatures.
But could we hope to get fresh air by
opening the windows of a city dwelling?"
Professor Pettenkofer, of Munich, tried to
answer uhaJ question Dy a cnemlcal test,
and demonstrated by actual experiments
that the atmosphere of an i'll ventilated
bedroom contains more noxious gases than
the air of an ordinary sewer. The outdoor
air of large city, i. e., the diluted
effluvium of factories and slum alleys, in
cessantly modified by the influx of sea air
Or mountain breezes, is between fifty and
q hundred times purer than the indoor at
mosphere of stuffy tenement 1.-THE only
objection to draughts in such cases." Dio
Lewis used to say, sis the circumstance
that the draught is generally not half
strong enough" 1t certainly can not be
the inclemency of the night air we dread,
FOR even in sweltering midsummer nights
the sweet south wind. welcomed by all
creatures that draw the breath of life,
brings no relief to the victims of the
iraught superstition.
Dante describes miser who has starved
his family wandering famished in the
leserts of Gehenna, and with the same
illness of retributive justice persons who
nave deprived their children of fresh air
,ught to do penance in a black hole of