Year: 1879

There is one very good reason


why people ''take cold" in winter
time. Most of the well-to-do spend
their lives, when in doors, in cooked
air. The lower down the thermom-
eter goes the higher the burning
coal is piled; all the chinks and
cracks are stopped that would


let any fresh air in, and its main
chance, indeed, Is when the front
door opens for twenty seconds, or


when the beds are made in the
sleeping rooms. In the living rooms
OF the family there is no occasion,
many think. to raise the windows
ever, except to wash them, on peri


odical cleaning days, Or to shut in
niture and people, lungs and skin,
are dried and baked In the hot, dry
rooms, until ingenious persons can
bring out electric sparks from their
finger ends by skating rapidly up
and down the room in their wooden
Slippers.


Out from this kiln dried atnOs-
phere into the winter streets and
into the very cold or very damp air
plunge the folks who live in these
air tight rooms. They put on plen-
ty of wraps, but they wear the
same foot-gear and they carry the
same lungs out into the streets with
them and tho same sensitive skin.
Then they 60 into friends houses
and sit in other hot rooms with all
their wraps on, Or they sit in church
pews, the women, at least, heavily
muffled in furs and woolens, for a
matter of two hours.


why a man will take off his
overcoat in church and women
cling to their jackets as to an arti-
Gle of faith, is among the puzzles
for the wise to settle, or for the
next hundred questions OF an in
quiring World Again, they go
out in the damp streets, and it is
wonder to all doctors an0 thinkers
that they do not all "take," and
keep, too, that congested state of
lungs, and membranes, and chilled
blood vessels that we class under
this one convenient term of "c0ld."


Perhaps the houses are not kept
any warmer than they ought to be,
when people are taking but little
exercise. Bnt they certainly are
nearly all of them too dry and lack
ing in constantly renewed pure air.
1t has been before remarked in the
Ledger that folks who are extreme
ly particular about wearing their
own clothes, and who would by no
means consent to take the cast of
garments of a neighbor-One and
all of them are perfectly comforta-
BILE to breathe over and over again
the cast off and soiled air from each
others lungs; when it is cooked es
pecially; for in summer time they
do insist on a change of it, and do
get their houses ventilated. Jani-
tors of public buildings, in short
sighted economy of fuel, will shut
up all the apertures by which fresh
air might get In, lest they should
suffer some heat to escape thereby,
and rewarded by sleepy audiences,
especially when the gas burners are
at work, also draining the cooked
air of what little life it has. There
are some people-many, it is to be
hoped-who open an inch or two of
their bed room windows every night
to insure a modicum of fresh air to
sleep by. But these do not in the
least care to have fresh air to be
awake in, it seems, for they are con-
tent to have their furnace draw all
its supplies from the tightly sealed
cellar, and from the stale atmos-
phere of the ash boxes and vegeta
bic bins in the subterranean apart
ment. When we live in fresh air
within doors as without, with Its
proper proportion of moisture for
the skin and breathing apparatus to
keep up their healthy tone, it is like
ly we shall have found one way at
least of how not to take cold =
biIoIalnbio 7 aHOor