Papers on Health | Page 5

and night,
summer and winter, so strengthen and invigorate that colds are rarely
taken, and when taken, generally in a mild form. This also applies to
influenza. If delicate consumptives can stand, without any gradual
breaking-in to it, unlimited fresh air, and can lie by day and night in
open sheds, no one need dread at once to adopt the open-window
system. Although few will believe it, until they try it, a wide open
window does not produce a draught as does one slightly opened, and it
is safer and pleasanter to go in for abundant fresh air than to try what
might be called a moderate course. Many think that with an open
window the heat of the fire is practically wasted. They do not know that
the radiant heat of the fire will warm the person it falls on even though
the temperature of the room is very low. The Canadian hunter before
his fire is comfortably warm, though the air around him may be a long
way below zero. Extra clothing may be worn if any chilliness is felt.
While the body is warm cold air has an invigorating effect on the lungs.
Indeed, the body soon gets accustomed to the colder air, and those who
practise keeping open windows winter and summer find that they do
not require heavier clothing than those who sit with windows shut. A
slight or even considerable feeling of coldness, when due to cold air
and not to ill-health, will not harm.
This is no new idea. Dr. Henry McCormac, of Belfast, father of the
eminent surgeon, Sir William McCormac, wrote forty years ago:--"The
mainly unreasoning dread of night air, so termed, is a great impediment

to free ventilation by night. And yet day and night air is the same
virtually, does not differ appreciably. The air by night, whether damp
or dry, is equally pure, equally salubrious with the air by day, and calls
not less solicitously for ceaseless admission into our dwellings. Air, ere
it reaches the lungs, is always damp. Quite dry air is irrespirable. It
needs no peculiar or unusual habitude in order to respire what is termed
night air. Exposure to contact with the day air equally prepares us for
exposure to the contact with the night air. We can multiply our
coverings by night with even greater ease than we can by day, and with
the most perfect certainty of producing and obtaining warmth. Good
heavens! How is it that people are so wildly mistaken as if the great
wise Deity, as he does by every exquisite and perfect adaption, did not
intend that we should make use of the purest, sweetest air day and night
always? The prospective results of breathing purest air by night are so
infinitely desirable, the immediate enjoyment is so great that it only
needs a trial to be approved of and adopted for ever.... Reasonable
precautions--that is to say, adequate night coverings--being resorted to,
no colour of risk to the lungs, even of the most delicate, can possibly
ensue. For, it is stagnant air, air pre-breathed only, and not pure
unprerespired air that makes lungs delicate. Although air, warmth, food,
and cleanliness be cardinal conditions and essential to life, still the
most important of all health factors is air--air pure and undefiled alike
by day and by night.... The constant uneasy dread of taking cold, which
haunts the minds of patients and their friends, is doubtless the one great
reason why fresh air is thrust aside. And yet cold will not be caught,
were it in Nova Zembla itself, by night, if only the sleeper's body be
adequately covered.... The pulses or puffs of air that comes in
ceaselessly, winter and summer, through open windows by night
inspire just as if one slept in the open air, a sort of ecstasy. Gush
follows gush, full of delightfulness, replacing the used-up air and
purifying the blood. It has oftimes been said to me, 'I open the windows
the moment I get out of bed;' to this I have uniformly replied, 'the
moment to open the window is before you get into bed, not when you
get out of it.' You cannot otherwise with entire certainty secure the
benefit of an ever ceaselessly renewed night air so all essential to the
blood's renewal and the maintenance of health.... With abundant night
coverings there is no shadow of risk. There is none of rheumatism,

none of bronchitis, in short no risk whatever. The only, the real risk,
which we incur, is that of closing our sleeping chamber windows, of
debarring ourselves of pure air during our repose."
Appetite.--Should be an indication that food in general or some certain
kind of food is needed by the body. Thus the appetite is the natural test
of