1873.1 A PROBLEM FOR AMERICAN WOMEN. it shows the least degree of intelligence. From observing the children of all these, and remembering my own experience when a new mother, I am satisfied that, before its first three days have passed, a child of intelligent and emotional parents knows when it is treated with coldness and impatience, or with love and solicitude; and suffers from feeble health, or grows strong and fast, in consequence. Play and Caresses are Needed. It evidently needs that vital magnetism which it derives from the loving caresses of the mother. That mere bodily contact is not enough, and that the spiritual (or mental) element of affection must be supplied, is evident when we compare the infants at Foundling Hospitals, who sit quiet, sad, and dull-looking, in the arms of hired wet nurses-with the fortunate babies whose own mothers care for and love them. The first look indeed like animals ;" and are seldom strong and healthy as they should be, if the above-quoted doctors are right; while the other little ones are bright and happy looking, ready to smile when played with, and able to respond to caresses. I have taken into my arms one baby after another at a Foundling Hospital, and tried to please them by fond words and gentle caresses; but very few of the poor little orphans knew what I meant at first, though some of them soon learned. Is it not sad that a baby of six months or a year should never have learned to smile -never have jumped and danced and cooed in any woman's arms? For often the Hospital nurse has two or three little waifs to feed, and bathe, and dress, and constantly attend to. They are not her own, and in a few months will pass from her care. Instinctively she steels her heart against them, lest she may suffer at parting. I am quite satisfied that these unhappy foundlings almost as often die for want of love and caressing, as for want of their natural food and other hygienic conditions. Before you dissent, reader, from this, reflect on the subject awhile. We constantly assure adults that "cheerfulness is a great aid to digestion;" that " a mer ry heart is a continual feast;" that "he who laughs can commit no deadly sin;" and "there is no real life but cheerful life." At the same time we are well aware that unhappiness and depression of spirits will reduce the, vitality of the strongest persons, and in time greatly impair their health. Happiness not Controlled by Reason. t Reason has nothing to do with this state of mind, for the cultivated reasoning powers will fight against it often without avail. Happiness and unhappiness are emotional states, induced by sensation and perception. Sensation begins at birth; perception soon after, according to the degree of inherited mental activity and power-and how soon the emotions are developed, we may know when we perceive the first manifestation of the emotion of fear, by the infant. From that moment let us make our babies happy, and manifest our affection by the tender caresses and brooding embraces prompted by natural mother-love; undeterred by cold and selfish intellectual arrogance, sneering about the "little animal, with only animal wants ;"since we have proved that even this young animal has a sensitive, emotional spirit, which must be duly cared for to keep it in good physical health. A Problem for American Women. The following is an extract from a letter from Jean Ingelow to Lucy Stone Blackwell, of Boston: "You have, I venture to think, more than one problem to work out in America, on which, in a great degree, depends the welfare of women. In one of these I take a keen interest, and I hope to see you settle it for yourselves and for us. I want you to discover how domestic work is to be combined with high culture. So long as household work is thought degrading (and nowhere is this so much the case as in America), there can never be anything like universal education; there must always be some who work all their lives, because others will not work at all. It is to be one of the great things that you Americans, I believe, are raised for, to teach the world how this is to be done; but the teachers can never be those who are not obliged to work at all. How to make clear-starching and ironing graceful and pretty occupations, and such they were thought by our great-great-grandmothers, how to keep a house clean, and to assist even in a kitchen without the least sense of being lowered, or the slightest personal deterioration, might surely be managed if women gave their minds to it-if more delicate machinery was invented for helping them, and if it could even be made the fashion for all women, young or old, to pride themselves on their domestic skill." ARE YOU CAT-FOOTED? DON'T get huffed, please! I do not wish you to specify the shape of your toes, and the length and sharpness of your toe-nails; I am not making any investigations into the conformation of your foot; I simply want to know if you are nervously averse to getting your feet wet. In nine cases out of ten, "Yes!" will be my answer; to which I shall say, "Well, then you are cat-footed." It is the most expressive of terms to indicate a dread of wet feet. Puss and yourself are alike in that respect. Just watch her when she comes to a wet or muddy place, and see how she hesitates, like the daintiest of dames, before crossing it. If possible, she will go around it, or even turn back and take another road. If compelled to go over it, she tip-toes, like any prettily-shod young miss, and shakes her paws in a manner indicative of thorough disgust, when she has gotten safe over. But, as a rule, puss is not seen abroad in wet weather. She wisely stays under cover, if she can. No doubt she thinks regretfully of that famous ancestor of hers who wore boots, and envies you your India - rubber over-shoes, of which more a little further on. But Puss and yourself differ, in that she only dreads momentary inconvenience, while wet feet are associated in your mind with various kinds of colds. You are perfectly right to avoid getting your feet wet, when you consistently can; but you are not justified in sacrificing more important points to this decision. At any rate, let me beg of you not to make wet feet a bug-bear of your life, if you expect to have any liberty of movement while it lasts; and don't, I entreat you, hang your hopes upon overshoes. Use them discriminatingly, but beware of making yourself their slave. As a rule, for ordinary wet walking in winter, good thick calf-skin boots or shoes, lined with some warm woolen stuff, and with soles an inch thick, have no superiors. In summer shoes should be of the same calf-skin, with the same thick soles, but without the warm lining. For habitual use this is the very best walking shoe for both sexes; and for all ages. A shoemaker who knows his business can make them to look as handsomely as the most stylish shoes worn; and you have usually the advantage of not having to disfigure your feet and weigh them down with an additional pair of shoes. The comfort of locomotion greatly depends upon being as lightly shod as is consistent with the protection of the feet from the weather. Those who walk from their homes to their offices, to remain in them all day, will object to a pair of damp, muddy, or untidy-looking shoes after they are housed; and they are right. But the fact that wearing walking shoes, without over-shoes, obliges you to remove them as soon as you come into the house for any length of time, is one of the best arguments in their favor. Anybody who has tried keeping one pair of shoes for the house and another for walking, will never again want to keep on the same pair all day, in-doors and out of doors. The change is very grateful to the feet when heated or fatigued. It is one of the surest means of avoiding all diseases of them. The very act of removing the shoes for a few seconds, and thus exposing the feet to the air is beneficial. Then you put on a fresh pair that are not heated or damp, and your feet feel refreshed and cured of their fatigue; while, if you keep the same pair on all day, they are more or less uncomfortable. But when you have to wade instead of walking, India-rubber boots may well come into play. Even to Arctic overshoes I do not object, when the glassy appearance of the pavement indicates danger to life and limb. But they should be worn under protest, and not habitually. Nothing can be more debilitating to the feet. Worn often, and long at a time, they make them unnaturally tender, by inducing constant perspiration. Hence, sore corns, and inflamed bunions and aches in the feet on every little pro 1873.1 INTERESTING TO TOPERS. vocation. Worse than all, a chronic predisposition to take cold. I believe I would rather get my feet wet half a dozen times a day, and go through all the worry of sponging them, and putting on clean stockings and dry shoes, than to suffer this. There are two things to be done when you get your feet wet; and the prompt doing of either will insure you against taking cold. First, go straight and take off of them every wet or damp thing, bathe them in cold water, and rub | hard till they are warm and dry; then put on clean stockings and perfectly dry shoes, and take care to keep warm. Secondly, if you can't do this at once, walk till your feet are dry, and on the same night be sure to sponge them with cold water and rub well. It is idiotic to get into a car, or any other vehicle, with wet feet, unless you have a fire or foot-warmer to dry them by. But if you can get them dried thoroughly before you be come chilled, you will not be apt to take cold. Colds from wet feet are taken by sitting down and allowing yourself to get chilly. It is always best to keep in action till the circulation is completely restored. Perhaps the best thing of all to do is to overcome one's feeling of cat-footedness. The imagination has much more to do with our bodily ailments than most of us imagine. A cold and wet feet are indissolubly associated in most minds. You see a puddle that you must cross: "Now, I shall get my feet wet and have a cold!" You plunge through, your mind in the meanwhile occupied with the most dismal forebodings. Of course, you get wet; and equally, of course, you take a cold, since you have made up your mind to do so, and do not take any precautions against it. You creep along, snail-like, for the remainder of your walk, or get into a car, and shiver, and soon begin to sneeze. You think it is natural that you should have headache and fever next day, that you should coddle yourself, and explain to your sympathizing friends, "I got my feet wet, and have taken cold!" 9 will find, if you will but stop to consider a moment. Why, I wonder, is humanity so constitutionally averse to that ounce of prevention which is worth a pound of cure? Had you but braced yourself for an encounter with that puddle; if you had hopped over it spryly, saying at the same time to yourself, "Pooh! pooh! I know I am getting my feet wet; but I can get them dry again, and it won't kill me!" and if you had walked along briskly till they were dry, and toasted them at the fire the first chance you got, and had been a little more careful than usual about draughts for the rest of the day, who believes you would have taken cold? Not I! All the other remedies are good; but a determined will and a little foresight are the best of all panaceas for incipient disease. Some people hardly ever get sick, just because they will not; while others succumb at the least provocation, because they are weak of will, or do not bring their wills to bear upon the obstacle before them. HOWARD GLYNDON. Interesting to Topers. The Financial Reformer, writing on this subject remarks that Dr. Hodges, of Belfast, has publicly stated that a bottle of whiskey, described as a fair sample of the liquor sold in low-class public-houses, was heavily adulterated with naphtha, Cayenne pepper, and vitriol; that another sample consisted almost entirely of naphtha, with a slight coloring tinge of genuine whiskey; and that another charming compound was composed of Cayenne pepper, vitriol, spirits of wine, and blue-stone, which could be produced at the rate of a penny per gallon. A writer in the Scientific Review, some three or four years ago, enumerated among the multifarious in gredients for the adulteration of ale, beer, and porfer, cream of tartar, alum, green vitriol, copper, lead, pyretic acid, cocculus indicus, grains of paradise, coloring matters of various descriptions, quassia, and other cheaper and more hurtful bitters, ledum palustre, myrica gale, and datura stramonium; besides liquorice, molasses, coriander, capsicum, carraway-seeds, salt, horse-beans, etc., etc. Hence, though the honest products of bar ley, hops, and the vine may have much to answe for, they are debited with a vast amount of evil instances, murderous substitutes for them. One which is really occasioned by noxious, and, in some of the multifarious recipes for fraudulent concoctions, given in a book published for the guidance and assistance of publicans and vintners, winds up with "A pinch or two of oxalic acid" does Now, all this is very stupid, as you it is something in the way of improvement! something or other, we forget exactly what, but CONSTIPATION AND ITS CURE. As this is a disease that affects probably one-half of the adult population of this country, and is the forerunner of many other diseases, it is well to understand it, and how it can be avoided. Its first manifestation is a lack of natural movement in the lower part of the alimentary canal. The waste matter that ought to pass off regularly and easily at least once a day, is retained not unfrequently for several days. The unnatural accumulation would very soon be painful and burdensome, but that nature undertakes to dispose of it in other ways. The fluid portions of the fecal mass are reabsorbed into the blood and discharged through the lungs, skin, and liver, giving to the breath the horrible odor one might expect from such a source, to the skin the vile color so often seen, while it often so overtaxes the liver as to bring on liver complaint. Indeed, as all these organs have their own duties to perform, they cannot long perform this extra work without injury; nor can they do it effectively. The blood is not made so pure by this means as it would be if the impurities were carried off promptly, according to the first intention of nature; while the bad blood develops almost any disease to which the system may have a tendency. So diseases of many kinds spring from this cause, besides those which result from the effort made at last to throw off the impacted | residuum. The principal causes of this derangement are lack of exercise and improper diet. A certain amount of exercise is necessary to the healthy action of the entire physical organism, and probably there is no diet which will keep the system right in this respect without some active exercise. This is one reason why sedentary people suffer so much from this complaint. But very many suffer thus whose exercise would be sufficient were their diet right. One of the most common wrongs is the use of concentrated food. There is a popular notion that nutrition is all we want, and that if we could get that by itself, we should have a model food. So we have all our flour bolted, and eat butter and cheese and sugar, and reject the skins and seeds of fruits, and flatter ourselves we are living very delicately. We do not know enough about physiology to be aware that we need these coarser and less nutritious elements to make up a bulk and a roughness which shall incite to natural action this lower part of the alimentary canal, and so pass off the entire waste matter promptly and leave the system healthy, the blood pure, the breath sweet, and the skin clear, the truly delicate results which every one should desire. Nature has mixed and proportioned our food well for us, and if we attempt to separate and concentrate it, with the idea of taking only the best, we in our ignorance cheat ourselves, and suffer consequences of which we rarely guess the cause. Those articles of our daily food which most surely produce constipation are, firstly and mostly, bolted flour in all its shapes, then cheese, milk, tea, rice, and sugar; while those which promote proper action are wheat, corn, rye, and oat-meal, and fruits taken with the regular meals. . It is a mistaken notion that looseness and constipation require different articles of food. They both spring from weakness of some part of the alimentary canal, and, indeed, often alternate with each other. Good, wholesome food, which will strengthen the whole system, will help either.form of weakness, though any considerable changes in the diet may require a cautious introduction. Chronic diarrhoea has often been cured by a diet of unbolted flour and fruits. These do not act like medicine, to run through and clear out the impacted mass, but like nourishing food, to build up and strengthen every part, and to keep it in healthy action. In the case of inveterate constipation some months may be required to secure regular and continued healthy action. Kneading the bowels gently, or having THE New York Tribune, for March 19th, | gument. And when it is recollected that 1873, contained the following suggestive paragraph: the earth arrests but one 2,300,000,000th of the whole amount of force that the sun emits, the disturbing influences of the conjoint approximation of these large planets to the sun will be still more apparent. The solar spots, recently ascertained to be vast cyclones extending 40,000 miles from the surface of the sun, have lately been recorded as coincident with cyclones in the Indian seas. The New York Times, of a late date, says: "The later theories of Piazzi, Smyth, Wolf, "There is a melancholy Dr. Trall, who announces in a Philadelphia newspaper that we are approaching a climax of a pestilential period. From 1880 to 1885, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune will come nearer the earth than they have been for eighteen hundred years. The result will be, as the Doctor says it has been before, that we shall have all manner of unpleasantness-plague, fam-| ine, and awfully hot and cold weather. One planet would have been bad enough | Herschel, and others, suggested a connec—now we are to have four in combined approximation; and, unless we adopt strict sanitary measures, we may expect a calamity indeed. Gluttons, tobaccochewers and smokers, and tight-lacing young ladies will never survive the perihelion of all the large planets of the solar system. So says the dreadful Dr. Trall." In Youman's "Chemistry," page 419, occur the following words: "Not only life but all the grand phenomena of force with which we are familiar upon this planet, have their origin in the sun. His radiations govern the movements of terrestrial atoms, and in these the movements of masses take their rise. Should that body cease to give out emanations, the earth would speedily lose its heat." That the coincident perihelion of the four large planets of the solar system would more or less modify the temperative and electrical conditions of the earth is a proposition too obvious to need ar tion between the periodic frequency of solar spots and the cycles of our hot and cold years, and our heaviest and most destructive and terrestrial storms." The Atlantic Monthly, for March, 1873, says: "We have already had something to say about the spots on the sun, and their curious relations to terrestrial phenomena. We have seen that the occurrence of the aurora borealis and the cyclical disturbances of the compassneedle are determined by those gigantic solar storms which give to the disc of our great luminary its spotted appearance. We have also given some of the facts which seem to indicate a remarkable coincidence between the periodicity of the spots and the periodicity of Asiatic cholera." In Webster's "History of Pestilences," the perihelion periods of Jupiter, for several hundred years, are shown to be coincident with pestilential periods. In Hecker's "Epidemics of the Middle |