DISEASES OF WOMEN, by R. T. Trall, M. D. TOBACCO-USING, an Essay by R. T. Trall, M. D. Wood Boxes,. 23 62 115 Wounds, Dressing for,.... 191 DOMESTIC HYGIENE. STATE and National Health Boards and Committees certainly do excellent work for communities and nations; but the real influence which they exercise over the health of individuals is insignificant when compared with that which may be, and indeed is, exercised by the matrons of the various households which make up villages, cities, and nations. City authorities may exercise a rigid surveillance over all the avenues through which disease is known to enter; they may keep the public streets cleanly, introduce costly means of supplying water, and cause the removal beyond the suburbs of slaughter-houses, tanneries, soap-boiling establishments, and noisome chemical works; but if the seeds of death and disease are allowed to germinate and flourish in each separate dwelling, and around each fireside, what favorable results can be expected? All reforms must begin at home, to be effective; and we would urge upon all parents the importance of careful attention to the simple suggestions which are herein offered, by means of which they may be able to save themselves and their families from numerous illnesses, with their attendant inconveniences, expense, and suffering, and, probably, in many cases, from untimely death. Ventilation.-From the first quick gasp of infancy to the last feeble sigh of old age, the prime necessity of life is air. Air is food for the lungs, as bread is food for the stomach. Millions more people die from want of lung food than from a deficiency of other aliment. The Creator has provided the necessary article in generous abundance, fresh, pure, and free to all. If we do not get enough, it is our own fault, for when we close our doors and windows the closest, this vitalizing, invigorating element is whizzing and howling close around outside, seeking to find an entrance. People who nail up their windows, stop every crack and crevice in the walls, line the door casing with felt, and fix a patent thing under the door as a sort of air-trap to catch the occasional whiffs of pure air which might otherwise get in, are barricading themselves against their best friend. A man who should so studiously and deliberately deprive himself of the means of procuring ordinary food, would be pronounced a suicide. Is he any less a transgressor-though ignorantly so-who deprives himself and his family of a still greater necessity, pure air? Every man produces five gallons of carbon dioxide, a deadly poison, every hour. This poison is so deadly that the amount produced and carried out of the body at each breath poisons, and renders unfit for breathing, three cubic feet of air. |