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night, and awake far more refreshed than those who indolently slumber all the morning.

Even this second nap is, however, by no means so injurious to health as the practice of continuing in bed of a morning long after waking. Nothing tends, especially in children and young persons generally, more effectually to unbrace the solids, exhaust the spirits, and thus to undermine the vigour, activity, and health of the system, than such a practice. After rising it is an excellent custom to wash and dress immediately, or, at any rate, before breakfast, so as to be ready to go out when business or exercise requires it. If dressing is deferred until after breakfast more time is wasted or lounged away than is compatible either with healthful exercise, or with the rules by which a man of business ought to conduct himself. The morning toilet, when properly gone about, is of great importance to health. The chief object to be attended to is cleanliness of person, even to minutiæ; a daily change of linen is highly desirable; a frequent one is necessary.

"It must not be forgotten," observes Hufeland, "that we spend a considerable portion of our lives in the bedchamber, and consequently that its healthiness or unhealthiness cannot fail of having a very important influence upon our physical well-being."

The condition of our sleeping apartments is, generally speaking, a matter for grave reproach in our present boasted age of improvement. How often are families crowded at night into obscure and confined chambers, while the best and healthiest rooms of the house are reserved for ostentatious display! The largest and most lofty room should be used for sleeping, and it should be freely ventilated during the daytime at all seasons, except when the weather is damp. The bedchamber should be divested of all unnecessary furniture, and should never contain more than one bed. The practice of sleeping in an apartment which is occupied during the day is very improper. Perfect cleanliness

SLEEPING IN DAMP ROOMS.

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and a sufficiently free ventilation cannot, under such circumstances, be preserved, especially during cold. weather; hence the atmosphere becomes constantly more and more vitiated, and altogether unfitted for respiration.

While too great a degree of caution cannot be observed to avoid sleeping in damp rooms, beds, or clothing, the temperature of the bedchamber should, if possible, never be augmented, under the ordinary circumstances of health, by artificial means. As this apartment is to be reserved solely for repose a fire is never necessary, excepting, perhaps, during very severe weather, and even then the temperature ought not to exceed fifty degrees. A sleeping apartment in which a large fire has been kept up for several hours previous to the period of retiring to rest may present an appearance of the most perfect comfort; it is, however, at the same time, a means of very effectually enervating the system, creating an increased susceptibility to the influence of cold, and thus opening the way to the attack of some of the most serious diseases, especially of the chest. A person accustomed to undress in a room without fire, and to seek repose in a cold bed, will not experience the least inconvenience, even in the severest weather. The natural heat of his body will very speedily render him even more comfortably warm than the individual who sleeps in a heated apartment, and in a bed thus artificially warmed, and who will be extremely liable to a sensation of chilliness as soon as the artificial heat is dissipated. But this is not allthe constitution of the former will be rendered more robust, and far less susceptible to the influence of atmospherical vicissitudes than that of the latter.

A practice equally imprudent with that of occupying a heated bedchamber during cold weather is the one very commonly pursued, of attempting to reduce the temperature of this apartment in summer by leaving the windows open at night. Many persons have experienced serious and irreparable injury to their health

by being in this manner subjected, whilst asleep, to a current of cold air from without. While a free admission of air is permitted throughout the day, the direct. rays of the meridian sun being, however, at the same time, as much as possible excluded, the windows of the bedchamber should be invariably closed after night.

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When night-lights are employed in an apartment they should be placed upon the hearth within the chimney. Healthy beds," observes the author of "Hints on Health," are not generally understood in England. Formerly a curtained box, half filled with musty mattresses, was the usual form, and quite as barbarous a custom it was as the air-tight wooden troughs and messes used to sleep in by the Chinese. The Italians generally use iron bedsteads, and frequently expose the mattresses and feather beds to the sun and air on the balconies, &c. The French use cotton for beds, because all animal substances are liable, without frequent cleaning and care, to propagate vermin. Feather-bed cleaners are well aware that feather beds become heavier and swarm with animalculæ by being slept on, principally owing to the accumulated perspiration, which is also perceptible to other observers by a somewhat fusty smell in most bedrooms before the windows have been opened.

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The custom of making the bed immediately on its becoming unoccupied is quite as objectionable as rolling up the mattress and bedclothes, and hiding them in a corner, or in a sham piece of " genteel" furniture, as if a bed were an object to be ashamed of.

The best bed for children is a sacking, and a cotton or straw mattress, as used for soldiers.

Very hard beds should not be used, as they may occasion children to rest on too few parts at a time, which hardens these parts by pressure, and prevents their growth.

The warming of beds, by charcoal fires in particular, by its imparting poisonous vapours to the clothes, is highly pernicious.

Feather pillows are not less injurious than feather beds. By preserving the head of an immoderate warmth

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they are apt to induce catarrhs, and in the young may become the remote or exciting cause of inflammation in the ear, eruptions, pains in the head, or even more serious complaints.

Closely shrouding a bed with curtains is highly pernicious. By preventing a free circulation of the air they oblige the individual who reposes within them to breathe an atmosphere vitiated by repeated respiration. They become, also, receptacles for fine particles of dust, which are liable to be inhaled during sleep, whenever disturbed by the motion of the curtains or of the bedstead: this alone is a cause to which many young persons may refer the first development of a consumptive attack.

Equally pernicious is the practice of sleeping with the face enveloped in the bedclothes. Our own feelings might be supposed sufficient to induce us to assume in bed that position in which every portion of the body will be left the freest from constraint; yet in the case of children some cautions may be necessary, in order to prevent an awkward position from being indulged in, calculated to produce a prejudicial effect upon the symmetrical growth and development of the system. Hence it is prudent, when young persons lie upon their backs, to reduce the size of the pillows, in order to guard against a contortion of the spine, while lying on the side requires pillows sufficiently large to fill up the space between the head and point of the shoulder. A constrained position, if it have no other bad effect, is a certain preventive to sound and refreshing sleep.

Beds should never be placed upon the floor. It is well known that, in all apartments occupied by living beings, the inferior portions of the atmosphere are always the most impure. The most wholesome situation for the bed is in the middle of the room, and raised some feet from the floor.

CHAPTER VIII.

SANITARY ARRANGEMENT OF A DWELLING.-FRESH AIR AND VENTILATION.

"This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that heaven's breath

Smells wooingly here, and

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate."

"I turn'd into an alley 'neath the wall,

SHAKSPEARE.

And stepp'd from earth to hell. The light of heaven,
The common air, was narrow, gross, and dun,—
The tiles did drop from the eaves; the unhinged doors
Totter'd o'er inky pools, where reek'd and curdled
The offal of a life; the gaunt-haunch'd swine
Growl'd at their christen'd playmates o'er the scraps;
Shrill mothers cursed, wan children wail'd, sharp coughs
Ran through the crazy chambers, hungry eyes
Glared dumb reproach and old perplexity,

Too stale for words."

KINGSLEY, The Saint's Tragedy.

WHEN it is considered that a much greater portion of our time is spent within doors than without, it is a circumstance to be wondered at that more attention is not usually paid to the construction of buildings with a view to health. Indeed, there are few houses, whether of larger or smaller dimensions, where some particulars have not been neglected, and where some improvements might not be pointed out. The principles which should guide us in the construction of our houses are simple; they should not be too cold, too hot, or in the

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