Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/132

126 only increases its value for expurgative purposes. The appalling, drug-defying mortality of a large city sweltering under the glare of the dog-day sun, is abated by the first spell of cooler weather. The veering of a midsummer breeze from south to northwest reduces the death-rate of infants two-thirds. Canadian trappers who leave their supply-camp with a bad cough, get rid of it on the fifth or sixth day "out." They may get footsore, and if game is scarce, hipped and homesick, but the feeling of haleness about the chest continues. Night-frosts do not affect it. Fatigues rather improve it. They may wake up with a feeling of frost-cramp from their chill-blained toes to their shivering knees, but the lungs are at ease; no cough, no asthmatic distress, no stitch-like pains, no night-fever.

An old campaigner would laugh at the idea of "colds" being taken in the open air. He knows that they germinate in close bedrooms and flourish in musty beer-shops, but vanish in the prairie-wind.

Houses cannot be kept too airy, no room or chamber should ever be kept permanently closed for days together. Never mind about the improvement of ventilatory contrivances: patent