Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/152

 injurious. Walnuts, almonds, and pecan-nuts have an especially bad reputation here, whether justly or not we cannot say.

OFFENSIVE BREATH.

A "bad breath," as it is popularly called, is such a serious misfortune that we devote a separate section to its consideration. Many an one who would be an engaging companion is rendered intolerable by it, by it many a damsel estranges her lover, many a wife her husband.

We have termed it a misfortune. This is not quite correct. It is often a fault, one that could and should be remedied. Knowing how common it is, how nauseous it is to associates, how mortifying to the individual herself, we have given close attention to its various causes in order to suggest remedies wherever remedies are of any avail. Often the first whiff of a fetid breath will reveal its origin, and if blindfolded one can prescribe the proper means by which it can be alleviated.

The great majority of cases arise either from the lungs, the stomach, or the teeth. When from the lungs, the odor is of a sickening sweetish character; when from the stomach, it is marked by the presence of that gas known as sulphuretted hydrogen, which we are most familiar with from its presence in rotten eggs; when from the teeth, it is putrescent, reminding one of decaying animal tissue. It may also be produced from