Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/777

Rh work in the open air. It may be an heroic cure, requiring a good deal of will-force in cold weather, but it is an infallible and the only radical remedy. In half a day the nasal ducts and the perspiratory exhalants will throw off irritating matters which would defy the drug doctor for a couple of weeks, or yield only to exercise their influence in another direction, for poison-remedies merely change the form of a disease. But the beneficial effect of out-door exercise is not limited to the respiratory organs: their quickened function reacts on the digestive apparatus, on the nervous system, and through the nerves on the mind; true mental and physical vigor in any form can be maintained only on a liberal allowance of life-air; those who feed their lungs on miasma become strangers to that exuberant health which makes bare existence a luxury. After years of in-door life the victims of melancholy, dyspepsia, and dull headaches come to accept their discomforts as the normal condition of mankind, but upon the first appearance of such disorders our instinct suggests the cause and the cure with an urgency which makes confinement in the atmosphere of our northern dwelling-houses the greatest affliction of childhood. If we reflect on the fact that our earth is surrounded by a respirable atmosphere of at least eight hundred million cubic miles, it seems a sad comment on the enlightenment of modern civilization that the unsatisfied thirst after life-air should inflict more misery upon millions of our fellow-men than hunger and all the hardships of poverty combined. "On the day of judgment," says Jean Paul, "God will perhaps pardon you for starving your children when bread was so dear; but, if he should charge you with stinting them in his free air, what answer shall you make?"

Perfect health depends upon a daily supply of fresh air as much as on our daily bread; but within certain limits the human organism is capable of adapting itself to abnormal circumstances. A man may accustom himself to devour his weekly allowance of solid food at a single meal, and in a similar way the vitalizing elements of air and sunshine can be hoarded up—allotropically, for all we know—for days, weeks, and months in advance. The Zooloo hunter who, after a six days' fast, gets a chance to satisfy the cravings of his stomach; can not be expected to content himself with half-pint rations à la Luigi Cornaro, and in midsummer, after six months of sedentary life, a boy should get his fill of out-door exercises; let him drink sunlight at every pore, do not stint his allowance of oxygen, compensate him for long arrears of woodland air and mountain-rambles.

With a little experience vacation trips can be managed very cheaply. Professor Jordan, of the Ilefeld Pedagogium, takes his summer boarders to the Hartz, or even to the Austrian Alps, at an aggregate daily expense of fifteen marks (three and a half dollars) for twenty or twenty-five big boys with North-German appetites. They carry their own beds in the form of a plaid and a pair of foot-sacks