Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/807

Rh of the services you can render is high, but I trust not exaggerated. When your numbers shall increase, and the character of those who are admitted remain of the same standard, your importance will grow. In your hands will, to a great extent, lie the opportunity for removing prejudices, spreading knowledge, healing and preventing disease. Even those of you who will not always consent to serve in other people's homes, will, by example and by teaching, remain in close alliance and co-operation with such as intend to remain in the ranks forever. As you now mean to leave us, endowed with the certificate of the required accomplishments, I can only add, while offering my best wishes for your future, that I trust you will never forget the place which gave you so ample opportunities for perfecting yourselves. You will never forget the gentlemen who taught you, nor that accomplished young woman who impressed all of you with the fact that the charms of womanhood will not suffer from hard work, from a classical education, and thorough medical or other knowledge. Do not forget, also, at the beginning of your independent career, the ladies to whose care and sacrifices and labors you owe the existence of the school which sends you forth as its first graduates, nor the great charitable institution which, after having given you your practical training, honors you to-night by the presence of many of its officers, and designates its president to deliver to you your diplomas.



LOTHING is a kind of armor to help us in the battle against the elements, the importance of which increases with the rigor of the climate which man inhabits. The house may be regarded as an amplified clothing, to be used less constantly, but as more enduring than other clothing, and capable besides of furnishing a full shelter. Both clothing and the house have been invented to protect us; but a very common error, which has given rise to many mistakes, has been to regard the house and the clothing as designed essentially to isolate us from the external air. The truth is, that they are simply regulators of our indispensable and constant relations with the ambient atmosphere. These relations can not well be comprehended unless we take account of the complex phenomena by which the temperature of the body is kept up in the midst of the most diverse influences. We know that animal heat is produced by chemical changes that are accomplished in the tissues, and principally, but not exclusively, by the combustion of the food which is assimilated and brought into the circulation, where the inspired oxygen transforms it into alcohol and carbonic 