Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/474

458 placid females of the genus homo are found among the well-fed but hard-working housewives of German Pennsylvania.

That hard work in the factory does not lead to the same result is due to the contrast between fresh and foul air; but also to the difference between sunshine and artificial twilight. Light is a chief source of vital energy, and every deduction from the proper share of that natural stimulus of the organic process is sure to tell upon the well-being of every living organism. See the difference between the vegetation of the south side and the north side of the same mountain-range, the gradations in the stunted appearance of hot-house plants, house-plants, and cellar-plants, the achromatism and strange deformities of animals inhabiting the waters of underground rivers. The direct rays of the sun seem to exercise many of the effects which the manufacturers of "electric brushes" ascribe to the use of their contrivances. In ancient Rome special sun-bathing houses were used as a specific for a form of asthenia, which was then more frequent than premature debility—the infirmity of extreme old age. In winter-time white-haired invalids, stripped to the waist, basked for hours under the glass-roof of a solarium which excluded the chill winds, but admitted the light from all sides, and the same remedy would prove even more effective in the treatment of chlorosis—properly a twilight-disease, and due to the same causes that rob a cellar-plant of its color and vigor. A board fence may fail to remove the fear of peeping Toms, but on sequestered mountain-meadows, warmed by a July sun, or better yet on the beach of a lonely sea-shore, the patient may while away an hour in the costume of the Nereids; or, after the manner of the sensible Brazilians, children may at safe hours be permitted to turn a leafy garden into paradise. Persons of highly limited means can utilize the elevation of their garrets, and use a half-screened window-corner as a solarium, for hours together. The expectation of disastrous consequences will be as surely disappointed as the dread of the night air. "Colds" are not taken in that way. The hairy coat which may, or may not, have covered the bodies of our prehistoric forefathers, did not interfere with the beneficial action of the solar rays, and it is not the least among the disadvantages of our artificial modes of life, that this benefit is now limited to one tenth, or, in the case of a muffled-up lady of fashion, to one per cent, of the cutaneous surface.

The diet should be sparing, but not to the degree of being astringent, for chronic constipation and nervousness are almost invariable concomitants. There are many appetizing vegetable articles of diet of which a liberal quantum can be eaten without exceeding the needs of the organism; but here, more than elsewhere, it is of paramount importance to remember the chief rule of the peptic catechism: not to eat till we have leisure to digest. Vertigo, myopsis (visions of floating specks clouding the eye-sight), palpitation of the heart, and the indescribable irritations and discomforts of the sufferers from