Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/105

Rh and unnatural strain upon the brains of business and professional men. To diminish this would be an almost impossible task. I can only suggest a diminution of working hours, the necessity for regular meals and habits, and means to prevent large cities from being over-stocked by the agricultural classes, who imagine themselves in these days particularly fitted for business and professional pursuits. We should abolish immoral entertainments, advertising quacks, so-called anatomical museums, and obscene and sensational literature, as far as possible.

Legislation should strictly regulate the sale of poisonous drugs, and the police should enforce the laws. Friends and relatives of excitable and nervous persons should be alive to the necessity of keeping from their reach razors, cutting instruments, and poisons. They should also endeavor, as far as possible, to prevent the formation of the opium-habit, self-administration of chloroform, and alcoholic indulgence.

Careful watch should be kept on all persons who go up into high public buildings, church-spires, and other eminences. Physicians should employ caution lest their patients should habitually indulge in some narcotic drug originally prescribed. The boards of health of the different cities cannot be over-zealous in suggesting means for the improvement of the dwellings of the poor. Air, light, and ventilation, should be provided, if possible, for these are absolutely necessary for nervous development and healthy cerebration. I have always considered the system of small dwellings, that has succeeded so well in Philadelphia and other cities, an inestimable boon to the working-classes. A healthier moral and physical tone is engendered, both by elevating the self-reliance of heads of families, and the abolition of moral contamination so prevalent in tenement-house life.

The establishment of bureaus and other agencies for procuring work for immigrants, freeing the cities from the surplus of these people, would prevent much desperation, misery, and self-destruction.



HE progress of science in recent times is in a great degree due to the employment of instrumental aids to observation; and whoever wishes to keep up with this advance, or indeed to gain an adequate notion of its extent and interest, can only do so by the use of similar means. In the study of chemistry, experiments and actual observation of the behavior of substances under various conditions, are indispensable; in physics, multifarious appliances for the illustration of principles are constantly required; in astronomy.