Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/325

 If there be a dressing-room next to the bed-room, it will be well to have the dressing-room window, instead of the bed-room window, open at night. The dressing-room door will regulate the quantity of air to be admitted into the bed-room, opening it either little or much, as the weather might be cold or otherwise.

Fresh air during sleep is indispensable to health—If a bed-room be close, the sleep, instead of being calm and refreshing, is broken and disturbed; and the boy, when he awakes in the morning, feels more fatigued than when he retired to rest.

If sleep is to be refreshing, the air, then, must be pure, and free from carbonic acid gas, which is constantly being evolved from the lungs. If sleep is to be health-giving, the lungs ought to have their proper food, oxygen,—and not be cheated by giving them instead a poison, carbonic acid gas.

It would be well for each boy to have a separate room to himself, and each girl a separate room to herself. If two boys are obliged, from the smallness of the house, to sleep in one room, and if two girls, from the same cause, are compelled to occupy the same chamber, by all means let each one have a separate bed to himself and to herself, as it is so much more healthy and expedient for both boys and girls to sleep alone.

The roof of the bed should be left open—that is to say, the top of the bedstead ought not be covered with bed furniture, but should be open to the ceiling, in order to encourage a free ventilation of air. A bed-curtain may be allowed on the side of the bed where there are windy currents of air; otherwise bed-curtains and valances ought on no account to be allowed. They prevent a free circulation of the air. A youth should sleep on a horse-hair mattress. Such mattresses greatly improve the figure and strengthen the frame. During the daytime, provided it