Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/193

183 every variety of diſtreſs. Obſerve, however, that the quantities of food and exerciſe are relative things: thoſe who move much may, and indeed ought, to eat more; thoſe who uſe little exerciſe, ſhould eat little. In general, mankind, ſince the improvement of cookery, eat about twice as much as nature requires. Suppers are not bad, if we have not dined; but reſtleſs nights naturally follow hearty ſuppers, after full dinners. Indeed, as there is a difference in conſtitutions, ſome reſt well after theſe meals; it coſts them only a frightful dream, and an apoplexy, after which they; ſleep till doomſday. Nothing is more common in the newſpapers, than inſtances of people, who, after eating a hearty ſupper, are found dead a-bed in the morning.

Another means of preſerving health, to be attended to, is the having a conſtant ſupply of freſh air in your bed-chamber. It has been a great miſtake, the ſleeping in rooms exactly cloſed, and in beds ſurrounded by curtains. No outward air, that may come in to you, is ſo unwholſome as the unchanged air, often breathed, of a cloſe chamber. As boiling water does not grow hotter by longer boiling, if the particles that receive greater heat can eſcape; ſo living bodies do not putrify, if the particles, as faſt as they become putrid, can be thrown off. Nature expels them by the pores of the ſkin and lungs, and in a free open air, they are carried off; but, in a cloſe room, we receive them again, though they become more and more corrupt. A number of perſons crowded into a ſmall room, thus ſpoil the air in a few minutes, and even render it mortal, as in the Black Hole at Calcutta. A ſingle perſon is ſaid to ſpoil only a gallon of air per minute, and therefore requires a longer time to ſpoil a chamberfull; but it is done, however, in