But it would be of no use to fix on a place with a good air to live in, if one does not chuse to breathe it. The air of rooms, or chambers, if it is not continually renewed, is nearly the same in all. It can hardly be called a change of air, from a close room in town to a close room in the country. There is no enjoying the benefits of a healthy atmosphere but in the open fields. If infirmities, or weakness, hinder the procurement of that benefit, by the going or the being carried thither, at least the air of the room, or chamber, should be renewed several times in a day; not simply by opening a door or a window, which renews it only a little, but in letting into the chamber a torrent of fresh air, by opening, all at once, two or three different and opposite inlets. There is no disorder that does not require this precaution; but it is requisite not to expose the sick person to the force of the current of air, and it is always very easy to place him out of the power of it. It is also extremely important to breathe the morning air. Those who deprive themselves of it, for the sake of remaining in a stifling atmosphere between four curtains, voluntarily renounce the most agreeable, and perhaps the most strengthening of all remedies. The freshness of the night will, by morning, have restored to the air all its vivifying principle; and the dew which evaporates, by degrees, after having loaded itself with all the balm of the flowers on which it will have dwelt, renders the air truly medicinal; you solace yourself in a vaporous bath of the essence of plants, the air of which you continually draw in, and of which nothing can be equivalently substituted to the good effect. The ease, the refreshment, the strength, the appetite, which we may feel procured by it, for the rest of the day, are a proof in every one’s power, and a stronger one than all that I could add. I have, very recently, seen the most sensible effects of it on some valetudinarians, and especially on such as were hypochondriacs: these experienced, in the clearest manner, that if they indulged themselves in breathing the morning air, they were always the more chearful, the more lively, for the rest of the day; and those who passed that rest of the day with them, could not, by that mark, be mistaken as to the hour of their rising. It is easy then to conceive, how important this effect is for those who are affected, in any degree, with the _Tabes dorsalis_, who are so often hypochondriacal; and in whom a return of chearfulness is alone sufficient to furnish an unquestionable sign of a general amendment of health. _ALIMENTS._ In the choice of Aliments I would recommend the two following rules: _First_, To take no aliments, but what, under a small volume, contain a great deal of nourishment, and are of easy digestion. This is an aphorism of SANCTORIUS: _Coïtus immoderatus postulat cibos paucos et boni nutrimenti_[105]. _Secondly_, To avoid all that have any acridity.