Women -- Biography; Women -- Social and moral questions
A good supply of _pure air_ is intimately connected with bodily vigour.
There are, in every country, whole districts, of larger or smaller
extent, in which the air is either permanently or periodically noxious;
its bad qualities arising generally from the miasma of fens, or the mud
banks and mud deposits of rivers. In all our towns, large or small,
there are to be found narrow streets, dark passages, small courts, and
back yards, where the atmosphere is always loaded with impurities, in
consequence of imperfect drainage, the accumulation of filth, and the
position of the buildings. In such places, the inhabitants are, for the
most part, a feeble and sickly race. Even when healthy, it is
absolutely certain that the respiratory organs should not always
breathe the same atmosphere. The unwholesome rooms in which children
are penned up, the close apartments where many women are doomed to
labour, and the smoke, chimneys, and long rows of houses that hem in
the path of others, are producing sad havoc among the softer sex. If
you would have health, strength, and longevity, you must now and then
refresh your lungs, by taking a stroll on a common, a walk by the
sea-side, or spending a day amid the ranges of the great hills with
their wild peaks and morning mists. The breathing of fresh air is, we
maintain, an essential part of physical culture.
_Cleanliness_ has a most important and salutary influence on your
material nature. In the skin of a person of average size there are
tubes connected with the pores, measuring, if put end to end,
twenty-eight miles. These ought always to be kept open. Checked
perspiration is direct injury to the membranes of the air passages, and
frequently to the alimentary canal. It is therefore necessary to remove
from the skin all refuse matter from within or without. This can only
be done by washing from head to foot every morning and night. It is
safe, and for many reasons most beneficial, to use cold water. The
flesh brush is of great service in stimulating the skin to action,
opening and cleaning out the pores, promoting a copious circulation of
blood, and producing a healthful and exhilarating glow; the strength of
which sufficiently attests the advantages derived. Soap is useful, and
the common and coarse kinds are better than most of those sold by
perfumers. Next to cleanliness in your persons, is cleanliness in your
dwellings. Every house ought to undergo an annual, or rather
half-yearly visitation of all its cellars, its scullery, washhouse,
garrets, loft, cupboards, closets, and all dark places and corners, for
the removal of dirt, or anything in its wrong place. As nearly as
possible the house ought to be turned “out of windows.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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