Motherly talks with young housekeepers: embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.Beecher, H. W., Mrs.
General
Motherly talks with young housekeepers: embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.
Beecher, H. W., Mrs.
Cooking; Home economics
We copy this letter entire, hoping by so doing to bring this subject
to the attention of those whose opinion and judgment are of greater
worth than our own. There are many conflicting opinions concerning the
effect which plants and vines, growing in the house, and filling it by
day and by night with their delightful atmosphere, have upon the health
of their worshipers. If the wise and scientific among our readers will
give this matter attentive and sober thought, we hope to find in the
multitude of counselors the wisdom which is so much needed.
It is not very many years since physicians lifted up their voices
against this pleasant adornment of our homes, by which some portion of
the joyous summer may be wrested from the grasp of the frost king, and
which enables us while indoors, to forget that fingers and toes are in
danger the moment we venture outside of the carefully tended parlor
garden.
But our physicians change their opinions like other mortals, and at the
present time some affirm that plants and vines in the house, or even
in the sleeping-apartments, are health-giving. They tell us that the
carbonic gas which is being constantly set free from our lungs, and
which is detrimental, is at once absorbed by our flowers, while these
at the same time give to us, in exchange, the oxygen which, in its
proper place and quantity, is so necessary to health and life.
Other physicians assume that a growing plant is not noxious or in any
way detrimental, but that as soon as it begins to blossom it should
be at once removed from a bedchamber, and if allowed to remain in the
house at all, should be placed, while in bloom, as far as possible from
the family apartments.
Again, it is stated--and all these conflicting opinions, we are told,
come to us from the “best and most reliable authority”--that no plant,
in flower or not, is at all injurious in any part of the house, so
long as the perfume from the blossom is not powerful and not at all
offensive. “Who shall decide when doctors disagree?” It seems to us
very important that our learned, scientific men--those who make the
effects of the various gases on life and health a careful study--should
give this question a thorough investigation, and when, after mature
research, they arrive, as they suppose, at a proper conclusion, should
publish their opinion in simple terms, such as all can comprehend. We
should rejoice if the conclusion of the whole matter might be such that
all could lean upon it with no fear of its proving by and by a broken
reed; but it is difficult to keep pace with changes in the results of
scientific investigations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account