Dress should be regulated according to the feeling, with sometimes more and sometimes less clothing. But I think it advisable that adults should wear flannel (thin) next to their person always when first going to Africa. It gradually absorbs the moisture, and retaining a proper degree of heat, thus prevents any sudden change of temperature from affecting the system. Avoid getting wet at first, and should this accidentally happen, take a thoroughly good bath, rub the skin dry, and put on dry clothes, and for two or three hours that day, keep out of the sun; but if at night, go to bed. But when it so happens that you are out from home and cannot change clothing, continue to exercise until the clothes dry on your person. It is the abstraction of heat from the system by evaporation of water from the clothing, which does the mischief in such cases. I have frequently been wet to saturation in Africa, and nothing ever occurred from it, by pursuing the course here laid down. Always sleep in clean clothes. Sanitary Measures I am sure I need inform no one, however ignorant, that all measures of cleanliness of person, places, and things about the residences, contribute largely to health in Africa, as in other countries. Ventilation of Houses All dwellings should be _freely ventilated_ during the _night_ as well as day, and it is a great mistake to suppose, as in Liberia (where every settler sleeps with every part of his house closely shut--doors, windows, and all) that it is deletereous to have the house ventilated during the evening, although they go out to night meetings, visit each other in the evening, and frequently sit on their porches and piazzas till a late hour in the night, conversing, without any injurious effects whatever. Dr. Roberts, and I think Dr. McGill and a few other gentlemen, informed me that their sleeping apartments were exceptions to the custom generally in Liberia. This stifling custom to save themselves does not prevail among the natives of Africa anywhere, nor among the foreigners anywhere in the Yoruba country, that I am aware of, and I am under the impression that it was the result of fear or precaution, not against the night air, but against the imaginary (and sometimes real) creeping things--as insects and reptiles--which might find their way into the houses at night. Test of Night Air