We will now offer a few remarks on the subject of white linen. We should not wear starched linen shirts, as they are less permeable to the air. In lieu of these, porous linen shirts are advisable, or any other kind of soft and porous material, without a starched front. The use of starched shirts should be confined to dinner parties and social functions. The most absurd part of our linen outfit is unquestionably that instrument of torture we wear as a yoke around our neck, preventing a free circulation through our most important arteries and throttling one of our most important organs—the thyroid gland. This we know as the “starched collar,” without which we must not appear in decent society. It is in any or all of its present shapes an unhealthy article of clothing, but especially so when, from foolishness, it is worn standing high up to the chin, keeping away the air from the neck and hindering free circulation. Its bad effects upon the thyroid have already been referred to in the chapter on the hygiene of the thyroid gland. It would be more reasonable to wear a low collar, turned down, and of soft linen, as worn by our forefathers. Women may have this privilege, but, sad to say, they do not avail themselves of it, but instead, in many instances, cover their necks, and even more than their neck, by impermeable materials. Yet the neck is one of the parts of the human frame where many sudorific glands are situated and where we perspire freely. These parts especially should not be enclosed by clothing; neither should the armpits and the toes of the feet, for here the sudorific glands of the body are very numerous. Yet we wear the most impermeable materials, such as leather, and often indeed thick leather, and _horribile dictu!_ even rubbers, very often, on these important organs. The outer garments should also be made, after careful consideration, to afford the greatest amount of porosity. It would be the height of hygienic triumph to wear clothes made to allow of the free inlet of wholesome sunlight. Gray garments are, therefore, the best, and next to this blue should be greatly preferred to dark colors.