Until we compare conditions to-day with those of even fifty years ago, we can form no idea of our rapid strides toward natural living. If we walk the streets of the city or the roads of suburban towns and villages very early in the morning, at any season of the year, we shall find the vast majority of the houses with open windows. It is true that the opening may not always be very wide, but they are open. Fifty years ago all would have been closed. Within the recollection of those whose memories go back a quarter of a century, we were taught that night air was dangerous to breathe and was to be completely shut out from our houses. Now we know that the organism needs fresh air by night as well as by day, and that the most dangerous thing about night air is the lack of it. We now treat the most dreaded diseases, pneumonia and tuberculosis, almost wholly by fresh air and nourishing food, administering drugs only to check the symptoms until the system gets into condition to throw them off. More than that, we know now that consumption, at least, is not a mysterious dispensation of Providence visited upon certain people without regard to individual responsibility. Rather it is always the result of improper living or thinking, or both, and, when it is the scourge of a district, as in thickly settled city slums, it is the direct result of monopoly and oppression that deny the common interests of all mankind. In 1865 Dr. W. W. Hall of New York published his book, “Sleep,” in the preface of which he said: “It is the end and aim of this book to show that as a means of high health, good blood, and a strong mind to old and young, sick or well, each one should have a single bed in a large, clean, light room, so as to pass all the hours of sleep in a pure, fresh air, and that those who fail in this, will in the end fail in health and strength of limb and brain, and will die while yet their days are not all told.” That this physician with a large practice should find it necessary to write a book to set forth the necessity of fresh air during sleeping-hours, goes to show how little the mass of our people knew even fifty years ago. We hear so much about fresh air in these days that we forget that the preceding generation was in deadly terror of it. All things point to a marked advance during the past decades, in the understanding of conditions necessary for health, but, after all, we have come but a very little way along the road we must travel to get the most out of life.