49. She may rest assured that it is utterly impossible for herself and for her family to have perfect health if the chimneys are allowed to be stopped. I assert this fearlessly, for I have paid great attention to the subject. If the chimney be stopped, the apartment must necessarily become contaminated with carbonic acid gas, the refuse of respiration, which is, as I have before stated, a deadly poison.
50. Chimneys, in many country houses, are permanently and hermetically stopped: if we have the ill-fortune to sleep in such rooms, we feel half-suffocated. Sleep, did I say? No! tumble and toss are the right words to express the real meaning; for in such chambers very little sleep do we get,—unless, indeed, we open the windows to let in the air, which, in such an extremity, is the only thing, if we wish to get a wink of sleep, we can do! Stopped-up bedroom chimneys is one and an important reason why some persons do not derive the benefit they otherwise would do of change of air to the country.
51. I unhesitatingly declare that ninety-nine bedrooms out of every hundred are badly ventilated; that in the morning, after they have been slept in, they are full both of impure and of poisoned air. I say, advisedly, impure and poisoned air, for the air becomes foul and deadly if not perpetually changed—if not constantly mixed, both by day and by night, with fresh, pure, external air. Many persons, by breathing the same air over and over again, are literally “poisoned by their own breaths!” This is not an exaggerated statement—alas, it is too true! Let every young wife remember that she requires just as much pure air in the night as in the day; and if she does not have it, her sleep will neither refresh her nor strengthen her, but that she will rise in the morning more weary than on the previous night when she retired to rest.
52. The way to make a house healthy, and to keep off disease, is by thorough ventilation—by allowing a current of air, both by day and by night, to constantly enter and to sweep through the house, and every room of the house. This may be done either by open skylight or by open landing windows, which should always be left open; and by allowing every chamber window to be wide open during the day, and every chamber door to be a little open both by night and by day, having a door-chain on each door during the night to prevent intrusion.
53. Let her, if she can, live in the country. In a town, coal fires—manufactories, many of them unhealthy—confined space—the exhalations from the lungs and from the skin of the inhabitants, numbers of them diseased,—all tend to load the air with impurities. Moreover, if in the town she desire a walk, it is often itself a walk, and a long one too, before she can get into the country—before she can obtain glimpses of green fields and breathe the fresh air; hence walks in the town do but comparatively little good. In the country her lungs are not cheated: they get what they want—a good article, pure air—and the eye and heart are both gladdened with the beauties of nature. I consider the following remark of Dr. Grosvenor, in his excellent Essay on Health, very pertinent. He observes: “Hence it is that one seldom sees in cities, courts, and rich houses, where people eat and drink, and indulge in the pleasure of appetite, that perfect health and athletic soundness and vigor which is commonly seen in the country, in the poor houses and cottages, where nature is their cook and necessity is their caterer, where they have no other doctor but the sun and fresh air, and no other physic but exercise and temperance.”
54. Cold air is frequently looked upon as an enemy, instead of being contemplated as, what it really is to a healthy person, a friend. The effect of cold upon the stomach is well exemplified in a walk in frosty weather, producing an appetite. “Cold air,” says Dr. Cullen, “applied with exercise, is a most powerful tonic with respect to the stomach; and this explains why, for that purpose, no exercise within doors, or in close carriages, is so useful as that in the open air.”
55. Hot and close rooms, soft cushions, and luxurious couches must be eschewed. I have somewhere read, that if a fine, healthy whelp of the bull-dog species were fed upon chicken, rice, and delicacies, and made to lie upon soft cushions, and if, for some months, he were shut up in a close room, when he grew up he would become unhealthy, weak, and spiritless. So it is with a young married woman; the more she indulges, the more unhealthy, weak, and inanimate she becomes—unfit to perform the duties of a wife and the offices of a mother, if, indeed, she be a mother at all!
56. Rich and luxurious ladies are less likely to be blessed with a family than poor and hard-worked women. Here is, to a vengeance, compensation! Compensation usually deals very justly both to man and womankind. For instance, riches and childlessness, poverty and children, laziness and disease, hard work and health, a hard-earned crust and contentment, a gilded chamber and discontent—
“These are ofttimes wedded as a man and wife,
And linked together, hand in hand, through life.”