The Habit of Disputing. The venerable Father Curley, who a few years ago died at the age of more than ninety, and who was one of the foremost, if not the leading, astronomer of the world, reads us a lesson on the necessity of keeping the heart in peace, and of the folly of being disturbed by passing events. He said once that when he was young he had fallen into the habit of disputing and always liked to carry his point; but, noticing that it disturbed his peace and led him into faults he had made a firm determination never to forget himself and never to dispute on any subject. He had adhered so strongly to this resolve that for thirty years he had never been a party to any dispute. There is a world of wisdom in this little bit of advice, for who can say that a dispute has ever been productive of any special good, and who can deny that it has often bred ill-temper, fretfulness, peevishness, anger and ill-will, all of which we can set down as strong enemies to good digestion and the health that is dependent upon it. The Duke of Westminster's Hares. We learn that the Duke of Westminster has decided to abandon his hare hunt this year, because of the disease among the hares threatening to make them scarce unless they are given a rest. We do not know whether the Duke of Westminster has any children or not, but if he has, we wonder whether he has ever thought of taking them away from school lest the unhygienic surroundings of such places might make them scarce. We remember reading once of a farmer who, when asked how many children he had, was obliged to stop and count them on his fingers, and even then forgot to enumerate the baby; but when this same man was asked how many sheep he had, he was able to answer "83 without a moment's thought, and a subsequent count proved that he had not forgotten a single one; looking, to our way of thinking, as though the sheep were much more prominent in this farmer's mind than were his children, and we venture to say that when it came time for an increase in the sheep-fold this farmer was much more critical in his selection of a ram than he would ever think of being in the choice of a husband for his daughter. Which all goes to show that from the highest to the lowest, from England's great and noble duke down to the lowliest farmer, brute creation seems to hold a higher place in the estimation of humanity than do the offspring of their own bodies. Bowing in Austria. Thus far, It would truly seem that there is really a silver lining to every cloud. there would seem to have been but one aspect to the late epidemic of the " grippe,' and that an aspect of grief, so to speak. We learn from Austria, however, that, owing to the prevalence of this epidemic, the ridiculous habit of removing the hat in salutation on the street has been abandoned. Going down the street on a cold winter day we have frequently thought, as we would see a man remove his hat and expose to the cold blast a bald head in a state of perspiration, that therein was probably to be found the cause of very much of the neuralgia that afflicts humanity. Owing to the influence of the "grippe," as we have stated, this practice has been abandoned throughout the empire of Austria, being replaced by the salutation "a la militaire." Clerical Wisdom. In church the other day, when we saw the clergyman, coming in to prepare for service, remove from his shoulders, not a tight-fitting overcoat, but a large, loose, roomy, voluminous cloak, we felt that in this cloak we saw another evidence of the wisdom of the clergymen. How frequently will a man run out of his house or his office and go around the corner for a moment, neglecting to put on an overcoat, as it is too much trouble and he does not want to be bothered with it, whereas, if instead of an overcoat, he was in the habit of wearing a large cloak, that could be thrown over the shoulder while he was going down stairs and drawn closely around the body, covering not only the body itself, but enclosing the hands, thereby doing away with the necessity or the trouble of putting on gloves, he would be much less likely to venture out unprotected. From an æsthetic point of view, the cloak should be called an improvement on the overcoat, for what is more graceful than the flowing folds of such an ample garment. Certainly our distinguished brethren of ancient times, the artistic inhabitants of ancient Greece and the martial citizens of ancient Rome, seem to have thought that garments patterned somewhat the same as the cloaks to which we refer were much more graceful and much more ornamental to the human body than the great coats of our present day and generation. The Hygiene of our Changing Climate. It would really seem that in this section of the country we are undergoing an absolute change of climate. While it may be only temporary, yet the character of the past two winters has been such as to give some reason for believing that we are not going to have in this region any more such winters as we used to know. If such be the case we will, of course, while becoming accustomed to the change, be liable to suffer in our bodily health, but when this acclimatization, so to speak, has become accomplished, we see a far greater advantage in this likely change, because if we are always to have spring-like or summer weather, the growing tendency towards suburban life will be immensely fostered. As it is to-day, there are few people who do not prefer the country to the city during the summer days. It is only when the cold, snowy, icy, penetrating days of winter come upon us that they feel drawn towards the crowded city. If, therefore, we are to have perpetual summer, so also will we have a perpetual desire for country life, the only objection to which will be thereby removed. A Christian Sanitarian. There is a deal of truth in the answer made to a man by his wife, who, when looking over a house into which he had just moved, said "I wonder who lived here last;" when she replied, “I don't know; but the lady was a Christian." Being asked how she could tell, her characteristic reply was: "She left no rubbish in the cellar." Acting on the principle that we should do unto others that which we would have others do unto us, one of the first rules of the Christian should be, not only not to leave any rubbish in a house that she is about to vacate, but also never to tolerate any rubbish or dirt of any kind in the house she is occupying. Celery and Typhoid Fever. Where do you think, said an eminent chemist to us recently, a great deal of typhoid fever comes from? The Schuylkill River, we promptly and dutifully replied, having learned our lesson well. Yes, he said, with a smile, but do you know that a great deal of it comes from our vegetables from down the "Neck?" It is a fact that our odorless excavating companies convey the contents of cesspools that they empty to these vegetable farms, where it is used as manure, and if it should so happen that the germs of typhoid fever have existed in one or more of the cesspools, the contents of which are so used, then we can readily understand how vegetables so nourished might themselves contain and convey to the consumer the germs of disease. This chen ist tells us (and he is no less an authority than Dr. Charles M. Cresson) that he has found, more than once, the germs of typhoid fever in the juice that he has squeezed out of celery. Of course, this is no reason for us to abandon the use of celery, neither is it an argument for us to deprive ourselves of the immense value, as a fertilizer, of the contents of cesspools, but it is a strong reason why every one should be instructed that it is absolutely essential that wherever a case of typhoid fever exists in a household, the evacuations should be treated with a solution of corrosive sublimate before being deposited in a cesspool. Tenement-House Mortality in New York. Dr. R. S. Tracy, the Registrar of Records of the Health Department, has submitted to the Board of Health a report on the tenement-house mortality of 1888, supplementary to a report made by him on the same subject in June, 1889, The doctor says that since the beginning of 1880 all tenement-houses have been constructed under the supervision of the Health Department, and the construction of rear tenements has not been permitted. The records show these things: 1. The death-rate was lower during 1888 in houses standing singly on a lot than where there were both front and rear houses. 2. The death-rate in houses built since 1888 was lower than in houses built before that time. 3. The death-rate was remarkably lower in houses built since 1886, both for adults and children. 4. The highest death-rate in the district south of Fourteenth Street and west of Broadway was below Reade Street. 5. The highest child death-rate was in the Ninth Ward, and the next highest in the Fifteenth.` 6. The highest death-rate of persons over five years of age was in the First and Third Wards, and the next highest in the Eighth. Ventilation in Iceland. The extreme cold of the winter in Iceland reduces the system of domestic ventilation in that country to very primitive principles. A traveler there was so choked one night by the close atmosphere of the air-tight little chamber in which he slept, with all the male members of the family, as to be compelled to wake his host, who sprang out of bed at the call, pulled a cork from a knot-hole in the wall for a few minutes, and then, replacing the cork with a shiver, returned to bed. College and Clinical Record. The Barrenness of the Rich. The New York World has been compiling a census of productiveness among the wealthy and the poorer classes of New York City, with the result that, during the past year, the poorer classes of the metropolis have been eighteen times as prolific as the more wealthy and more fashionable. The World, and many of its readers, deplore this state of affairs, but, to our way of thinking, it is really a wise dispensation. Of course, it is according to nature for married people to have children, and anything which obstructs the course of nature is to be deplored. But, viewing this question from a materialistic view, we are forced to the assertion that the offspring of rich parents are very rarely of any use to themselves or the world at large, so that we must not regard the limitation of the production of a useless commodity as an unmixed evil. It is the poorer classes that have given to the world all, or nearly all, of its truly great and useful men and women, and so long as this class continues to produce we need have no fear for the welfare of society. While, therefore, we must feel an instinctive reverence for the mother of a large family, as must have felt the husband who placed on his wife's tombstone in a church-yard in Delaware County the following inscription: Some have children and some have none; yet we must not consider it an unmixed evil that the rich and fashionable―very many of whom are unfit for the responsibilities of maternity--should be limited in their productiveness. The Strangers' Cold. A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette gives the following account of a curious phenomenon which has been noticed and commented upon by several observers before: During a seven years' residence in Norfolk Island-the well-known settlement of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers-he writes, he had opportunities of verifying the popular local tradition that the arrival of a vessel was almost invariably accompanied by an epidemic of influenza among the inhabitants of the island. In spite of the apparent remoteness of cause and effect, the connection had so strongly impressed itself on the mind of the Norfolk Islanders that they were in the habit of distinguishing the successive outbreaks by the name of the vessel during whose visit it had occurred. But the phenomenon is not confined to Norfolk Island. Whatever may be its explanation, there are evidences of its appearance in widely sundered localities. In Chambers's Journal for July, 1888, an article headed "The Strangers' Cold," gives various instances of influenza appearing among remote populations simultaneously with the arrival of strange vessels on their coasts. The island of St. Kilda is quoted as having a fixed tradition to this effect, while in Wharekauri, an island about four hundred and thirty miles east of New Zealand, the circumstance is so well recognized that the mere appearance of the influenza is sufficient signal to the inhabitants of the interior that a strange vessel is in port. The Salutary Effect of Small-Pox. Commenting on the appearance of small-pox in Connecticut, Dr. C. A. Lindsley, the Secretary of the State Board of Health, says: "Possibly an occasional outbreak of this dreaded malady is not an event altogether bad in its influences. There are several ways in which by the sacrifice of a few citizens, such public action has resulted, as has doubtless preserved many other lives. Thus, the indifference to the importance of vaccination in the public mind grows so rapidly when for a short period the public are exempt from small-pox, that the only thing which will induce a renewal of the practice is an occasional human victim of the disease. 66 It may therefore be well that the intervals between these sacrifices for the public good should not be too long, lest the neglect of vaccination should make so large a part of the people unprotected that when the disease did come it would find victims in every household. "Again, there is nothing known in the experience of this State that will animate a local board of health like a case of small-pox within its jurisdiction. Boards which have been in a state of profound hibernation through all seasons for many years, have been aroused into the most exalted activity, as if by an electric shock, when a small-pox case has been reported to them. And in some cases this recovery from general paralysis has been more or less permanent, with corresponding benefit to the communities they served. So that in the language of the bard of Avon we may say: "Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, And this our life Finds Sermons in stones, and good in everything. A Ventilating Dado. At a recent meeting of the Glasgow Philosophical Society the subject of house ventilation was brought up by Mr. D. J. Hoey, who said that he was a disciple of Sir Humphrey Davy, and that the method he had elaborated was founded on Davy's work. A dado of three to four feet in height was placed round the walls of the apartment, with a narrow space between the dado and the wall to form a reservoir for fresh air let in from without by inlets in the wall. On the top of the dado, wire gauze or perforated metal was placed, through which the air percolated into the room. The area of the exit from the top of the dado being much greater than that of the inlet, and the total space inclosed by the dado being much greater still, the fresh air passing through this extended space lost its initial velocity, and percolated gently into the room. The total area of the inlet was proportioned to that of the hot-air shaft for carrying out the impure air. The needful column of hot air, for carrying off the impure exhausted air, could best be supplied by a chimney of suitable capacity, with a close-throated fire-grate, having an opening in the room at a high level into the flue. When a suitable chimney was not available, the same results were produced by a tube of sufficient area and height erected above a sunlight in the roof of the hall. |