Read Ebook: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 11 No. 68 June 1863 A Magazine of Literature Art and Politics by Various

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That point of temperature at which the moisture of the air first becomes visible is known as the dew-point. According to one authority, the mean dew-point of England, from the first of November to the last of March, is about 35?; that of our Northern States about 16?. Now suppose a house in England is kept at a temperature of 70?, the drying power would there be represented by 35. A house with the same temperature in Albany, for example, would possess a drying power of 54. This great contrast in the atmosphere of the two countries is strikingly illustrated by the difference between the plump body and smooth skin of the Englishman, and the lean, juiceless body, and dry, cracked skin of the Yankee. It is also shown by the well-known difference in the influence of house-heat upon furniture. Our chairs and sofas and wood-work warp and shrink, while nothing of the sort occurs in England.

As we cannot increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere of our continent, we must limit our practical efforts to the air of our houses. If we use a stove, its entire-upper surface may be made a reservoir for water; ornamental work, of but little cost, may be used to conceal it. The furnace may be made to send up, with its heat, many gallons of water daily, in the form of vapor. In justice to stoves and furnaces, I must say here, that, in the opportunity to do this, they possess one advantage over open fire-places.

We must all have observed, that, while the air of a hot kitchen is comfortable, that of a parlor at the same heat, from an air-tight stove, is almost suffocating. The kitchen has a hot stove, but the steam of its boiling kettles moistens the air.

Your country aunt, who has lived over her cooking-stove for years without serious inconvenience, after spending an afternoon in your parlor, heated by a stove or furnace, returns home "glad to get out of that hot, stifling air." And yet the thermometer may have indicated that the kitchen was ten degrees warmer than the parlor. The dry heat of the parlor produced headache, irritability, and perhaps a sense of stricture in the chest. If we would avoid these, a dry chapped skin, an irritable nervous system, and a dry hacking cough, we must add the needed humidity by artificial means.

CLIMATE

The influence of climate in the production of tuberculosis was formerly much exaggerated. Removal to a warm latitude, so generally prescribed some years ago, is now rarely advised. Although the bland atmosphere and out-of-door life of the tropics may often check the progress of the malady, yet the constitution is generally so enervated that the return to home and friends involves often not only a return of the malady, but its more rapid progress. At present, a winter at Lake Superior, or other region where the cold is intense and uniform, is the popular prescription. I do not doubt the value of the expedient in many cases. But the consumptive who can afford a winter neither in the Mediterranean nor at the frigid North may comfort himself that the value of such trips has been greatly overrated. Advice to the phthisical to spend a season a thousand miles from home is, to a large majority of them, not unlike that of the whimsical London doctor to the rag-picker he found coughing in the streets:--"That's a bad cough, a bad cough, you have. I advise you to make a journey on the Continent; and, in order to secure all the advantages, you had better travel in your own carriage." Happily for those with short purses, health in this, as in most other cases, is more easily found at home.

I do not believe that the prejudice against our New-England climate, entertained by consumptives, is well-founded. The slight percentage of difference against us, as compared with the people of other parts of the country, in the number of deaths from consumption, is to be traced, I believe, not so much to our climate as to our manufactories. New England contains nearly all the great factories, labor in which is so prejudicial to health,--as well as a greater number of furnaces, air-tight stoves, and close houses.

I do not believe that the sudden changes of the New-England climate are disastrous to the consumptive who is well protected. While it is true that our climate provokes a greater number of colds than that of Florida, it is not less true that our atmosphere is more invigorating.

"The Climate of the United States," by Dr. Samuel Forry, of the United States Army, one of the best works of the kind ever published, gives a great number of facts, interesting in this connection. His statistics are gathered exclusively from the army. The men of the army are, in great part, of the same age, from the same rank in life, of the same habits, and have the same clothing, food, and labor, and when sick the same treatment. The influence of climate upon human health may, therefore, be ascertained with more accuracy from careful observations among this class of men than from any other source. In comparing the populations of New York and New Orleans, for instance, it is almost impossible to make accurate allowance for the manifold differences in habits, diet, occupation, etc.

Dr. Forry shows conclusively, that, while colds and influenzas are more common in the northern branches of the regular army, as 552 to 271, consumption is more common in the southern, in the proportion of 10-1/2 to 7-2/3. In the southern divisions there are 708 cases of fever of various sorts to 192 in the northern. "We may safely infer," he says, "that whatever tends to impair the constitution, as fevers, tends to develop consumption in every class which is predisposed, and in all climates and countries." Dr. Forry's tables present some curious facts. One which will most impress the general reader is, that rheumatism is more common at Key West than on the coast of New England. But it will not surprise the reflecting, that a change of 5? at Key West is felt as much as one of 20? at Boston. The slight changes, however, do not equally purify the atmosphere and invigorate the body.

DRESS

No subject is so intimately connected with the health of the respiratory apparatus as dress. And, as bearing upon pulmonary consumption, there are certain errors in the dress of children which must be noticed. I believe I echo the voice of my profession, when I declare that the seeds of consumption are planted in thousands by these mistakes in dress during infancy and childhood. To correct these, permit me a few practical suggestions.

The skirt-bands must be left very loose. If you would give the baby's lungs and heart the best chance for development, the dress about the chest and waist should be so loose, that, if the child be held up by the shoulders, its entire dress, except as sustained by the shoulders, will fall to the floor. With such a dress the blood is so much sooner oxygenated, that, other things being equal, the characteristic dark red color of the skin will disappear much sooner than with a close dress.

The bones surrounding the small, feeble lungs, now for the first time beginning to move, are so soft and pliable, that, under the slightest pressure, they will yield, and the capacity of the lungs be reduced. Yet I have seen the nurse use the entire strength of her fingers in the first application of the skirt-bands. No thoughtful person, acquainted with the anatomy of the thorax in a new-born babe, can escape the conclusion that its vitality is seriously compromised by this pressure upon the principal organs of that vitality. In many instances I have seen the character of the little one's respiration and pulse decidedly affected by enlarging the skirt-bands.

Mothers, if you think all this pressure necessary to give your babes a form, as I have heard some of you say, you forget that the Creator of your child has all wisdom and skill, and that any changes in the baby's form and proportions must prove only mischievous. And perhaps you may not feel your pride hurt by the suggestion, that His taste is quite equal to yours. That a corset or other machine is needed to give a human being a form, as is so often suggested, is an imputation on the Creator which no thoughtful and conscientious person can indulge.

I speak of the dress for the damp and cold seasons. It should be added, that during the cool summer evenings too much care cannot be exercised in protecting the baby's arms and shoulders. If the mother desires to exhibit her darling's beautiful skin, let her cut out a bit of the dress near its heart, and when the neighbors come in, let her show the skin thus exposed to the company. This is so near the central furnace of the body that it has no chance to get cold; but in the case of the arms and legs, we have parts far removed from the furnace, and such parts require special protection.

Take the glass tube of the thermometer out of the frame, and put the bulb in your baby's mouth. The mercury-rises to 98?. Now, on a cool evening, place the same bulb in its little hand; the mercury will sink to 60? or less. Need I say that all the blood which has to make its way through the diminutive and tortuous vessels of those cold arms must become nearly as cold as the arms and hands themselves? And need I add, that, as the cold currents of blood come from both arms back into the vital organs, they play the mischief there?

If you would preserve your child from croup, pneumonia, and a score of other grave affections, you should keep its arms warm. Thick woollen sleeves, fitting the little dimpled arms down to the hands, at least, constitute the true covering.

A distinguished physician of Paris declared just before his death,--"I believe that during the twenty-six years that I have practised my profession in this city, twenty thousand children have been borne to the cemeteries, a sacrifice to the absurd custom of naked arms."

When in Harvard College, many years ago, I heard the eminent Dr. Warren say,--"Boston sacrifices hundreds of babes every year by not clothing their arms."

What has been said of the dress of children is none the less applicable to the dress of adults. One of the gravest mistakes in the dress of women is the very thin covering of their arms and legs. A young lady once asked me what she could do for her very thin arms. She said she was ashamed of them. I felt of them through the thin lace covering, and found them freezing cold. I asked her what she supposed would make muscles grow? Exercise, she replied. Certainly,--but exercise makes them grow only by giving them more blood. Six months of vigorous exercise will do less to give those cold, naked arms circulation than would a single month, were they warmly clad.

The value of exercise depends upon the temperature of the muscles. A cold gymnasium is unprofitable. Its temperature should be between sixty and seventy, or the limbs should be warmly clothed. I know our servant-girls and blacksmiths, by constant and vigorous exercise, acquire large, fine arms, in spite of their nakedness; and if our young ladies will labor as hard from morning till night as do these useful classes, they may have as fine arms; but even then it is doubtful if they would get rid of their congestions in the head, lungs, and stomach, without more dress upon the arms and legs.

Perfect health depends upon perfect circulation. Every living thing that has the latter has the former. Put your hand under your dress upon your body. Now place it upon your arm. If you find the temperature of the body over 90? and that of your arm under 60?, you have lost the equilibrium of circulation. The head has too much blood, producing headache; or the chest too much, producing cough, rapid breathing, pain in the side, or palpitation of the heart; or the stomach too much, producing indigestion. Any or all these difficulties are temporarily relieved by immersion of the hands or feet in hot water, and permanently relieved by such dress and exercise of the extremities as will make the derivation permanent.

The most earnest efforts looking towards dress-reform have had reference to the length of the skirt. I think it is one of woman's first duties to make herself beautiful. The long skirt, the trail even, is in fine taste. Among the dress features of the stage none is so beautiful. The artist is ever delighted to introduce it in his pictures of woman. For the drawing-room, it is superb. When we meet on dress occasions, I cannot see why we may not introduce this exquisite feature. If it is said that expense and inconvenience are involved, I reply, so they are in paintings and statuary.

For church and afternoon-sittings, skirts that nearly touch the floor seem to me in good taste; but for the street, when snowy or muddy, for the active duties of house-keeping, for the gymnasium, and for mountain-trips, it need not be argued, with those whose brains are not befogged by fashion, that the skirts should fall to about the knee.

Dr. Clarke says,--"Since the free expansion of the chest, or, in other words, the unimpeded action of the respiratory organs, is essential to health, the employment of tight stays and those forms of dress which interfere with these natural actions must be injurious, and cannot therefore be too strongly censured."

The celebrated Dr. James Johnson declares,--"The growth of the whole body and the freedom of all its functions so much depend upon perfect digestion, that every impediment to that digestion, such as compression of the middle of the body, must inevitably derange the whole constitution. Although the evils of tight lacing are as patent as the sun at noonday, I have never known its commission to be acknowledged by any fair dame. It is considered essential to a fine figure, yet I never could discover any marks of stays in the statues of the Medicean Venus, or the Apollo. And I venture to aver that the Cyprian goddess was not in the habit of drawing her zone as tight as the modern fair ones, else the sculptor would have recorded the cincture in marble. The comfort and motions of the foot are not more abridged and cramped by the Chinese shoe than are respiration and digestion by the stay." Thus wrote the physician to the father of the present queen of England.

A former professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the university of Vermont says,--"Undue confinement of the chest must at all periods of life be prejudicial; hence the practice of tight lacing we almost always find classed among the causes of phthisis, as well as of numerous other ills." And he adds,--"It is surely an erroneous notion that women need the support of stays."

BEST MATERIAL FOR DRESS.

In all seasons of the year, and in all climates, the best material for dress, for old and young, for strong and weak, is woollen. It is the poorest conductor of heat, and therefore secures the most equable temperature. This is the principal object of dress. The superiority of woollen clothing for babes is even greater in July than in January. In the warmest days a single thickness of soft flannel will suffice. But if linen or cotton be worn, the garment is soon moistened by perspiration, and two or three additional thicknesses are needed to protect the child against the ill-effects of a draught.

In warm weather we find it necessary to wear woollen garments in the gymnasium, as a protection against a chill from draughts while perspiring. Our soldiers in the South find flannel their best friend, securing them against the extremes and exposures of their camp and field life. Blacksmiths, glass-blowers, furnace-men, and others exposed to the highest temperatures, find woollen indispensable.

Few practices will do so much to secure the comfort and protect the health of young children as dressing them in flannel night and day, the year round. It may be objected that flannel irritates a delicate skin. This is often so, as the skin is now treated. But there is no baby's skin so thin and delicate that daily bathing and faithful friction may not remove this extreme susceptibility. And as the skin is the organ upon which the outer world makes its impressions, nothing is more important than that all morbid susceptibility should be removed.

An additional advantage in the use of flannel is, that it serves by its mechanical effect to keep up a healthy surface circulation, which is one of the vital conditions of health. The skin and the lungs act and react upon each other more directly, if possible, than any other two organs of the body. Children born with a predisposition to consumption especially need a vigorous treatment of the skin.

Professor Dunglison says,--"The best clothing to protect us from external heat or cold is one that is a bad conductor of calorie, or one that does not permit heat to pass readily through it." This is the case with woollen. The Spaniard and the Oriental throw woollen mantles over them when they expose themselves to the sun.

Londe asserts that "the use of woollen next the skin is one of the most precious means possessed by therapeutics. Its use on children does much to prevent bowel-affections, and with it we can bear with impunity the vicissitudes of weather."

Brocchi ascribes the immunity of sheep which feed night and day in the Campagna di Roma "to the protection afforded them by their wool."

Patissier affirms that woollen clothing has been found effectual in preserving the health of laborers working in marshy grounds, canals, and drains.

Captain Murray, of the English service, after two years spent among the icebergs on the coast of Labrador, sailed, immediately upon his return to England, for the West Indies, where he remained some months, and while other officers lost many men, he returned to England without the loss of a man, which he ascribed in considerable part to the use of flannel. So important did he regard this hygienic measure that he had every man examined daily to ascertain that he had not thrown off his flannels.

A distinguished author writes that the aged, infirm, rheumatic, and those liable to pulmonary disease, are greatly benefited by the use of flannel.

Dr. Willich says,--"Wool recommends itself to us, because it is the covering of those animals most resembling man in structure."

Count Rumford says he is convinced of the utility of flannel in all seasons, that he was relieved by its use from a pain in the breast, to which he was much subject, and had never since known an hour's illness.

The celebrated Hufeland says it is a desirable dress for the nervous, those subject to colds, catarrhs, influenzas, and, in fact, for all invalids.

Another writer says that desperate diseases would be prevented, and many valuable lives saved, by its more universal use.

A distinguished American physician says that flannel next the skin is of service to the consumptive by the irritation it produces, as well as the defence it affords against the cold.

An English authority says,--"Experience has so fully evinced the utility of covering the skin with flannel, that no person habituated to its use, in our damp climate, can be persuaded to dispense with it at any season of the year."

EXERCISE

Motion is the great law of the universe. It is the first instinct of animal life. When it ceases, life ceases. The degree of life may be measured by the amount of normal motion. When the life-forces run low, the natural and most effectual method of invigorating those forces is found in motion.

A radical change in this respect is imperatively demanded by the growing intelligence of the people. The Germans,--God bless them!--having given more faithful study to the various problems of human development, have devised better modes. The Kindergarten, one of the many beautiful blossoms of the genius of that noble people, is being transplanted to this country. Wise parents, thank Heaven, and take heart. Miss Peabody's Kindergarten, in Boston, should be visited by the friends of education.

Nothing at this hour is so much needed in the development of the young as some system of physical training, which, under competent masters, may be introduced as a part of the daily drill into all our schools, public and private. The routine should be so arranged that study and physical exercise should alternate in periods not longer than half an hour throughout the day. For example: the school opens at 9 o'clock. The first half-hour is devoted to study and recitation. Let the second be given to vigorous training in the gymnasium under a drill-master, and to music. The third to study and recitation. The fourth to drill, in which those with weak stomachs form a class by themselves, with special exercises; those with weak chests another; those with weak spines still another: all classified and treated according to their several needs. The fifth half-hour to study and recitation. The sixth to declamation, singing, or culture of the vocal organs, in general and special ways. The seventh and eighth half-hours to study, conversation, etc. And again in the afternoon an alternation of intellectual and physical exercises, the latter so ordered as to bring into play every muscle, and thus secure the symmetrical development of the body. Who can doubt that under this system greater progress would be made in intellectual culture than at present? The mind would find more effective tools for its work. But, with an incredulous shake of the head, the people say, "Yes, this is all very fine, but quite impracticable," If by this they mean that it is not practicable until the public conscience is better enlightened, I grant the force of the objection. But if they mean to say, that, with a due appreciation of physical culture, such a school is an impracticability, I am confident they are mistaken. The order I suggest could be introduced in a week in any existing school, did the parents and teachers so will. I am happy to be able to say that such a school as I have described, possessing all the best facilities for classical and scientific instruction, and under the management of eminent educators, will be opened in an American city within the present year. The school has been determined upon from the conviction that only in beginning with the rising generation can the results of physical culture, or the system combining both physical and intellectual culture, in their natural relations, be thorough and satisfactory, and that the results of this experiment would do more than all that can be said or written to arouse public attention.

Sweetser says,--"Were I required to name the remedy which promises most aid in the onset of consumption, I should say, daily gentle and protracted exercise in a mild and equable atmosphere.... Exercise, moreover, determines the blood to the surface of the body, rendering the cutaneous functions more active and healthful, and may in this way also contribute to the advantage of the lungs."

Dr. Parrish says that "vigorous and free exposure to the air is by far the most efficient remedy in pulmonary consumption."

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