iSpe' .tfO- HALL'S JOIMAL OF HEALTH. FOE 1864. "HEALTH IS A DUTY."— Moti "men consume too much food and too little pure air; they take too much medicine and too litlle exercise."-— ed. "I labor for the good time coming, when sickness and disease, except con- genital, or from accident, will be regarded as the result of ignorance or .animalism,, and will degrade the individual in the estimation of the good, as much as drunken- ness now does." — Ibid. EDITED BY W. W. HALL, M. D., VOL. XL NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR, AT NO. 12 UNION SQUARE. Will contain all the " Health Tracts" published within the last five years, with others amounting in all to nearly three hundred. January will begin with number one ; twenty or more of the tracts will be published each month, with several pages of other reading pertaining to health and disease, notices, &c, &c, so that the volume for 1865 will contain more reading matter than any of its predeces- sors, and will be by far the most practically useful of any yet pub- lished. The regular spbscription price is one dollar and a half a year. Any person, up to December 1st, who will send five dollars at one time, will be entitled to four subscriptions ; ten dol- lars will entitle to nine subscriptions. For twenty dollars sent at one time, twenty numbers will be sent to one address for one year. " Bronchitis and Kindred Diseases :" " Consumption :" " Health and Disease :" " Sleep," or either of the bound vols, .of Hall's Journal of Health, will be sold, or sent post paid for $1,50. Any single number of any previous vol. will be sold or sent post paid for 12 cts. Any person desiring, an answer to any letter in reference to their health, must send five dollars, and a post paid envelope with their name, and post office address superscribed. Office hours from 10 to 2 daily with great certainty, and often #t other times, at No 12 Union Square, east side, opposite the monument, New York city. ABRIDGED. The entire edition, in all its forms, of " Soldier Health," hav- ing been bought up by the Christian Commission, it will be repub- lished in the November number, with a view to supplying the new army going to the war through our subscribers, whose friends oi kindred are leaving for the front; To subscribers who- renew their subscriptions, this Soldier's number of the Journal, will be furnished at seven cents each ; if ordered at the time of subscribing for 1865; or ten dollars a hundred at other times : and to all others, twelve cents each, post paid ; or twenty cents for two copies post paid. Subscriptions to Hall's Journal of Health begin with January and end with Dt^mber of each year, hence the Journal will cease to be sent after December to present subscribers who do not expressly order it to be continued. Those who do not want it any longer need not write at all. W. W. HALL, October 1st, 1864: No. 12 Union Square, New- York City: INDEX TO HALL'S JOTJBIAL OE HEALTH VOL. XI, 1864. PAGE Apoplexy, 67 Admonishing, 76 Agricultural colleges, 90 Asthma, 139 Biliousness, 231, 20 Bread, 37, 45 Bronchitis, 125 Business success, 146 " Betiring from, 156 Consumption, 25 " Climate for, 31 " its beginnings, 192 Corn Bread, 37 Children corrected, 39 - " Ingratitude of, 78 " of the Rich, 171 • " Dirty,....:.., 202 Convenient knowledge, 40 Charms, 42 Cell development, 137 Croup 139 Christianity Joyous 160 Checking Perspiration, 163 Colds how taken, 163 Cooking Meats, '. 164 " Economical, 165 Cough Hacking, 192 Cattle Feeding, ; 198 Central Park, 207 Cholera, 229 Deranged, 38 Death, 58 Drowning, 82 Dress, 77, 118 Drinks, Invalid 140 PAGE Dodge's Tincture, 226 Diarrhoea, 228 Dysentery, 230 Entering a Boom, 79 Eating, 19, 43, 87, 179, 180 Economy a Duty, 103 Flies Destroyed, 18 Frenzy, 56 Fidelity, 60 Flowers in Winter, 80 Families Saved, .' .111 Food and Health, 114 " Value of, 181 " Digestibility, : 185 " Nutritiousness, 186 " Elements, 200 Feet, Fetid, 138 Fortunes Made, 197 Fuel Saved, 165 " Selection of, 201 Glue Liquid, 20 Growing Old, 79 Great Men's Sufferings, 233 Health and Music, 1 Head Ache, 19 How to rise, 63 Household Knowledge, 89 Happiest Persons, 109 Hunger, 184 Hacking Cough, 192 Horse Rations, 199 Health and Gold, 237 Husband, the Kind, 240 Home, a Pleasant, 248 IV INDEX. PAGE In the Mind, 41 Inheritances, 115 Imprisonment, 134 Ice, its uses, 165 Investments, Permanent, 239 Kindness Rewarded, 36 Liquid Glue, 20 Life Uncertain^ 81 Liquid Measures, ' 140 Living Beyond Means, 175 Lice in Cattle and Hair, 226 Loose Bowels, 228 Music and Health, 1 Mind and Body, , 44 " In the, 41 " Best of, 83 Marriage, 249, 71 Mother, 61, 73 Melodies, 168 Mitchell the Astronomer, 241 Milton's Habits, 246 Never, 69 Nepevthe, 113 Over Eatiner, 19 Open Eire Places, 236, 141 Old Man's Story, . . . 50 Paste, .. 20 Parental Corrections, . ." 47 Philosophy, ' * 75 Prejudice, 76 Piano Forte, 143 Potatoes, 181 Perseverance, Indomitable, 241 Recuperation, 32 Resurrection Flower, 80 Restless Nights, 116 Sick Head Ache, 19 Skating, 24 School Girls, 35 PAGE Stomach, 88 Sunshine, 4 98 Safety of Families, Ill Sleeplessness .195, 116 Starvation, 133 Summer Recreations, 149 '' Excursions, 162 Strange People, 153 Salt^ Rheum, 203 Soldier Health, . ... 211 Sabbath Observance, 225 Soldiers, All, . . . .' 227 School of Misses Bucknall, 226 Teachers, Harsh, 49 Tables, Valuable, 72 Time, its Value, 81 Tonsil Cutting, 137 Travelling Hints, 166 Tomatoes, .192 Thirsting to Death, 194 White Wash, 19 Weather and Wealth, 70 Wedding, First, 71 War, Philosophy of 93 Wakefulness, 116, 195 Worth Knowing 201 Warmth and Strength, 202 Washington 247 POETRY. Poets and Music,\ 1 Anvil Strike, 14 Birds in May, 9 Boy that Died,- 117 Darkness and Light, It Going Alone, 16 Heaven, 11 Milton's Blindness, 15 Neighbor, •. 14 Over the River, 10 Skeleton, 12 School Boy Days, 13 The Rest, 117 V HALL'S JOUMAL OF HEALTH. Our Legitimate Scope is almost boundless : for whatever begets pleasurable and harmless feelings, promotes Health ; and whatever induces disagreeable sensations, engenders Disease. WE AIM TO SHOW HOW DISEASE MAT BE AVOIDED, AND THAT IT IS BEST, WHEN SICKNESS COMES, TO TAKE NO MEDICINE WITHOUT CONSULTING A PHYSICIAN. Vol. XI.] JANUARY, 1864. [No. 1. POETRY, MUSIC, AND HEALTH. ■ Many persons, when hungry, are so " ugly " and irritable, that they remind us of a parcel of starving pigs called up to the slop-trough of a farmer's kitchen ; they will grunt and push and squeal and bite one another with surprising vigor, until they get to eating fairly, when there is a sudden and all-per- vading silence, with scarcely any evidence of life, except the wagging of their tails, in token of profound satisfaction with themselves and all the world ; when perfectly rilled, they retire in dignified silence, and take their siesta on the sunny side of some fence or wall, in the most benignant humor imaginable. Children who are hungry, often come to the table in the same mood ; and discreditable as the announcement may seem, many parents, not unpossessed of some excellent traits of character, exhibit, on their entrance into the dining-room, such a fretful and complaining nature, that any inquiry, however kind, courteous, or conciliating, is almost sure to be met with an insulting silence, an impatient reply, or a downright boorish rejoinder, showing very conclusively, that in temper, in dispo- sition, and nature, they are not much above " the brutes which perish." Many a notable affectionate and loving-hearted wife, after exercising all her ingenuity in preparing an inviting meal for her husband, often waits patiently, and yet vainly, for some expression which recognizes her fidelity to household duties ; others more unfortunate still, have no reward but querulous- 2 hall's jouenal of health. ness and ungracious fault-finding. When the meal is over, these "monster" husbands return to their "right mind," and are every whit as gracious and good-natured as anyother pigs. There are some who are subject at periods to an ugliness of disposition, which excites a conjecture that possibly they may be "possessed of a devil/' sometimes two or three or more — transiently, at least ; others there are, beyond all question, who have always had that companionship ; and forty thousand woes be to the unfortunate individual who has such a yoke-fellow — the devil of habitual ill-nature, beginning with the early morning, ceasing only with the exhaustion which gives sleep. There was known to be a cure for the acute form of this malady, three thousand years ago, for it was said of a certain king, that he was subject to these "spells" of devilishness ; and that on one occasion, the evil spirit left him, and he " was* well," as soon as the skillful and handsome son of Jesse took down his harp and swept its strings with the fingers of an amateur. "Whether there was an accompaniment of " thoughts that breathe and words that burn," is not certainly known, but as David has written some of the sweetest, and some of the sublimest poetry which has fallen from the pen of mortals, it is not impossible that he sang when he played ; and the result certainly was, that whether it was music or recitation, or both, the evil spirit was put to flight, and the royal patient was pro- nounced "well," without the necessity of a strait-jacket, pills, castor-oil, or chloroform. It is the fashion of the times, however, to take it for granted, that this evil spirit, whose origin is from below, the spirit of fretfulness, of dissatisfaction, of incessant fault-finding, and chronic ill-nature, as exhibited in domestic life, can by no pos- sibility exist on the diviner side of the house ; but, as a matter of course, can only be found in the lords of creation ; hence, or for other reasons, every mother in the land is at more pains, and has more solicitude for her daughters' musical training, than for any thing else, as if it were to be expected, as a matter of course, that all husbands had to be exorcised. And it is a fact, that if any man had forty thousand Beelzebubs tearing round within him, making a very Pandemonium in the house- 3 hold, every individual one would scamper off with the rapidity attributed in olden time to a shot placed in particular circum- stances on a shovel, the very instant that Beauty's voice swelled the notes, and tapered fingers swept the octaves. "While, therefore, it is philosophical to have our daughters learn music, it might be well to remember that "spirits differ." Some men have no ear for music ; have no music in their souls, while all have more or less of human nature ; more or less of the leaven of ill-temper, of impatience and wrathfulness, which is not amenable to the symphony of sweet sounds, but which is softened down to the lovingness of a baby's cooing at the ex- hibition of a little common-sense; of tidiness of person; of worldly prudence; of domestic management and household handiness on the part of the wife. No man possessed of any force of character can bear with equanimity the daily observa- tion of the fact, that what he brings into the house for the com- fort and sustenance of his family is not taken care of, is de- stroyed by unprincipled servants, or used with a criminal lav- ishness which benefits nobody, and yet is an hourly injury to him, inasmuch as the fruit of his labor and his care is ruinously used. The demon of deep dissatisfaction will take possession of the man who has any respect for himself, his family, and his social position, when he begins to find out that his wife "has no taste for housekeeping ;" that this branch of domestic duty is left en- tirely to the servants, and, as a consequence, the carpets are moth-eaten the first summer ; the costly furniture in six months looks as if it had been in use a dozen years ; the rosewood is "nicked;" the sienite marble is stained with all the colors not belonging to it; the costliest velvets and tapestries are irreme- diably greased ; while the walls are scratched and match-marked, in every possible direction. . It can not be a just matter of surprise, that a man should become possessed of an evil spirit, when he finds that as often as he presents his wife with a charming " hat," with a splendid "silk," with a magnificent set of furs, he is doomed in less than a week to find the "love of a bonnet" lying about, first on a bed, next on a center-table, next hitched on to the hat- rack in the hall, as if it were a mere " hack," to be put on only when it was like to rain, or when going out to make " next door " a neighborly visit after nightfall ; or if the costly silk, after the first wearing, has been hastily dumped down on the floor, or hurriedly crammed into a drawer, to be taken out with a hundred thousand unsightly creases; or if the diamond breastpin is broken, or the bracelet-guard lost, or a diamond is missing from the finger-ring after the first wearing. Not a less powerful means of u bringing up " an evil spirit into a man, is the finding his house all topsy-turvy when he comes home after the business of the day ; the children crying, the servants " in a stew," while the wife is in a humor so ungracious, that the moment her husband enters the door, she begins with the volu- bility of a dozen ordinary women, to pour out one complaint after another, about every servant and every child ; about the butcher and the baker and the milkman, ending with an intima- tion of a very unmistakable character : " It's your fault." And if, after all this, the five- o'clock dinner is placed on the table at six, the potatoes hard, the roast beef black, the bread half dough, the milk sour, and the soup dishwatery, it can not be surprising, if evil spirits do " catch him " up and " whisk " him off to the village-tavern, the grogshop, the billiard- saloon, or the gaming-table, returning home later and later, until, after a while, he habitually enters his house in the small hours of the morning, beastly drunk, and with oaths and curses and savage blows, sometimes enforces those attentions to his more beastly wishes which the self-punished wife had not wit enough be- fore to see the wisdom of giving voluntarily. It is too late then for any human music to charm such a man, or to tame and " lay " the evil spirit within. These things being so, it might be well for city mothers es- pecially to have their daughters take fewer lessons in music, fewer in French, fewer in crochet- work, and more in " common- sense;" more in domestic duties, such as sewing, knitting, patching, darning, dusting rooms, making beds, taking care of their own clothing, and that of the smaller children ; helping the mother in all possible ways; thinking for her ; planning for her ; anticipating her wants and desires and directions ; doing POETBY, MUSIC, AND HEALTH. 5 all these things, not merely as a duty, but as a pleasure ; doing them promptly, cheerfully, and lovingly, at all times and under all circumstances ; feeling the while that the child should be the servant, and the mother the served. No one can doubt, tbat a daughter thus brought up, with frequent opportunities of trying her hand at making cake, baking a loaf, roasting a joint, boiling a potato, drawing a cup of tea, spreading a table, getting up a party, fitting her own dress, trimming her own bonnet, and being her own seamstress, would have a power over a man, all-controlling, in subduing his passions, in chasten- ing his extravagances, and moulding his nature into a form, the" very embodiment of all that is noble, manly, generous, and loving. The "music," then, which the wife should "practice," in order to have a healthful influence over the physical, moral, and mental nature of a man, restraining him from vice, and crime, and gluttony, and late hours, and drunkenness, and the poetry which she should recite to him every day, are the music and poetry of a tidy home, of cleanly and well-behaved child- ren, of quiet and respectful servants, of a table spread so in. vitingly that if only bread and milk and butter were there, they would taste like nectar and honey just from the hive; while the all-pervading and happy influence of a quiet, loving and lady-like wife, sanctifies the whole household, and makes it a community of love, of enjoyment, of domestic beatitude. There must be music and poetry too in the husband; he must strive daily to deport himself toward the woman who has borne him children, with a like respect and deference and consideration and gentleness, to that which he was accustomed to exhibit shortly before the marriage ceremony had made them one. We say " strive," for many a time it will require an effort, a moral power akin to the heroic, for there is much in the life of almost every man of business, so wearying, depressing, and often harrowing to the whole nature, that he would be more than mortal, if under their influences, when the physical nature is tired with labor, he could exhibit the beautiful ameni- ties of an elevated domesticity, without some summoning up to his aid, all the latent power within him, to recall tHe feelings 6 hall's journal of health. • and affections and deportment of the happy days of courtship. He may sometimes have to contend with woman's wayward- ness, only exhibited, it may be, when under the influence of sickness, or inward grief, or deep disappointment, or bitter mor- tification, or of a hard lot in life ; but surely it will be the more manly part, under such circumstances, to shut his eye and ear and sense to many things, covering them with that mantle of charity which he should always have at hand, for her sake, who left father and mother and all the dear associations of home and kindred, and threw herself so trustingly on his protection, his love, his honor, and his care. Let the daughter also "practice" for her who bore her, that sweetest of all music to an aged mother's heart, to wit, a prompt, a cheerful, an unhesitating obedience to all her known wishes ; let her feel abidingly, that nothing she can do for the mother who loved her and watched over her with so much tenderness and solicitude and anxious care through the running years of infancy and childhood and mature age, can ever half repay her ; let that mother's peace and comfort and repose and quiet happiness be the constant study and the steady aim of every dutiful daughter; for however much she may do, it would not be considered half enough when that mother has passed into the grave. Yes, however much she may have done, it will then be felt the strangest thing in the world that she had not done more ; she will constantly re- proach herself for want of consideration in a thousand little things, each one of which might have been a rill of pleasure to the aged heart as it was nearing its final resting-place. Let the dutiful and loving daughter "practice" that other " music-lesson " for her mother's sake, the willingness to learn; to practice it so diligently, that there need never be a repetition of a mother's counsel, or direction or advice. Said a mother to me once : " I never recollect the time when I found it necessary to repeat a wish to any child of mine; I have only to half tell it when it is done." Happy mother! dear loving children! How I wish there were more such ! I know there are too many daughters who are directly the reverse ; who seem to think that a mother's advice is out of date ; her counsel old fogyish, and all her pains to show her how to do things, are not only disre- POETRY, MUSIC, AND HEALTH. 7 garded, but are listened to or witnessed with the utmost impa- tience, as evidenced by the surly look, the unsightly frown, or some disrespectful exclamation. Poor child! every one of these will be a dagger to your heart ; the more painful as you grow older; striking deeper and deeper as years roll on, causing many an hour of sadness by day, and of remorses, oh! how grinding ! in the sleepless hours of midnight, so many of which are the lot of old age. The things of which we have been speaking are moral music and moral poetry ; these promote the health of the heart ; but there are pieces of real, tangible poetry, the repetition or the reading of which aloud, at times, when the mind is in the mel- low mood, or when sorrows weigh it down, or when grief press- es upon it like a crushing millstone, will many a time lighten the load which burdens poor humanity's heart, and at other times will lift it up, and elevate, and waken it to nobler pur- poses and to higher resolves, instead of letting life go out in blank despair, or in the dread fal night of suicide. Poetry and song have not in three thousand years lost any of their efficiency in medicating the maladies of the mind, which, by the way, are sometimes more terrible in their ill-effects, than are physical diseases. . . Song soothes the troubled soul ; it calms the perturbed spirit, and sweetly lessens the weight of those mournfully pleasing recollections of the far-distant past of childhood and home ; of the friends long since departed, but still, oh! how deeply, truly, sweetly loved ! Simple silent reflection has a power to " Calm the surges of the mind," especially at eventide, when the day's work is done ; and clear it of the gross incumbrances which corrupting business transac- tions have left behind them, that it may be emptj^, swept and garnished, fit for the Master's use ; yea, fit for the dwelling-place of God! If music and meditation have such a power separately, that power must be intensified, when living sentiments are expressed in searching words, and glorious thoughts are embodied in 8 hall's journal of health. words and music too. Then, sweet as the mother's lullaby will the heavenly influences come over the heart in repeating to it- self, as the day gradually dies into the night : " I love to steal awhile away From every cumbering care ; And spend the hours of setting day In humble, grateful prayer. " I love to think on mercies past, And future good implore ; And all my cares and sorrows cast On Him whom I adore." Ko one we should think could " hum " those lines in a minor key without improving both the mental and bodily condition: And perhaps the reader may find a "healing power" at times in the recitation of some of the following selections. There is physical and moral health in all of them, with not only no loss of virtue by their repetition, as is the case with all material drugs, but absolutely an intensifying effect, the oftener the mind runs over them, softening many a heart, lightening many a load, calming many a perturbed spirit, and soothing many a ruffled temper. How sweetly comforting and love-sustaining, what a moral " tonic," acting physically, waking up the whole man to greater activities and with greater courage to meet life's labors and duties and toils is there found in a single verse of the immortal Watts: "The God we worship now "Will guide us till we die ; Will be our God while here below, And ours above the sky." And what a waking up of our manhood comes over us in recit- ing the grand production of Bishop Doane, " Stand like an An- vil." And then how is the mind calmed in an instant down by the repetition of "My Schoolboy Days," or of the "Lines to a Skeleton," or of the beautiful words of the "Factory Girl," "Over the River," and that charming piece, "The Bird that Sang in May," all of which follow ! THE BIRD THAT SUNG IN MAY. A bird last spring came to my window-shutter, One lovely morning at the break of day ; And from his little throat did sweetly utter A most melodious lay. He had no language for his joyous passion, No solemn measure, no artistic rhyme ; Yet no devoted minstrel e'er did fashion Such perfect tune and time. It seemed of thousand joys a thousand stories, All gushing forth in one tumultuous tide ; A hallelujah for the morning-glories That bloomed on every side. And with each canticle's voluptuous ending, He sipped a dew-drop from the dripping pane ; Then heavenward his little bill extending, Broke forth in song again. I thought to emulate his wild emotion, And learn thanksgiving from his tuneful tongue ; But human heart ne'er uttered such devotion, Nor human lips such song. At length he flew, and left me in my sorrow, Lest I should hear those tender notes no more ; And though I early waked for him each morrow, He came not nigh my door. But once again, one silent summer even, I met him hopping in the new-mown hay ; But he was mute, and looked not up to heaven— ^ The bird that sung in May. Though now I hear from dawn to twilight hour The hoarse woodpecker and the noisy jay, In vain I seek through leafless grove and bower The bird that sung in May. And such, methinks, are childhood's dawning pleasures, They charm a moment and then fly away ; Through life we sigh and seek those missing treasures, The birds that sung in May. This little lesson, then, my friend, remember, To seize each bright-winged blessing in its day ; And never hope to catch in cold December, The bird that sung in May. 10 OVER THE RIVER. OVER THE RIVER. BY MISS N. A. W. PRIEST. Over the river they beckon to me, Loved ones who've crossed to the further side, The gleam of their snowy robes I see, But their voices are lost in the dashing tide. There's one with ringlets of sunny gold, And eyes the reflection of heaven's own blue, He crossed in the twilight gray and cold, And the pale mist hid him from mortal view ; We saw net the angels who met him there, The gates of the city we could not see, Over the river, over the river, My brother stands waiting to welcome me. Over the river the boatman pale Carried another, the household pet ; Her brown curls waved in the gentle gale, Darling Minnie 1 I see her yet. She crossed on her bosom her dimpled hands, And fearlessly entered the phantom bark, We felt it glide from the silver sands, And all our sunshine grew strangely dark ; We know she is safe on the further side, Where all the ransomed and angels be ; Over the river, the mystic river, My childhood's idol is waiting for me. For none return from those quiet shores, Who cross with the boatman cold and pale ; •* We hear the dip of the golden oars, And catch a gleam of the snowy sail ; And lo I they have passed from our yearning hearts, They cross the stream and are gone for aye. We may not sunder the vail apart That hides from our vision the gates of day. We only know that their barks no more May sail with us o'er life's stormy sea ; Yet somewhere I know on the unseen shore, They watch, and beckon, and wait for me. And I sit and'think, when the sunset's gold Is flushing river and hill and shore, I shall one day stand by the water cold And list for the sound of the boatman's oar : 11 I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail, I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand ; I shall pass from sight with the boatman pale, To the better shore of the spirit-land. I shall know the loved who have gone before, And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, When over the river, the peaceful river, The Angel of Death shall carry me. HEAVEN. BY MISS N. A. "W. PRIEST. Beyond these chilling winds and gloomy skie$ Beyond death's cloudy portal. There is a land where beauty never dies And love becomes immortal : A land whose light is never dimmed by shade, Whose fields are ever vernal ; Where nothing beautiful can ever fade, But blooms for aye, eternal. We may not know how sweet its balmy air, How bright and fair its flowers ; We may not hear the songs that echo there Through those enchanted bowers. The city's shining towers we may not see With our dim earthly vision : For Death, the silent warder, keeps the key That opes those gates elysian. But sometimes, when adown the western sky The fiery sunset lingers, Its golden gates swing inward noiselessly, Unlocked by unseen fingers. And while they stand a moment half-ajar, Gleams from the inner glory Stream brightly through the azure vault afar, And half reveal the story. 0 land unknown ! 0 land of love divine I Father, all- wise, eternal, Guide, guide these wandering way-worn feet of mine Into those pastures vernal. 12 THE SKELETON. THE SKELETON. Some few years ago, the London Morning Chronicle published a poem, entitled " Lines on a Skeleton," which excited much attention. Every effort, even to the offering a reward of fifty guineas, was vainly made to discover the author. All that ever transpired was, that the poem, in a fair, clerkly hand, was found near a skeleton of remarkable symmetry of form in the Museum of the Royal College^ of Surgeons, Lincoln's Inn, London, and that the Curator of the Museum had sent them to the Morning Chronicle. LINES ON A SKELETON. Behold this ruin ! 'Twas a skull, Once of ethereal spirit full, This narrow cell was Life's retreat, This space was Thought's mysterious seat. What beauteous visions filled this spot 1 What dreams of pleasure long forgot ! Nor Hope, nor Love, nor Joy, nor Fear, Has left one trace of record here. Beneath this moldering canopy Once shone the bright and busy eye : But stare not at the dismal void. If social Love that eye employed ; If with no lawless fire it gleamed, But through the dews of kindness beamed, That eye shall be forever bright When stars and suns are sunk in night. Within this hollow cavern hung The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue. If falsehood's honey it disdained, And where it could not praise, was chained \ If bold in Virtue's cause it spoke, Yet gentle Concord never broke — This silent tongue shall plead for thee When Time un vails Eternity. Say, did these fingers delve the mine ? Or with its envied rubies shine ? To hew the rock, or wear the gem, Can liCtle now avail to them. But if the page of Truth they sought, Or comfort to the mourner brought, These hands a richer meed shall claim Than all that waits on Wealth or Fame. Avails it, whether bare or shod, These feet the path of Duty trod ? If from the bowers of Ease they fled, To seek Affliction's humble shed. If grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned, And home to Virtue's cot returned These feet with ADgel's wings shall vie, And tread the palace of the sky. MY SCHOOL-BOY DAYS. My school-boy days, my school-boy days, How sweet the light they cast ; How, as on wings of joy, their rays, Come glimmering o'er the past 1 They come as came the joyous gleams Of sweet but half- forgotten dreams. My school-boy days, my school-boy days. They come but once in life ; Like angel-glances on the sea Of tempest and of strife. Like some lone minstrel's dying lay, They echo still, though passed away. My school-boy days, my school-boy days, There's magic in the sound ; It calls my young companions up And sets them smiling round : With school-boy hopes and school-boy fears, Its little joys and little tears. My school-boy days, my school-boy days, Life looked all sunshine then ; How longed pur young ambitious eyes Impatient to be men! But have we found in life's dull ways The joys we lost in school-boy days ? My school-boy days, my school-boy days, Adieu — in your bright bowers, Fond memory oft shall while itself Through life's long, leaden hours, And echo back, in lonely lays, The song of school-boy's happy days. •Anon. 14 WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR? STAND LIKE AN ANVIL. BY BISHOP DOANE. " Stand like an anvil 1" when the strokes Of stalwart strength fall thick and fast; Storms but more deeply root the oaks, Whose brawny arms embrace the blast. " Stand like an anvill" when the sparks Ply far and wide, a fiery shower ; Virtue and truth must still be marks Where malice proves its want of power, " Stand like an anvil !" when the bar Lies red and glowing on its breast ; Duty shall be life's leading star, And conscious innocence its rest. u Stand like an anvil 1" when the sound Of ponderous hammers pains the ear ; Thine but the still and stern rebound Of the great heart that can not fear. 41 Stand like an anvil !" noise and heat Are born of earth, and die with time ; The soul, like God, its source and seat Is solemn, still, serene, sublime. WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR ? Thy neighbor ? It is he whom .thou Hast power to aid and bless — Whose aching heart, or burning brow Thy soothing hand may press. Thy neighbor ? 'tis the fainting poor; Whose eye with want is dim, Whom hunger sends from door to door — Go thou, and succor him. Thy neighbor? 'tis that weary man Whose years are at their brim, Bent low with sickness, cares, and pain- Go thou and comfort him. Thy neighbor ? 'tis the heart bereft Of every earthly gem — Widow and orphan, helpless left — Go thou, and shelter them. 15 Thy neighbor? yonder toiling slave, Fettered in thought and limb, "Whose hopes are all beyond the grave- Go thou, and ransom him. Whene'er thou meet'st a human form Less favored than thine own, Remember 'tis thy neighbor-worm, Thy brother or thy son. Oh 1 pass not, pass not heedless by — Perhaps thou can?t redeem This breaking heart from misery — Go, share thy lot with him." MILTON'S BLINDNESS. The following is published in the recent Oxford edition of Milton's works, as from his pen ; it is certainly the production of Mrs. Howell, of Philadelphia' I am old and blind ! Men point at me as smitten by God's frown ; Afflicted and deserted of my kind ; Yet I am not cast down. I am weak, yet strong ; I murmur not that I no longer see ; Poor, old, and htlples?, I the more belong, Father supreme 1 to thee. 0 merciful One! "When men are farther t then thou art most near; When friends pass by me, and my weakness shun, Thy chariot I hear. Thy glorious face Is leaning toward me ; and its holy light Shines in upon my lonely dwelling-place, And there is no more night. On my bended knee I recognize thy purpose clearly shown : My vision thou hast dimmed, that I may 899 Thyself— thyself alone. I have naught to fear ; This darkness is the shadow of thy wing ; Beneath it I am almost sacred — here Can come no evil thing. GOING ALONE. Oh ! I seem to stand Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been, Wrapped in the radiance of thy sinless land, Which eye hath never seen. Yisions come and go : Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng ; From angel-lips I seem to hear the flow Of soft and holy song. Is it nothing now, When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes ? When airs fiom paradise refresh my brow The earth in darkness lies. In a purer clime My being fills with rapture — waves of thought Roll in upon my spirit — strains sublime Break over me unsought. Give me now my lyre I I feel the stirrings of a gift divine Within my bosom glows unearthly fire Lit by no skill of mine. "GOING ALONE." With curls in the sunny air tossing, With light in the merry blue eyes, With laughter so clearly outringing, A laugh of delight and surprise ; All friendly assistance disdaining, And trusting no strength but its own — The past fears and trials forgotten, The baby is " going alone." What woeful mishaps have preceded This day of rejoicing and pride ! How often the help that he needed Has carelessly gone from his side ! He hag fallen while reaching for sunbeams, Which, just as he grasped them, have flown, And the tears' of vexation have followed, But now he is " going alone." And all through his life ho will study This lesson again and again ; He will carelessly lean upon shadows, He will fall, and weep over the pain. 17 The hand whose fond cla?p was the surest "Will coldly withdraw from his own, The sunniest eyes will be clouded, And he will be walking alone. He will learn what a stern world we live in, And he may grow cold like the rest, Just keeping a warm sunny welcome For those who seem truest and best ; Yet, chastened and taught by past sorrow, And stronger and manlier grown, ^ Not trusting his all in their keeping, He learns to walk bravely alone. And yet not alone, for our Father The faltering footsteps will guide Through all the dark mazes of earth-life, And " over the river's " deep tide. Oh ! here is a Helper unfailing, A strength we can perfectly trust, When, all human aid unavailing, " The dust shall return unto dust." DARKNESS AND LIGHT. There is no heart but hath its inner anguish, There is no eye but hath with tears been wet ; There is no voice but hath been heard to languish O'er hours of darkness it can ne'er forget. There is no cheek, however bright its roses, Bat perished buds beneath its hues are hid; No eye that in its dewy light reposes, But broken star-beams tremble 'neath its lid. There is no lip, howe'er with laughter ringing, However bright and gay its words may be, But it hath trembled at some dark upspringing Of stem affliction and deep misery. We all are brothers in this land of dreaming, Yet hand meets hand, and eye to eye replies ; Nor dream we that beneath an eye all beaming The flower of life in broken beauty lies. 0 blessed light, that gilds our night of sorrow I 0 balm of Gilead, for our healing found ! We know that peace will come with thee to-morrow, And that afflictions spring not from the ground. 18 ITEMS, NOTICES, ETC. Graham Bread. — Take the unbolted flour of wheat, wet it with lukewarm water, add salt and yeast, knead in enough more of this flour to make it stiff, add a little molasses, and, when risen, bake in medium-sized loaves. Erysipelas is said to be cured by applying to the part affected, a paste made of raw cranberries beaten. Kettles are cleansed of onion and other odors, by dissolving a teaspoonful of pearlash or saleratus in water, and washing them. Hair, removed by fevers and other sickness, is made to grow by washing the scalp with a strong decoction of sage leaves once or twice a day. Stings and bites are often instantaneously cured by washing them in hartshorn or turpentine. Flies destroyed.' — A pint of sweet milk, a quarter of a pound of sugar, two ounces of ground pepper, simmer together for ten minutes, and place it about in shallow dishes. If this is true, there is no necessity for using poisonous articles about a house. Boiling Potatoes. — It is said that in Ireland they always nick off a piece of the skin, put them in a pot of cold water, which is gradually heated, but never allowed to boil ; cold wa- ter should be added as soon as the water begins to boil ; when done, pour all the water off, cover the vessel with a cloth, and in a few minutes they are cool enough for use. Buy the best articles for family use ; for, although they cost more, good articles spend best. Sugar from Havana is always dirty, that from Brazil is clean, as also from Porto Rico and Santa Cruz. Refined sugars, whether loaf, crushed, or granulated, are the cheapest in the end. Lard from a hog not over a year old, is the best, and should be hard and white. Butter made in September and October is the best for win- ter use. Rich cheese feels softer under the pressure of the finger. That which is very strong is neither very good nor healthy. To keep one that is cut, tie it up in a bag that will not admit , flies, and hang it in a dry cool place. If mold appears on it, wipe it off with a dry cloth. 19 Flouk and meal of all kinds should be kept in a cool dry place. The best rice is large, and has a clear fresh look. Old rice sometimes has little black insects inside the kernels. The small white sago, called the pearl sago, is the best. The large brown kind has an earthy taste. This article and tapioca, ground rice, etc., should be kept covered. To select nutmegs, pick them with a pin. If they are good, the oil will instantly spread around the puncture. Keep coffee by itself, as the odor affects other articles. Keep tea in a close chest or canister. Oranges and lemons keep best wrapped close in soft paper, and laid in a drawer of linen. The cracked cocoa is best ; but that wThich is put up in pound papers is often very good. Soft soap should be kept in a dry place in the cellar, and not be used until three months old. To thaw frozen potatoes, put them, in hot water. Frozen ap- ples in cold water, but use them at once. Over-eating. — As soon as you are sensible that you have eaten too much, take a walk, gradually increasing its rapidity until there is a free perspiration, and continue at this gait until every feeling of discomfort about the stomach or lungs has disappeared, then cool off very slowly in a closed room, and eat not an atom until the second meal thereafter, thus omitting one. Sick headache is almost always attended with cold feet, and the failure of a daily action of the bowels ; and there is no per- manent cure without the rectification of these. Whitewash. — White fences and outbuildings indicate the thrifty farmer and a tidy household. Put half a bushel of unslacked lime in a clean, tight barrel, pour over it boiling wa- ter until it is covered five inches, stir briskly until the lime is thoroughly slacked, then add more water until it is as thin as desired, next add two pounds of sulphate of zinc and one of * common salt ; then apply with a common whitewash brush, giving a good coat in April and October, or at least once a year. 20 If you get jour feet or body wet, keep moving with sufficient briskness to keep off a feeling of chilliness until you get to the house ; undress instantly by a warm fire, drinking, as soon as possible, a cup or two of hot tea of any sort, and remain by the fire until thoroughly rested. When from any cause the bowels fail to act at the usual time, do not eat an atom more until they do act, at least for thirty-six hours ; the first meal after a fast should be very light, of bread and butter, and a cup of weak tea or coffee. Biliousness is indicated by a bad taste in the mouth of mornings, a poor appetite, and a feeling of general discomfort, often accompanied with a headache and cold feet. The best cure is to work moderately, take but two meals a day, and these of bread and butter, with a cup of tea or coffee. Poison of almost any kind swallowed will be instantly thrown from the stomach by drinking half a glass of water, (warm is best,) in which has been stirred a tablespoon of ground mustard ; as soon as vomiting ceases, drink a cup of strong coffee, into which has been stirred the white of an egg ; this nul- lifies any remnant which the mustard might have left. Paste may be made with flour in the usual way, but rather thicker, with a proportion of brown sugar, and a small quan- tity of corrosive sublimate. A drop or two of the essential oil of lavender, peppermint, anise, or bergamot, is a complete se- curity against molding. . Paste made in this manner, if kept in a close covered pot, may be preserved in a state fit for use at any time. Liquid glue is made by dissolving a pound of common glue with heat in a pound of strong vinegar, and one quarter of a pound of alcohol ; this is whitened by adding sulphate of lead. • Moths are kept from carpets by sprinkling salt and pepper^ mixed in equal quantities, about and under the edges. Bed-bugs are kept away by washing the crevices with strong salt water, put on with a brush. Picture-frames and glasses are preserved from flies by painting them with a brush dipped in a mixture made by boil- ing three or four onions in a pint of water. + An ink-stand was turned over on a white table-cloth, a ser- vant threw over it a mixture of salt and pepper plentifully, and all traces of it disappeared. 21 Ants are kept out of drawers and other places by spirits of camphor. Butter kept fresh. — Take it as it comes from the churn, and wash the butter-milk thoroughly out of it, then dry the surface of the butter with a clean clotb, break into small pieces, and pack it solid into a crock. The air must be entirely ex- pelled. Set the crock in a kettle half-filled with water, then place the kettle over the fire until the water boils. While boil- ing remove from the fire, and let the crock remain in the water until cold. A Medicine. — Abernethy's prescription to a wealthy patient was : " Let your servant bring you three or four pails of water, and put it into a wash-tub ; take off your clothes, get into it, and from head to foot rub yourself well with it, and you'll re- cover." 11 This advice of yours seems very much like telling me to wash myself," said the patient. " Well," said Abernethy, " it is open to that objection." A Prescription. — If you wake up thirsty, diet, that is, eat nothing ; if you have diarrhea, be quiet, that is, do noth- ing, drink nothing ; and if not better in twelve hours, send for a physician. Lightning-Eods, in cities, says Prof. Henry, of the Smith- sonian Institute, should be connected with the water or gas- pipes underground, outside the building. A bit of glue dissolved in skim-milk and water, will re- store old crape. Half a cranberry bound on a corn will soon kill it. Eed Ants. — Wash your shelves down clean, and while damp rub fine salt on them quite thick, and let it remain on for a time, and they will disappear. Eyes. — If you must sew on black cloth at night, pin a piece of soft white paper along the seam, and sew through it ; after- wards tear the paper away. Camomile. — The decoction of its leaves is said to destroy various insects ; the living plant imparts health to other plants, often reviving drooping ones. Potatoes contain nearly all their nutriment (the starch) very near the surface ; the heart has but little ; hence, let the peel- ing- be the thinnest possible. 22 ITEMS, NOTICES, ETC. Lac stick dissolved in alcohol is the best varnish for tree or vine wounds, and to prevent bleeding from trimming or pruning. Greenwood Cemetery, up to June, 1860, had received se- venty-six thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven dead bodies (76,797) since first opened, September 5th, 1840. The New Eeservoir, in the north-eastern portion of the Cen- tral Park, is a well whose mouth equals a surface of one hun- dred and six acres, a well whose depth is twenty feet, and will contain water enough to supply the city of New-York for one month, in case of an accident cutting off the supply from Croton river. Music for our Daughters. — Strangers who are now nocking to the city, will find it to their interest to call at Wor- cester's piano establishment, corner of Fourteenth street and Third avenue. This is one of the very oldest houses of New- York ; in all the financial " crises" of the country, it has never known a "suspension" or a " removal ;" thus indicating a thrift, which is only known to men who always make the best instru- ments, and thus secure the steady patronage of wealthy fami- lies, whi<§h, from its extent, enables the proprietor to sell a better piano at a lower price than can elsewhere be had, being more especially adapted to withstand the effects of a warm and moist climate. How to Enjoy Life. By Dr. W. M. Cornell. Published by James Challen & Son, Philadelphia, and by Sheldon & Co., New-York. This book contains a large amount of useful truth, and we trust its industrious author will find for it a large sale. Movement Cure or Motor-Paihy, by Dr. George H. Taylor, published by Fowler & Wells, contains a large amount of curious and useful information as to the preservation of health and the removal of disease by muscular and mechanical means. Eyes, Cataract. — Mark Stephenson, M.D., Surgeon of the New-York Ophthalmic Hospital, etc., read a paper before the American Medical Association convened at Washington City, whose publication was considered of such importance as to be called for by the Society. It reflects great credit on the learned author, for its professional ability, and extensive research. INDEX TO 182 HEALTH TRACTS. NO. OF TRACT Air and Sunshine, 51 Apples, 59 Antidotes of Poisons, 134 Baldness, 124 Bathing, 30 Beards, 74 Bites, 23, 27 Bilious Diarrhea, 153 Burns, 23, 27, 80, 129 Colds, Cured, 3, 27 " Neglected, 27, 29, 36 " Prevented, 31 " Catching, 144 Checking Perspiration 58 Catarrh, .' 52 Corns and Shoes, 14 Coffee, 46, 72, 128 Costiveness, 22 'Cute Things, 120 Children at School, 132 Cures, 135 Changing Clothing, 141 Cholera, 151 Clergymen, Saving, 158 Cancer, 177 Drunkenness, 8 Dyspepsia, 8, 33 Disease, Its Causes, 4 Disease Avoided, 28 Disease not Causeless, 164 Drinking, 35 Diet for Invalids, 54 Deafness, 70 Dying Easily, 143 Drowning, 146 Dieting, 147 Diphtheria, 149 Diarrhea, 150 Dysentery, 152 Disinfectants, 1 54 Death Rate, 159 Erect Position, 11 Eating, 26, 171 Eating Wisely, 32 KO. OK TRACT Eat, How to 34 Eating Habits, 142 Eyes, Care of, 5, 15 Eyesight Failing, 61 Erysipelas, 56 Escaping from Eire, 15*7 Emanations, 145 Exercise, 174 Fruits in Summer, 2 Flannel Wearing, 19, 130 Feet of Children, , ... 14, 21, 180 Fifteen Follies, 53 Fire Escape, 157 Fifth Avenue Sights, 153 Growing Beautiful, 15 Great Eaters, : 171 Genius, its Vices, 161 Hair, , ', IS Headache, 41, 62 Health without Medicine, 20 Healthful Observances, 38 Health Essentials, 42 Hydrophobia, 49 Housekeeping, 75, 94, 122, 144 Health Theories, 77 Inconsiderations, 4 Ice, its Uses, 9 Inverted Toe-Nail, 64 Insanity, 473 Life Wasted, 138 Loose Bowels, 150 Leaving Home, 162 Logic Run Mad, 172 Music Healthful, 7, 81 Medicine, Taking, 60 Memories, 71 Milk, its Uses, 82 Medical Items, 1 69, 182 Month Malign, 170 Nothing but a Cold, 36 Neuralgia, , 44 IV INDEX. NO. OF TRACT One Acre, 139 One by One, 160 Obscure Diseases, 165 Precautions, '. . . . 37 Presence of Mind, '. . . 39 Premonitions, 43 Private Things, • 45 Poisons, 23, 27, 55, 134 Physiological Aphorisms, 65 Pain, 6*7 Potatoes, 123 Philosophy, 137 Physiological Items, 155 Posture in Worship, 176 Rheumatism, 50 Read and Heed, 69 lation, 145 Sitting Erect, 13 Sabbath, 17, 156 Scalds, 80 School-Children,. . 132, 183 Sour Stomach, 24 Sleeping, 25 Skating, 63 Suppers, Light, 73 Summering, 78 NO. OF TRACT Spot, The One, 126 Specifics, 138 Spring-Time, 140 Summer Drinks, 148 Saving Ministers, 158 Stammering, 179 Soups and Gruels, 181 Traveling Hints, 6 The Three P's, 47 Teeth; : 68 Urination, 66 Valuable Knowledge, 27 Vaccination, 79 Ventilation, 125 Vermin, Household, 136 Vices of Genius, 161 Winter Rules, 11 Walking, 18 Warnings, 48 Worship, Religious, 168 Woolen Clothing, 19, 134 White Washes, 134 Worth Remembering, 167 Weather Signs, 172 All the above Health Tracts, with a great variety of other practical reading in reference to Health, will be found in the two volumes for 1862 and 1863, $1.25 each, both for $2, at the office, 831 Broadway, New-York. HEALTH TRACT, Ho. 63. SKATING Is one of the most exhilarating of all pastimes, whether on the ice, or over our parlor or hall floors, with roller-skates. In the days of " Queen Bess," some three hundred years ago, it was a favorite amusement with the Londoners, whose facilities for the same were limited to pieces of bone attached to the shoes. As lives have been lost in connection with skating, the following suggestions are made : 1. Avoid skates which are strapped on the feet, as they prevent the circulation, and the foot becomes frozen before the skater is aware of it, because the tight strapping benumbs the foot and deprives it of feeling. A young lady at Boston lost a foot in this way ; another in New-York^ her life, by endeavoring to thaw her feet in warm water, after taking off her skates. The safest kind are those which receive the fore-part of the foot in a kind of toe, and stout leather around the heel, buckling in front of the ankle only, thus keeping the heel in place without spikes or screws, and aiding greatly in supporting the ankle. . 2. It is not the object so much to skate fast, as to skate gracefully ; and this is sooner and more easily learned by skating with deliberation ; while it prevents overheating, and diminishes the chances of taking cold by cool- ing off too soon afterward. 3. If the wind is blowing, a vail should be worn over the face, at least of ladies and children ; otherwise, fatal inflammation of the lungs, " pneu- monia," may take place./ 4. Do not sit down to rest a single half-minute ; nor stand still, if there is any wind ; nor stop a moment after the skates are taken off ; but walk about, so as to restore the circulation about the feet and toes, and to pre- vent being chilled. 5. It is safer to walk home than to ride ; the latter is almost certain to give a cold. 6. Never carry any thing in the mouth while skating, nor any hard substance in the hand ; nor throw any thing on the ice ; none but a care- less, reckless ignoramus, would thus endanger a fellow-skater a fall. 7. If the thermometer is below thirty, and the wind is blowing, no lady or child should be skating. 8. Always keep your eyes about you, looking ahead and upward, not on the ice, that you may not run against some lady, child, or learner. 9. Arrange to have an extra garment, thick and heavy, to throw over your shoulders, the moment you cease skating, and then walk home, or at least half a mile, with your mouth closed, so that the lungs may not be quickly chilled, by the cold air dashing upon them, through the open mouth ; if it passes through the nose and head, it is warmed before it gets to the lungs. 10. It would be a safe rule for no child or lady to be on skates longer than an hour at a time. 11. The grace, exercise, and healthfulness of skating on the ice, can be had, without any of its dangers, by the use of skates with rollers at- tached, on common floors ; better if covered with oil-cloth. Lessons are given in this pleasant and exhilarating exercise at Mr. Disbrow's on Fifth Avenue, whose spacious and well-conducted establishment ought to be well patronized. His ice pond is now in exellent order. NOTICES. Atlantic Monthly, published by Ticknor & Fields, No. 135 Washington street, Boston, Mass. ; three dollars a year; Volume 13 began with January. Among its contributors are some of the best intellects and the most cultivated minds in the nation. It is the great literary monthly of the country, and by the acknowledged ability with which it has been conducted, it has been placed on a permanent basis, and is highly appreciated abroad as well as at home. 'Tun Horticulturist, founded by the lamented A. J. Downing, in 1S46, is in its eighteenth vol. ume : twj dollars a year ; No. 37 Park Row, New-York. Its patronage is commended to country gentlemen and intelligent agriculturists throughout the country. Tub Presbyterian, Philadelphia, two dollars and fifty cents a year, has an industrious and able correspondent in this city ; his weekly letters well pay for the subscription-price to every New- Yorker who wishes to keep himself posted as to the "goings on" and chief doings of our mighty metropolis. To Farmers. — There is no monthly published on this or any other continent on agriculture or on any other subject which gives one half as much valuable, practical, and reliable information for one dollar a year as the American Agriculturist, issued at No. 1 Park Row, New- York City. Blackwood's Magazine, two dollars a year, London, Quarterly, The Edinburgh, T7ie West- minster, and North British Reviews, each three dollars, are all furnished for ten dollars a year. Address Leonard Scott & Co., No. 54 Gold street, New-York. The contributors to these publications are among the very ablest writers in Great Britain. Music. — The hinged-plate piano improvement of Horatio Wooster, of New-York, is eliciting the admiration and hearty commendation of the most accomplished artists in the country. Among the names are those of Gottschalk, Muzio, Mason, Berge, Fredel, Thomas, Harrison, Wernike, Mor- gan, Gosche, and the distinguished amateur Dr. Thomas Ward, all substantiating the sentiment of Gottschalk, when he said, "I estimate the volume of tone to be increased one hundred per cent by this invention," which is certainly very high praise, coming as it doe3 from the very highest musical authority. Godey's Lady's Book, three dollars a year, Philadelphia, continues as heretofore to be the Queen of pictorial monthlies, delighting multitudes of families with its beautiful steel engravings and its valuable practical embellishments, etc. Arthur's Home Magazine, two dollars a year, Philadelphia. Who that has ever subscribed for it, ever willingly failed to " renew" when Christmas came ? Pilks, Fistula, Ruptures, etc.— The last published work of Dr. Bodenhemer on these and kindred subjects has been translated into French. Dr. B. spends the winter at the Monongahela House, Pittsburgh, and for knowledge, ability, skill, and success has no superior living. Teeth.— Dr. John Allen, 22 Bond street, New-York, in whose office Dr. Evans, now the first Dentist in Europe, took lessons is believed to be the ablest member of his profession for furnishing single and sets of teeth. We know cases where twenty years of youthfulness have been imparted to the features. The Farm-House Milk, pure and sweet, is brought to town daily by the New-Jersey and Rock- land County Milk Association, under the management of C. W. Canfield, Esq., No. 146 Tenth street, New- York, near Broadway, adjoining Stewart's New Retail Palace. Barnum's Museum continues to be the general place of resort for novelty-seekers. Formerly a 41 Museum " was considered to be a collection of all the queer, outlandish things of creation, but Mr. Barnum, with characteristic energy and forecast, has made his establishment a place not only of amusement but of solid instruction. Scarcely a week passes in which some new object of inter- est is not introduced. Natural treasures are gathered from the poles to the tropics ; yesterday he had a polar bear ; to-day a family of Esquimaux ; to-morrow it will be a whale, or a multitude of fishes of all sizes and hues, from the Pole to the Line; and frequently all are seen at once, exciting the mind of the beholder alternately with feelings of awe, of wonder, of admiration and delight. Iron Fences, railings, plain and ornamental, statues, figures of animals, bedsteads, gate-posts, tree-guards, with every conceivable variety of article for families, farms, cemeteries, parks and pleasure-gardens and grounds, are found at the very extensive establishment of Hutchinson & Wickersham, 259 Canal street, New-York, one of the oldest and best known houses of the kind in the city. We heartily commend "The Home Monthly," two dollars a j-ear, Boston, to every household wishing a whole year of delightful and instructive reading for wives, husbands, daughters, and sous. HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. Our Legitimate Scope is almost boundless : for whatever begets pleasurable and harmless feelings, promotes Health ; and whatever induces disagreeable sensations, engenders Disease. AIM TO SHOW HOW DISEASE MAY BE AVOIDED, AND THAT IT IS BEST, WHEN SICKNESS COMES, TO TAKE NO MEDICINE WITHOUT CONSULTING A PHYSICIAN. Vol. XL] FEBRUARY, 1864. [No. 2. CONSUMPTION. As one person out of six dies of consumptive disease, every man, woman, and child is more or less directly interested in every thing having a practical bearing in reference to a mal- ady which has already carried millions to the grave, and is destined to destroy millions more. In reading the public pa- pers, the impression might be made on the unthinking that consumption was more easily cured than any other human ail- ment. The confident manner in which it is announced that this, tha't, and the other remedy is uniformly successful, and that all that is necessary to procure the same, is to forward a three-cent postage-stamp, and the way is open to a prompt, per- manent, and radical restoration, does mislead thousands every year. Cod liver oil, naphtha, medicated inhalation, Bourbon whisky; the injection of solutions of nitrate of silver, the ruthless excision of the tonsils, and pectorals and syrups and troches and a multitude of other remedies, safe, sure, and infalli- ble, have been proposed from time to time, have had their fashion and their butterfly hour ; but the people still continue to die of the dreaded disease ; not as before, but more numerously than ever, proving beyond contradiction, that there is no cura- tive power in any of them. And the very avidity with which any new remedy is seized upon and published to the world, is evidence enough, that the great want is still unsupplied. When it is remembered that consumption is a general destruction of the substance of the lungs, it ought to be felt, even by the un- 26 hall's journal of health. reflecting, that in reality, there can be no absolute cure ^be- cause, when a portion of the lung is once destroyed, its repro- duction is as impossible as that of a lost limb or finger. In a literal ser^se, then, consumption is absolutely incurable. At the same time a man may, from various causes, lose a part of his lungs, and yet have that decay arrested, and live in reason- able health for many years afterward. Anatomists say that in examining the lungs of those who have died after the age of forty -five, it is a very common thing to notice evidences of a partial destruction of the lungs, and their subsequent healing up, without the subjects of this process ever having had a sus- picion in life, that any thing was the matter with the lungs. It follows then, that being cured of consumption, in this restricted sense, is an event -of every day occurrence. But such a conclu- sion brings with it very little comfort when connected with that other observation, that such "cures" are always spontaneous, and are never clearly traceable to any drug swallowed, to any gas or atmosphere inhaled, or to any surgical operation. The reputation which successive vaunted remedies have obtained has been owing to several causes, each of which is particularly calculated to foster a deception ; and First. Consumption is a disease which, in its nature, is of a very flattering character, in that it generally, except in its very last stages, is not attended with any pain; the appetite is good, and the intellect clear; the malady itself is in the lungs, which, being scantily supplied with nerves, have very little feeling. Second. The seeds of consumption, as previously explained, are little, hard, roundish substances, called " tubercles," scat- tered through the lungs in little patches, more or less extensive, which patches ripen, as it were, at different times, as apples on a tree or berries on a bush ; this ripening, however, is rather a rot- tening process; it is the softening of the tubercles, whereby the lungs become disorganized and destnjyed, and are in this state, spit out of the mouth, in the shape of a thick, yellowish matter. While this softening process is going on, and until the matter is wholly expectorated, the patient does not "feel so well ;" there is fever, and there is cough, with a variety of other discomforts. But when the matter of that "patch" is all expectorated, and the lungs are relieved of the discomfort of its presence ; the elas- CONSUMPTION. 27 ticity of tlie system returns ; the cough greatly abates, and in some cases disappears almost entirely, and the patient expresses himself as feeling " almost as well as I ever did in my life." This better feeling continues until another patch ripens, rots, and is spit away ; the process . going on, in repetitions, from time to time, until such a large portion of the lungs has been destroyed, that enough is not left to live upon, and death closes the scene. Hence it is, that the history of almost every con- sumptive, is that of being better or worse, through the whole course of its progress ; which averages about two years. These " spells " of being " worse " are uniformly attributed to having " taken a little cold." The patient, too willing to be deceived, takes comfort in the reflection, that if he had not taken that last cold, he would still have gotten better ; and summoning up a new resolution and energy, determines that he will be more careful against taking cold another time ; and as a means of so doing, "bundles up " more ; is more guarded as to " exposures;" that is, goes out less, hugs the stove more, leaves less frequent- ly his cozy corner at the fire ; not taking note of the fact, for a long time that he "takes cold," as he calls it, in spite of all his efforts, and finally settles down in the declaration that the " least thing in the world gives me a cold ;" or there is a posi- tive inability to determine how he got his last cold ; and then begins to think that it came on of itself; the true state of the case being that it is simply the natural progress of the disease ; that " taking cold " had nothing to do with these repeated back sets. And there is a failure also to observe, that during this "bundling up," this fearfulness of "exposures," involving closer and closer confinement to the house, the " colds " come more frequently, last longer and longer, "until one runs into another, and there is a continued cold ; which means in reality, that the destructive process is now going on steadily, and with it there is a more and more harassing cough, a greater and greater thinning of flesh, a more and more distressing short- ness of breath, more drenching night-sweats, more consuming fevers, with a weakness, approaching the utter helplessness of a new-born child. But suppose in the earlier stages of the malady, when per- haps the first or second or third "patch" had pretty much soft- ened and the patient was beginning to spit it away, a particular 28 hall's journal of health. remedy was administered ; the improvement which always fol- lows the riddance of the yellow matter, which is really rotted kings, is attributed to the last thing taken or done ; it may be a week, a month, or a year before another " patch" of tubercles begins to soften; meanwhile, considerable health is enjoyed, and the patient, quite willing to believe that he has been cured of consumption, speaks of the remedy used, in the most extrav- agant terms; and with a kind of gratitude gives his "certifi- cate " of its value in his own case ; and in a month it has been read by millions. Hence the multitude of fallacious "cures," so called, which flood the country. But suppose there had been but a single "patch of tuber- cles," and nothing had been done; but there was the usual cough, expectoration, night-sweats, etc., and then an ultimate restoration to health, the whole thing is dismissed with the remark, that it was only a very bad cold. There is, perhaps, not a man living who is troubled with " a very bad cough," who has not been advised to try a multitude of remedies, with two stereotype statements, "It can do you no harm, if it does you no good;" and "It cured a much worse case than yours." But there are literally millions who, after hopefully trying the remedy, have been doomed to the sad experience and ad- mission, that " however much others may have been benefited, no benefit has resulted in my case." But as there are persons who have labored under the more common and unequivocal symptoms of consumption, such as cough, spitting blood, expectoration of yellow matter, night sweats and swollen ankles, and yet have recovered and lived in good health a quarter of a century afterward, it will be in- structive to note, what are the circumstances in common, in all these well-authenticated cases ; then we may conclude, that if in any given case these circumstances can be brought about, similar favorable and triumphant results may be reasonably anticipated. Let the reader turn to the cases of apparent cure already noted, to wit : Dr. Norcom's case, (page 102 ;) an- other reported in a British medical periodical, in 1854, and reproduced in this volume, (page 113,) and others following. To these may be added the case of General Andrew Jackson. It was stated in the public prints at the time of his death, that CONSUMPTION. 29 there was every indication that one fourth of the lungs had been destroyed by disease twenty-five years before. To these may be added a case which came under the author's notice five years ago. Volume 17, case 2222, was an Englishman ; tall, slim, nerv- ous temperament, a traveling clock-mender and tinker. The yellow matter in the air-passages was so abundant that he could bring up a mouthful at any time, with a kind of gulp, or hem. This seemed to be a case so utterly hopeless in all its aspects, and one wherein no medicine whatever seemed to be appropri- ate, the only advice which was at the same time applicable and possible to him, (as he was extremely poor,) was that he should eat regularly and as much as possible, and spend his waking existence in some very active exercise out of doors. He was advised to cough as little as possible, to make every effort to repress it, to endeavor to get rid of the "phlegm" by hem- ming; but that whenever it was not possible to restrain a cough, to throw the head back and cough out at an angle of about forty-five degrees, so as to jar and strain the lungs as lit- tle as possible, and thus bring away the phlegm more easily, as would be the case when it came up much nearer in a straight line, than at a right angle, as in ordinary coughing, or at a more acute angle still, when the chin is bent down as it usually is, in the act of coughing. This man was so very poor, (and the win- ter was approaching,) that it was considered necessary to furnish him with some clothing. But he was well informed ; had seen and thought for himself as to the nature and philosophy of his malady ; so that there was a sufficient inducement to explain to him the reasons for the particular courses advised ; these he seemed to comprehend and appropriate. Still, there was no expectation of ever seeing him again in life. A year later he was heard from through a third person, who spoke of him as the •■ crazy carrier."' Adopting the suggestions made to him, he at once procured the situation of meeting the express rail- road train at a certain point, receiving the daily newspapers, which had to be carried on foot to a post-office two or three miles distant. At first he was too weak to walk fast ; but by great patience he had increased his gait, until at the time of his reporting, he was literally running five miles every twenty- four hours ; never missing a day. On one occasion, when the 30 hall's jouknal of health. thermometer was hovering about zero, he was seen without gloves, or overcoat, his hat thrown back, so as to expose the whole forehead, papers under arm, and at a long, loping gait, "making time" for the post-office; this furnished the occasion for giving the sobriquet of " the crazy carrier." Later on he came to pay a fee for the first consultation, and five years from the first interview, he called to say that he was well; that he had supported his old father and mother during the interval; that he was drafted, and wanted to know what could be done for him in the way of securing an exemp- tion. On a careful examination, there was found no physical ground for excusing him from serving as a soldier ; and all that could be conscientiously done for him, was to give a certificate that he had been under treatment within a few years for con- sumptive disease. In all the cases of apparent restoration from consumptive symptoms above referred to, there is one element, always pres- ent, never absent ; it is no pill or potion, no drug or " simple " remedy; no syrup nor "pectoral;" no lozenge, no surgeon's operation, nothing physical; but something as impalpable as thin air ; it is simply force of will ; an unconquerable deter- mination to live above disease ; to conquer it or to die in the attempt. Moral courage, then, is at the very foundation of all effective treatment for consumption of the lungs ; and is worth a thousand times more than any " dose " ever compounded by the apothecary; or than any "operation," which the most skill- ful surgeon in existence can boast of. Without this quality of the mind, invincible determination, all artificial means for the cure of consumption in its ordinary course, have seemed to be utterly unavailing. It must not be that fitful bravery which leads a man, in the excitement of the moment, to march up to the cannon's mouth, at the instant of its belching forth flame and fire and death ; but it must be a persistent resolution, a " chronic " courage, which remains at the highest point all the time ; day in and day out ; reaching through days and weeks and months, and even years if need be. A courage which can at a moment's warning leave the cozy fireside and brave the fiercest winds of winter, which can any day abandon the com- forts and happiness of home, and undertake long journeys on horseback or foot, through snow and frost and freezing rains i CONSUMPTION". 31 sleeping in comfortless cabins, or by the wayside ; living on the coarsest fare of "squatter" poverty, or depending on the pre- carious "bringing down" of the hunter's rifle; the men who can do these things, and do them with such a will as to make them as mere pastimes, these are the men who can, and who often do, survive for long years, the fierce attacks of consump- tive disease, and all honor be to them, for such high types of heroism ! But in this connection let it be borne in mind that such moral courage, such force of character, is not found oftener than once in a thousand, and that this being so, the man who has actual consumption may consider himself inevitably doomed, except in the very rarest number of cases ; and that they are wisest who make a systematic effort to live in such a way, as not to fall into the grasp of so remorseless a disease themselves ; and to do all that is possible, by judicious counsel and unceas- ing watchfulness, to preserve their children, and others who may be under them, from those habits of life which invite so fell a malady. Climate for Consumptives. — It has been a fashion of many years' standing, to go to the South, when the lungs seemed to be affected ; or to take long journeys by sea. Of late years, another " notion " seems to have taken hold of the public mind, to wit, that Minnesota, the great North- West, is best adapted toward recovering a man from consumption ; and ' now, the stream of consumptive travelers is in that direction, instead of toward the sunny South, to Cuba, Madeira, and other localities. This change of sentiment originated in loose newspaper state- ments, that very few persons were noticed to have died of con- sumption in Minnesota. Similar statements have been made as to California, and for the very same reasons ; both countries are comparatively new; few, other than the hardy, "settled" in them, and for obvious reasons the statistics on the subject must have been very imperfectly gathered. California is in a measure inaccessible, by reason of its distance. Havana and other warmer latitudes require more means than the multitude can command; hence, the great army moves toward the "North- West," with most discouraging results. The ablest resident physician at St. Paul, the chief town of Minnesota, says, that two thirds of the consumptives who reach that point, die 32 there ; and it is his frank and honorable habit to advise visitors to leave there as soon as possible. The air is indeed pure, and still and dry, having a uniform temperature in mid-winter ; but whether from its great severity, or its rarefied character, or from its possessing some stranger ingredient, not yet detected, or whether from other causes, the fact remains the same, that two thirds of all who go to Minnesota for the removal of consump- tive symptoms, perish there ; and how many, soon after their return to their own homes, there are no means for ascertaining. But it is suggestive to note in the cases given in the preceding pages, that they were from all latitudes, from Canada to Cuba, leaving us to fall back on the great comprehensive fact, that the essential, the fundamental, the all-controlling agency in the arrest of any case of consumptive disease, and a return to reasonable health for any considerable time, is an active, cour- ageous, and hopeful out-door life, in all weathers and in any lati- tude, with some rousing motive, other than regaining the health, beckoning them on, to do and to dare. RECUPERATIVE POWER. This is the f • vis medicatrix naturae," the power of nature to cure herself, and is implanted by Divinity in all that lives, vegetable -or animal. Were there no such power, every injury done to blade of grass, or shrub, or tree, to insect, animal, or man, would result in sickness, decay, and death ; and soon there would not be a living thing the globe over. The extent to which injuries to the human frame may be re- covered from are sometimes amazing,; nature only asking one thing, and that is, to be let alone ; to be allowed quietude, rest. Soon after breakfast, March sixteenth, 1860, Mrs. L. A. Page, two months married, was captured in the Kocky Mountains by a band of Apache Indians. Although she had suffered much from recent attacks of fever and ague, she traveled all day on foot, over a rough, mountainous road ; to increase her pace, they frequently pointed their six-shooters at her head. At the end of sixteen miles, she lagged so much behind that her cap- tors resolved to kill her, and for that purpose removed every part of her clothing except a single garment ; they next threw their lances at her, inflicting eleven wounds in her body, and RECUPERATIVE POWER. 33 threw her over a rocky precipice, and then threw stones at her, several of which struck her on the head ; this was about sun- set. Having alighted on a bank of snow, the fall was broken ; still she was insensible, and must have remained there, in that condition, for two nights and a day. That she should have sur- vived an hour, is extraordinary. "When she recovered her senses, she put snow on her wounds, and started in the supposed direction of her home. Her feet gave out the first day, and she was compelled to crawl. Sometimes, after crawling up a steep ledge of the mountain, laboring hard for half a day to accom- plish it, she would lose her footing and slide down to a lower part than that from which she started. At night she scratched holes in the sand in which to sleep, in order to protect herself from the cold winds of March on the mountain, five thousand feet above the level of the sea ; but before she could start on her daily travels, she had to remain until the sun warmed her up ; having no fire, and not a particle of clothing beyond the inner garment. She lived on grass — nothing else. On the fourteenth day she reached an untenanted camp of workmen in the Pineries, where she found a little food, and some flour which had been spilled on the ground. The fire being not quite out, she kindled it up, and made a little cake of the flour which she had scraped up, being the first food she had tasted since the morning she left home. She could hear the men at work, and sometimes see them, but could not attract their attention. She, however, made out to crawl to a path which she knew they would have to pass at night, whence they carried her to her home, two miles distant ; after an absence of sixteen days, she was well again. This narration is given to impress on the mind of the reader that nature is the best physician, as a general rule ; that her re- quirements are few and simple, and that with pure air, pure water, and quietude, ailments may be recovered from which, had they been removed by any .human remedy, would have given the discoverer a world-wide name, and have poured into his treasury untold millions. The first remedies in this case were perfect quietude for two days; thus, every particle of strength preserved by the system was applied toward repairing the injury done. All this while, however, the purest air was breathed, every breath of which, while it imparted life to the 34 HALL'S JOUKNAL of health. blood, left the body loaded with its impurities of waste and de< cay, and particles dead either by disease or the physical violences offered. Next to this rest and pure air, was either snow-water, or that from mountain-springs, according as it could be obtained Another important element in nature's cure of violence and sickness is in dieting. In almost all cases of ordinary disease, nature, in self-defense, takes away the appetite, so that what power the system has should be employed in throwing out dis- eased matters and those which oppress it, instead of expending that power in the digestion of food, which would only serve to clog the almost-stopped machinery. For two weeks she ate nothing but grass. A most curious and valuable practical truth is taught here, one worth millions in the cure of disease, and of a world-wide application ; a truth which daily forces itself on every intelligent physician and every ob- servant nurse, that the diet of the sick should be simple, single unconcentrated ; that is, one thing at a time, and that should be an article whfch contains but a little nutriment in a large amount of gross. Hence, in all ordinary sickness, acute diseases, such as fevers, fruits and vegetables are better than meat ; for while the latter is nearly all nutriment, nine tenths of the former are waste. In the common apple or turnip there are, perhaps, five atoms of nourishment in a hundred atoms of gross. There is still a less proportion of nutriment in grass, but there is some, and there is power in the human stomach to extract it. There is one item in connection with the sick which is of untold value ; more and better and purer nutriment is obtained by a sick man's stomach from a smaller amount of food than from a larger • from one ounce, than a dozen. The single ounce may be thor- oughly digested, hence all the blood it makes is perfectly pure, is full of strength and life ; while the pound, being more than the stomach can take care of, is imperfectly digested, and must make an imperfect blood material ; hence can impart no radi. cal, enduring strength. But this is not all ; this imperfect blood is mixed as soon as made with the whole blood of the body, and to that extent renders the entire mass impure. The lesson of this article is this : In all ordinary ailments and accidents, secure quiet of body, composure of mind, pure air, pure water, and simple food at regular intervals, being a little hungry all the time. HEALTH TBACT, No. 183. THE SICK SCHOOL-GIRL. I know an only daughter of fourteen, sole heiress to a fortune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the petted child of fond but foolish and misguided parents, in a distant city, and yet she is miserable in mind and body for three fourths of her waking existence. She rides to school, less than a mile away, in a splendid equip- age every fair morning ; if it is threatening weather, she stays at home. She sel- dom goes to bed sooner than eleven or twelve o'clock. She is barely ready to start to school any morning sooner than nine. On the mornings of Saturday, Sunday, holidays, and bad days, eleven o'clock still finds her in bed. Her nights are spent at parties, balls, operas, theaters, or in frivolous company. If none of these are avail- able, she reads novels in bed by gas-light for hours and hours together ; but an al- most invariable custom, before retiring, especially after returning from the ball or the theater, is to take a hearty supper. The result of this last practice is, that she never has any appetite for breakfast, not much more for dinner, so that the only full meal of the day is just before retiring. The legitimate results of such a training on body, mind, and heart are sadly suggestive. This spoiled child is never well any three days in succession, and has alarming attacks of a dangerous malady a dozen times a year, besides almost daily complaints of headache, tiredness, cold feet, weight or burning at the stomach ; and more or less of a " little cold," all the time. To suppose that this child will ever reach the maturity of womanhood is absurdity itself. The effects which such a mode of life has on the mind are not less baleful. Such a girl can not be "educated" in any single branch of knowledge, in any single ac- complishment. The excitement of the nightly novel and theatre will wear out the mental energy before its time, and must as certainly unfit her for the realities and the labors of life as the excitement arising from spirits incapacitates the body for steady, effective labor. - • ■ The effects of such a defective training on the heart, the temper, the soul are the highest types of injustice, selfishness, and a sad destitution of human sympathies. These bear hardest and first on the servants. The coachman must remain on his box in the street until midnight, however inclement the weather ; her maid must sit up to open the door when she comes home, and the cook the same, in order to prepare her a lunch before retiring. Yet if the cook is not up at daylight to pre- pare the regular family breakfast, and the maid to open the house and sweep the halls and stoop and pavement in time for the earliest visitor, and the coachman to take his master to 'Change, or his mistress to her early shopping, they are all subject to the severest reprimands, with the apparently unanswerable question : 11 Are you not paid to wait on me ?" The laundress also suffers, for miss takes not the slightest pains to " save her clothing," either from being soiled, or torn, or dis- ordered, on the plea that " she is hired to wash, and we pay her for it." The in- telligent and generous mind sees at once the absurdity of such views, their injustice and their stony-heartedness. No one has a right to make one hand's turn of un- necessary labor for the meanest scullion of the kitchen, nor to demand unseasonable labor or service ; every servant in every humane family has a right to all the sleep that can be taken, and an equal right to demand regularity in all the movements oi the household, or an extra compensation for the lack of it. We should demand nothing which costs another unnecessary trouble Gr pain. HEALTH TRACT, No. 184. KINDNESS REWARDED It is a dreadful thing to be old and poor, and have no home ; but there is a deeper depth of human calamity than this — it is to have, in addition, an old age of wasting, wearing sickness, which is often superinduced by that constant depression of mind which attends the consciousness of being alone and friendless and in want. One of the very best means of avoiding an old age of destitution and bodily suffer- ing is to cultivate while young all the benevolent and generous feelings of our na- ture, never by any possibility allowing any opportunity pass of befriending a fellow-traveler, as we are passing along life's journey, for sooner or later the re- ward will come, the reward of a happy heart and oftentimes a comfortable provision for declining years. In 1812, a wounded soldier was lying helpless on the plains of Chalmette, a few miles below New-Orleans. A youth passing that way kneeled at his side, inquired as to his wants, conveyed him to a shelter, and remained with him until he was able to leave for his home in the city. Nearly have a century later, the wounded soldier died, but old Judah Touro never forgot the youth who helped him on the battle-field, and left him fifty thousand dollars in money, besides some duties to perform which eventually yielded Mr. Shepherd $100,000 more. While living in New-Orleans, about the year 1850, a poor young doctor, with a large family and a small practice, often came into my office. He was always court- eous, always kind, and always sad ; and who could be otherwise when anxiety for to-morrow's bread for wife and children, was always pressing on the heart ? But there came a letter one day, with the English post-mark, making inquiries for a young American doctor who had greatly befriended an English gentleman during a long and dangerous attack of sickness in New-Orleans a number of years before. This grateful gentleman had died, and left our poor young doctor a large estate. Ten years ago and less, there lived in the city of New-York a clergyman whose name and memory are sacred to thousands of grateful, loving, revering hearts. He has not been dead long, he will never die out of the holy affections of the peo- ple before whom he came in and went out so many years. Among his people there was one man, and he was of large wealth, who seemed to make it his special busi- ness, as it was his highest happiness, to see that his revered pastor wanted nothing. It was not a fitful care. It did not spring up in May, and die long before December came, but through weeks and months and long years it was always the same ; in- cessant, perennial, gushing up alway like a never-failing spring. The pastor died ; his loving watcher, by no fault of his own, failed for almost millions ; any recovery was absolutely hopeless. The grief that pressed him most was the loss of ability to help the helpless. Men looked on and wondered, and began to question if Providence would let such a man come to want in his gray hairs. But there was an eye upon him. A man of very great wealth said: "He must not suffer who cared so well and faithfully and long for my old minister. He is just the man I want to attend to my estates, and he shall have all he asks for as compensation for bis services." HEALTH TRACT, No. 185. T£>^r a sntflr CORN BREAD. A bushel of corn contains as much nutriment as a bushel of wheat, and is five or six times less costly. But it is almost always spoiled in the Eastern States by being ground too fine. The most ignorant "contraband" in the South- West can make a most delicious bread in a few minutes out of corn-meal, pure water, and a little salt, baked on a hot hearthstone, or a heated hoe ; this is the celebrated " hoe-cake" of the olden time. Very few persons in the East can make any kind of corn-bread without putting in soda, saleratus, or cream of tartar enough to physic an elephant; the necessity for these ingredients arises from the useless fineness of the meal, which makes it bake heavily. Chemical research has demonstrated that the most healthful and nutritious and strengthening particles of ground corn or wheat are found attached to the outer covering, which forms the "bran," and which, by some perversity, is segregated from both flour and meal. The same principle applies to the Irish potato, for there is more nutriment in the quarter of an inch attached to the skin than in the whole remainder. There is more of the element which forms our bones in the refuse bran of corn or wheat than in all the other parts together. From experiments recently made with cattle, it appears that there is a large amount of nutriment in the cobs of Indian corn ; that if cobs and grain are ground together, cattle fare as well, thrive as well as if they were fed on the ground corn alone ; and from the fact that those fed on the former gave about half as much more manure, it may be safely inferred that if the cob and corn were properly ground together, and eaten moder- ately coarse, but baked well and thoroughly, it would not only be a wholesome article of diet, but would have a good effect in remedying that " costive habit " which is almost inseparably connected with nearly every human ailment, which aggravates all of them, and the removal of which greatly ameliorates, if it does not promptly and permanently cure three fourths of our ordinary maladies, if combined with cleanliness, rest, and pure air. Mush and Milk is a famous and much loved article of food, especially if the mush is slowly boiled for several hours ; if it is then cooled, sliced, and fried, it makes a dish which a healthy and industrious man can eat with a relish every day in the year. Indian corn coarsely broken, (called hominy,) soaked all night over or near the fire, and slowly boiled six or eight hours next day, makes a dish which may be eaten with salt, syrup, naolas* ses, or milk, of which one scarcely ever tires. HEALTH TRACT, No. 186. DERANGED. Insanity means literally without health as to the brain ; its most com- mon cause is the mind dwelling too much on one idea, or having a too great sameness of occupation, especially of an all-absorbing or unpleasur- able character, as witness inventors, great geniuses, etc. The Superintend- ent of a State Lunatic Asylum states that the most furious maniac he had ever known was a woman who had raised a large family of children, each of whom was sent out to work as soon as able to do so, while she nursed the younger ones and did nearly all the work of the family herself ; here was not only sameness of occupation, but an unpleasant sense of being driven all the time ; anxiety, wearing care and solicitude pervading the whole of her existence. The insane are generally those who have had some great trouble; disappointed affection; loss of a dear relative or bosom friend ; pecuniary reverses, or eating remorse. Had any one of these been called to encounter half a dozen troubles, each equal to the first, there would have been no derangement at all, because the nervous stream would have expended its force, or have been diverted to half a dozen different points instead of one, and thus would not have caused disorgani- zation or an uncontrollable action as of the one over-stimulated portion. A man who thinks and talks incessantly of one thing, is soon set down by his neighbors as " crazy on that subject," although sensible enough on others. The fear of poverty has made many a rich man go mad. But the hardest worked slave is seldom deranged, because he has no abiding sor- row ; no concern about to-morrow's bread ; his labor is mechanical, and the moment it is over he dismisses all thought of toil, the mind runs home to his little hut, to his supper, and the other animal gratifications of his position, and his sleep is infinitely sweeter than his master's. In edu- cated and elevated New-England there are nearly ten times as many crazy persons as among an equal number of field hands in the South. Taking planters and their slaves together, there are three times fewer insane than in as many New-Englanders. More crazy people come from the farm than from the city and the town, in spite of the coveted quiet of a farmer's life, its envied independence, and its wrongly estimated abundance of the good things of this life. There are not half as many deranged people in the Western States as in New-England, in proportion to the population. One general principle explains these varying conditions. New-England is thickly settled ; its soil is sterile ; its winters long and dreary, and the competition for bread is ceaseless and terrific ; the mind frets at the long winter's inaction ; it is like a caged lion ; it beats unavailingly against its prison bars, and wastes itself in castle building and "vain thoughts." To be without money is to be without bread in New-England ; in the sunny South and in the broad fields of the blooming West the people "take trust for pay," and can live for years on confidence and credit, and a fear for to- morrow's bread never enters the imagination. Ohio is a fertile State, but thickly settled ; the two antagonize each other to some extent, so that the number of her lunatics is half-way between those of New-England and the West. Therefore, divert the mind in time of trouble ; don't brood over misfortunes, nor indulge in melancholy meditations ; gloat not over gold ; never allow your reflections to become inseparable from any one subject. When you find that you " can't sleep " from the mind running on a particular subject, remember that you are rapidly preparing for the mad- house, and in proportion as any one idea absorbs the brain, in such propor- tion are you courting insanity. Cultivate a cheerful, an uncomplaining, a genial frame of mind. Look on the bright side of things ; take hold of the smooth handle ; and above all be moderately busy to the last day of life in something agreeable and useful to yourself and others. HEALTH TBACT, No. 187. CORRECTING CHILDREN. Not long ago an editor in the northern part of the State of New-York, told his son, about eleven years old, that he would whip him in the course of a few hours, and locked him in an upper room until he had leisure to do so. When the boy heard the father coming, he became so alarmed that he jumped out of the window and broke his neck. About a year ago a mother punished her little daughter, of eight years, by shutting her up in a dark closet ; the child became so frightened that convulsions were induced, which resulted in death. In another case of a similar character, the result was still more calamitous, for the child became epileptic, and so remained for a long life afterward-. The object of parental correction should be the ultimate good of the child ; and to make it effective, 1. The character of the punishment should be according to the disposi- tion and temperament of the child. 2. The punishment should be in proportion to the nature of the offense. 3. The punishment should be inflicted with the utmost self-possession ; for if done in a towering passion it takes the character of revenge ; the child sees it and resists it with defiance, stubbornness, or with a feeling of being the injured or oppressed party. 4. Punishment should never be threatened, for one of two results, both unfortunate, are certain : the promise will not be kept and the child loses confidence in parental assertions ; or the child's mind, dwelling upon what is expected, suffers a lengthened torture, imagination always aggravating the severity of the chastisement, and the child gradually learns to startle at every event which is at all likely to usher in the correction, and the foundation is laid for that fearfulness of the future which is the bane of all human happiness ; and in some cases the severity of the expected suffering looms up so largely under the influence of a distempered imagination, that, as in the case of the editor's child, suicide is considered the lesser evil. It is nothing less than a savage barbarity for any parent to hold the mind of a child in a state of terrorism for a single hour, let alone for days and weeks. 5. Never correct a child by scolding, admonition, or castigation in the presence of any other person whatever. It is an attack on its self-esteem which provokes resistance and passion. Let grown persons recollect how ill they bear even deserved reproof in the presence of others. 6. Never punish a child twice for any one offense ; it is a great injustice, a relic of barbarism, and always either discourages or hardens. Make each settlement final in itself, and don't be forever harping on what is past. ■ 7. Punishment should not be inflicted in any case without placing clearly before the child's mind the nature of the aggravation, and that the sole design of the chastisement or reproof is his present and future welfare. 8. In all cases where punishment is decided upon, it should be prompt, or deferred, according to the degree of aggravation or palpable wrong. It is almost always better to defer ; but in such cases threaten nothing, say nothing, do nothing which indicates in the slightest degree that any thing is to come. And when the time does come, do not alarm the child with any show of preparation, but gradually and affectionately bring up the whole matter ; place it in its true, just, and clear light, and act accord- ingly ; and always, as much as possible, appeal to the child's conscience, to its sense of right, to its magnaminity, to its benevolence toward men, and its gratitude toward God. HEALTH TRACT, NO. 188. CONVENIENT KNOWLEDGE. Mutton can be produced more cheaply than any other meat, and yet it is quite as nutritious as beef, while it has not so much waste. Pugilists as often " train " on mutton as on beef. A Cellar which opens inside a dwelling should be kept as faultlessly clean all the year round as any other part of the house, because its atmosphere is constantly ascending, and im- pregnates every room in the house with its own odors. In reality, there ought not to be any cellar under any dwelling. i Squeaking boots or shoes are a great annoyance, especially in entering a sick-room, or a church after the services have commenced ; the remedy is, to boil linseed oil and saturate the soles with the same. Neuralgia of the severest character is sometimes removed by painting the parts two or three times a day with a mixture composed of half an ounce of the Tincture of Iodine, and half a drachm of the Sulphate of Morphine. Liniment. One of the most powerful liniments for the re- lief of severe pain, is made of equal quantities of spirits of hartshorn, sweet oil, and chloroform; dip into this a piece of cotton cloth doubled, about the size of a silver dollar, lay it on the spot, hold a handkerchief over the spot, so as to confine the fumes, and the pain immediately disappears. Do not let it re- main on over a minute. Shake it well just before using, and keep the bottle very closely stopped. Chemical Agencies. If a single drop of sweet oil comes in contact with half an ounce of the chloride of nitrogen, it would explode with such power as to shiver a house to atoms. The highest wave does not exceed twenty feet, and a man may easily " ride them" — and thus prevent himself from drown- ing— by throwing himself on his back, just keeping his nose above water, and joining his hands nnder the water. Dentistry. It is becoming fashionable to have teeth ex- tracted while the person is in a state of insensibility, caused by inhaling nitrous oxide gas, commonly known as "laughing gas." When first discovered it was used freely, but in some cases dangerous results followed, as testified to by Sir Hum- phry Davy, Professor Silliman, Pereira, Berzelius, Ayston, and others. But from the fact that no such ill results have been ob- served for many years past, although it has been taken by scores of thousands, it may be reasonably concluded that a purer quality is now prepared, and that its administration is safe. Food. The most easily digested articles of food as yet known, are sweet apples baked, cold raw cabbage sliced in vinegar, and boiled rice ; the most indigestible are suet, boiled cabbage, and pork ; the former requires an hour, the latter five. HEALTH TRACT, NO. 189. IN THE MIND, An old man was shaving himself one day before the fire, but suddenly exclaimed in a great rage to the maid-servant : " I can't shave without a glass ! why is it not here ?" " Oh !" said the girl, "I have not placed it there for many weeks, as you seemed to get along quite as well without it." The crusty old bachelor (of coarse he was an old bachelor, or he would not have been so crotchety and crusty) had, for the first time, ob- served that there was no glass there, and his inability to shave without one, was "in the mind" only, it was imaginary. A Dutch farmer, who measured a yard through, was one day working in the harvest-field with his little sod, and was bitten by a snake. He was horror-struck. When he re- covered himself a little, he snatched up his outer clothing, and made tracks for home, at the same time busying himself in putting on his vest ; but it wouldn't go on. He looked at his arm, and it seemed to be double its natural size ; but tugging at it with greater desperation, he finally got both arms in. But his blood fairly froze in his veins, when he discovered it wouldn't meet by about a foot. By this time he had reached his house, and' throwing himself on the bed, exclaimed in an agony of terror: M 0 mine frow ! I'm snake bite ! I'm killed ! 0 mine Cot I" But his little bit of a wife, standing a-kimbo in the middle of the floor, burst out into a fit of laughter so uncon- trollable, that she was likely to suffocate, and thus beat her husband in dying. The poor man, in his alarm, had endeavored to put on his little boy's vest, and was not swollen at all, except "in the mind." Many a mother feels fretted and jaded and worn out with the cares of housekeeping, and is almost sick. But at the mo- ment a welcome visitor comes in, full of life and cordiality and cheeriness, in less than five minutes that mother is a different woman ; the sky has cleared ; the face is lighted up with smiles ; and she feels as well as she ever did in her life. Her discour- agement, her almost sickness was not "in the mind," it was a reality, but the excitement of conversation drove out the weary- ing blood, which was oppressing the heart, and made it fairly tingle to the finger-points. Mem. Ladies! when you go a vis- iting, carry smiles and gladness and a joyous nature and a kind heart with you, and you will do more good than a dozen doc- tors. Most persons have a variety of uncomfortable feelings at times, but they disappear on some exciting occurrence, not be- cause they are merely "in the mind," only imaginary, but be- cause the excited heart wakes up to a new propulsive power, and drives forward the stagnating blood from points where its sluggishness was producing oppression, or actual pain. Mem. 2d. For all, when you are grumpy, bounce up, go ahead, and do something. HEALTH TRACT, NO. 190. CHARMS. Even in these late ages the horse-shoe is not ^infrequently seen nailed over the door of the cabin or cottage, to "charm " away misfortune, or to "keep off" disease. There are intelli- gent men who have carried a buckeye in their "unmention- able " pockets for years, to "keep off" piles! Children can be found at school, any day, with- little bags of brimstone attached to their necks by a string, to "keep off" some particular mala- dy. There are many young gentlemen and ladies who have half a dozen " charms " attached to their watch-chains, it being a remnant of the ancient superstition. We give a pitying smile at the mention of these absurdities, for we know them to be un- availing. But there are " charms " against human ills which are powerful to save from physical, mental, and moral calamity ! Bearing about in one's heart the sweet memories of a mother's care, and affection, and fidelity, often has a resistless power, for many a year after that dear mother has found her resting-place in heaven, to restrain the wayward and the unsettled from rush- ing into the ways of wicked and abandoned men. John Ean- dolph, of Eoanoke, used to repeat in his later years, and always with quivering lips, that while he was quite a young man, in Paris, he was repeatedly on the point of plunging recklessly into the French infidelity which was so prevalent during the terrible "Ee volution" of the time; but was as often re- strained by the remembrance of that far-distant time, when yet in his infancy, his mother used to have him bend his knees be- fore her, and, with ' his little hands in hers, taught him in sweet but tremulous tones to say nightly, "Oar Father, who art," etc. A Scotch mother, when her son, a lad of sixteen, was just about leaving for America, and she had no hope that she should ever meet him again, said to him : " Promise me, my son, that you will always respect the Sabbath day." "I will," said he. His first employer in New- York dismissed him because he re- fused to work on Sunday. But he soon found other employ- ment, and is now a very rich man, an exemplary Christian, and an influential citizen. Tens of thousands are there in this wide land who, by the " charm " of the temperance pledge, have gone out into the world, singly and alone, to battle with its snares, and tempta- tions, and sin ; they have been surrounded at every step by the great tempter, with the allurements of passion and pride ; of sensual gratifications and of corrupting associations ; but keep- ing their eye steadily fixed on the beautiful "pledge," to "touch not, taste not" the accursed thing, they have bravely come off conquerors, and to day stand in their might the pillars of society. Young gentlemen, and young ladies, too, make it your ambition to bear about with you "alway" the "charm" of the "pledge" of reverence for the Sabbath-day and the holy ^ memories of a sainted mother's religious teachings, and you will pass safely to a ripe old age of happiness and health. HEALTH TRACT, INTO. 191. CURIOSITIES OF EATING. An old beau, formerly well known in Washington City, was accustomed to eat but one meal in twenty -four hours ; if, after this, he had to go to a party and take a second dinner, he ate nothing at all next day. He died at the age of seventy years. A lady of culture, refinement, and unusual powers of observ- ation and comparison, became a widow. Keduced from afflu- ence to poverty, with a large family of small children depend- ent on her manual labor for daily food, she made a variety of experiments to ascertain what articles could be purchased for the least money, and would, at the same time, " go the farthest," by keeping her children longest from crying for something to eat. She soon discovered that when they ate buckwheat cakes and molasses, they were quiet for a longer time than after eat- ing any other kind of food. A distinguished Judge of the United States District Court observed that, when he took buckwheat cakes for breakfast, he could sit on the bench the whole day without being uncomfort- ably hungry; if the cakes were omitted, he felt obliged to take a lunch about noon. Buckwheat cakes are a universal favorite at the winter breakfast-table, and scientific investigation and analysis has shown that they abound in the heat-forming prin- ciple, hence Nature takes away our appetite for them in summer. During the Irish famine, when many died of hunger, the poor were often found spending their last shilling for tea and tobac- co and spirits. It has also been often observed in ISTew-York, by those connected with charitable institutions, that when money was paid to the poor, they often laid out every cent in tea or coffee, instead of procuring the more substantial food, such as meal, and flour, and potatoes. On being reproved for this ap- parent extravagance and improvidence, the reply, in both cases, was identical ; their own observation had shown them that a penny's worth of tea, or tobacco, or liquor, would keep off the sense of hunger longer than a penny's worth of any thing else. Scientific men express the idea by saying, "Tea, iike alcohol, retards the metamorphosis of the tissues ;" in other words, it gives fuel to the flame of life, and thus prevents it from con- suming the fat and flesh of the body. If a person gets into the habit of taking a lunch between breakfast and dinner, he' will very soon find himself getting faint about the regular lunch eon- time ; but let him be so pressed with important engagements for several days in succession as to take nothing between meals, it will not be long before he can dispense with his lunch altogether. These things seem to show that, to a certain extent, eating often, is a mere matter of habit. Whole tribes of Indian hunters and trappers have been known to eat but once in twenty-four hours, and that at night. HEALTH TBACT, No. 192. IND AID BODY. The influence which the mind has in causing, aggravating, and protracting disease, is too constantly lost sight of, by all classes of physicians. Every body recommends exercise as a means of preserving and regaining health. But to ride a cer- tain length of time, or to walk a specified distance "for the health," merely for the sake of the health, is almost useless, and is a penance ; but if there is the accompaniment of an agreeable associate or an exhilarating motive, one which lifts up the mind and absorbs it for the time being, so as to make it wholly forgetful of the bodily condition, as the radical object of the exercise, this is health giving ; its effects are always magical, on mind and body and blood. Dwelling on trouble ; remorse for lost opportunities ; the hug- ging of sharp-pointed memories; moping over the slights of friends; feeding on exaggerations of the hardness of our lot, and grieving vainly for unrequited love, all these are known the world over, as being capable of bringing on slow and pain- ful and fatal diseases. But it is not so well understood that great mental emotion sometimes causes maladies which prove fatal in a few days ; such maladies as are induced by great physical exposures. It was recently announced that a distin- guished French advocate was so excited and exhausted by one of his professional efforts, as to superinduce an attack of pneu- monia, (lung fever or inflammation of the lungs,) of which he died in a few days. Three young ladies were riding in a carriage in St. Louis ; the horses ran away ; two of the riders escaped from the vehicle, while the third sat still, as composedly as if nothing unusual had taken place ; all were astonished at her " presence of mind." After she reached her home, she informed her friends that she remained still because the shock, the feeling of horror was such, that she was per force, as immovable as marble ; the reaction was such as to cause an inflammation of the bowels, which nothing could remove, and of which she died in a few days. These facts, with thousands of others like them, prove beyond all cavil, that the mind may be a cause of dis- ease ; and the inference is clear, that the states of the mind should be watched. We should guard against cherishing de- pressing feelings ; and with as much care, should habituate our- selves to self-control ; to the habit of looking at every thing of a stirring or harrowing character with a calm courage ; we should strive at all times for that valuable characteristic, " presence of mind," under all circumstances ; for we are every day in great need of it ; it is in many cases, a literal " life-preserver." HEALTH TRACT, No. 193. BREAD. Considering that not one hired cook in a thousand makes good bread, it is more healthful to use baker's bread, and is also more economical for small families. Baker's bread is always good, fresh, and light, hence there is no waste. To pre- vent waste where home-made bread is used, it being so often heavy, hard, burnt, or sour, it is made into toast, or bread pudding, whch requires so much sweetening and butter and spices that the "saving" is all lost. An intelligent and observant writer states in that excellent monthly, the American Agriculturist, that his family of five persons paid out in one year for Another year. Meats, $9$ 68 Meats, $84 76 Flour, 5 barrels, . 46 25 Bread, 451 loaves, 5c, 61 30 Butter, 22£c., 65 81 Butter, . 56 81 i ■ Total, $207 74 Total, $202 87 Flour and butter, $112 06 Bread and butter, $118 11 The bread cost more, but the butter less, and less meat was eaten, to say noth- ing of the fuel, time, milk, salt, rising, etc. saved by using baker's bread ; then, there is the comfort of having good bread always on the table, and the absence of that annoyance which an intelligent mind always experiences when compelled to eat unwholesome food. The amount of injury done to the tender stomachs of young children, invalids, and sedentary persons, by eating bad bread day after day, from one year's end to another, must be enormous. A cook who can not make good bread of every description, ought not to be allowed house-room for an hour ; and that mother is criminally negligent, whatever may be her position, who does not teach her daughter to know what good bread is ; and also how to make it. Alum is used to give whiteness, softness, and capacity for retaining moisture. Lime could be employed with equal effect, having the advantage of correcting any sour- ness in the bread or stomach ; besides affording an important ingredient for making the bones strong. Every housekeeper ought to know how to make two or three kinds of bread. The best yeast in the world is made of hops and cold water, nothing else. If lime-water is used, it should be water saturated with lime, that is, holding as much lime as it can ; if it has for a moment more, it goes to the bottom, as sugar in a tea-cup, when the tea can be made no sweeter. Use nineteen pounds of flour and five pounds of saturated lime-water made thus : Put stones of quick lime in water, stir until slack, let it settle and then pour off. Soda (an alkali made of sea-salt) and saleratus (an alkali made of wood ashes) are used for the self- same purpose, to neutralize any sourness in the bread ; one is in no respect better than the other ; but as cooking soda is the cheapest, it is an economy to prefer it. Johnny Cake. — To two quarts of Indian (corn meal) add a tea-spoonful of salt and as much cold water as will make a soft dough ; bake one hour, eat hot, with milk. Stir cold water into unsifted wheat meal until a not very soft batter is made, put into small patty-pans, bake in a hot oven half an hour or more. Raised Biscuit. — A pint of light dough, a fresh egg and its bulk of fresh but- ter. Knead most thoroughly for ten minutes ; roll out and let them rise on a shal- low pan, in a moderately warm place for half an hour ; bake for twelve or fifteen minutes in a hot oven ; to be eaten while fresh. The two most important requi- sites for making good bread are a most patient and thorough kneading and a hot oven, kept steadily hot, until the baking is completed. Patent Flour is made of the following drugs : With six pounds of wheat flour mix five tea-spoonfuls of cooking-soda, then seven of cream of tartar and six of common salt. Shorten or not with a quarter of a pound of butter. NOTICES. " Golden Stories," published by Mr. "Wood, 61 Walker street, embrace fire delightful little books, in uniform binding, for young children : " The White Kit- ten," " The Tent in the Garden," " Loving Words or Loving Deeds," " The Water- Melon," and " Willie Wilson, the Newsboy." This House, it will be remembered, has had for many years the most extensive assortment of medical publications of any other establishment in the country, besides a large collection of miscellaneous books, all of sterling value. Almanac for 1864. Being the Tenth Illustrated Kegister of Rural Affairs. By Luther Tucker & Co., Albany, N. Y. Sent free by mail for twenty-five cents, giv- ing a vast amount of useful, reliable, and practical information to farmers upon every variety of subject connected with the cultivation of land. The Mother's Journal, monthly, $1 a year, New-York, by Mrs.,Cai*oline 0. Hiscox, is filled with articles of sterling value ; the selections are made with a wise dis- crimination, nothing frivolous ever appears in its fair pages. It merits a very general circulation. " It Beats the World," said our good-natured old colored laundress the other day, in admiration of the " Universal Clothes- Wringer," and her reasons were terse and laconic : " It saves work and clothes too." Weather Indicator. Charles Wilder, of Peterboro, N. H., manufactures Wood- ruff's Barometer, which combines in a remarkable degree cheapness, accuracy, sim- plicity, durability, and portability. Prices from $5 to $20. Photographic Magnifier, a most charming accompaniment to photographic albums. $1, $1.50 and $3. The Photographic Magnifier affords the sweetest of all pleasures, as often as used for inspecting the portraits of those dear to us. Sold by P. C. Godfrey, 831 Broadway, New-York. To Youth. — A warning against advertisements headed Physical Debility. Con- fessions of an Invalid. Marriage Guide. Warning to Young Men. Manhood Re- stored. Essence of Life. Advice to the Married. Early Indiscretions. Loss of Memory. Nervous Debility. See Hall's Journal of Health for December, 1863. Sent post-paid for twelve cents. Personal. — Our office for medical consultation temporarily, is at 831 Broadway, New- York, from eleven to one o'clock, daily. Ladies who desire a consultation are requested to notify us, when we will appoint a specific hour. Gentlemen who can not be in the city during the above hours can arrange a special appointment. We do not desire interruption at present, except from eleven to one, unless necessary. The last editions of "Health and Disease" and "Sleep" are exhausted ; new editions will be printed about first of February. Any one of our books will be sent post-paid to any person sending us four new subscribers. John G. Broughton, Esq., No. 13 Bible House, New-York, has sent us four pub- lications of the American Tract Society, No. 28 Cornhill, Boston. " Temperance Tales," by Lucius M. Sargent, is an invaluable book for all classes, but especially for the young. " Pleasant Tales," in prose and verse, with twenty-six engravings. Contents : Mark's Temptation ; Bill and his Bible ; A Lesson from the Birds ; True Courage,*and fifty-four ! other useful and most interesting stories, sent for forty cents ; also, u Black and White," by Mrs. Jane D. Chaplin, which will find thou- sands of admiring and sympathizing readers. Christ the Children's Guide, by Rev. J. S. Sewall, a sweetly instructive little book of thirty-six pages. SURGICAL DISEASES. To such of our readers as require scientific, skillful, and able treatment of a surgical character, we commend Prof. H. A. Daniels as fully competent, the more so as he has had an extensive and varied experience in every department of surgery. We will take pleasure in introducing any of our readers to him, either personally or by letter. Dr. D., 221 Sixth Avenue, New- York City, confines his practice more particularly to those classes of disease where the efforts of an expert are generally successful ; such as diseases and deformities of the eyes, nose, and face, removal of tumors, polypi, dead bone, strictures, stone in the bladder, piles, fistula, fissure, cancer, and every variety of ulcer. Harper's Pictorial Weekly, $3. Harper's Monthly, $3. Both, $5 a year. Skating Carnival. — Oscar F. Outman, Esq., has prepared, at great expense, a lake of about eleven acres, on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh street, for purposes of skating. On Tuesday, December 22d, 1863, it was first opened for the season. We found the ice in beautiful order, strong, clear, and smooth. Season tickets for gentlemen, $5 ; Ladies, $2 ; youth under fifteen, $3. There will be every accommo- dation of retiring-rooms, refreshments, skates, cloak-rooms, etc. Under the im- mediate superintendence of Mr. John L. Brown, the public have a guarantee that every thing connected with this famous resort of fashion and fun will be hand- somely conducted. NOTICES. The Harper Brothers', among a multitude of other useful and instructive new issues from their prolific press, have just published, for the exclusive benefit of juvenility, " Mr. Wind and Madam Eain," by Paul De Musset, translated by Emily Makepeace, with twenty-seven illustrations by Charles Bennett. Among the con- tents are, How the Mill Turns and Cabbages Grow ; Mr. Wind Pays a Visit ; Mad- am Rain Drops in ; Mr. Wind Laughs ; Poor Madam Rain ; Mr. Wind and Madam Rain Sporting with the Sun and Moon, etc. The Boyhood of Martin Luther ; or the sufferings of the heroic beggar-boy who afterward became the great German Reformer. By Henry Mayhew. The bare title of this most instructive volume will commend it to the attention of a multitude of our readers, both young and old. Young Benjamin Franklin, (by the same author ;) or the right road through life. A story to show how young Benjamin learned the principles which raised him from a printer's boy to the first ambassador of the American Republic. These biographies ought to be read in every family in the nation ; they could not fail to have an immense influence for good on every child and youth. We thank the Harper Brothers for their publication. "Rambles after the Land of Shells" is another of those publications of the American Tract Society, 28 Cornhill, Boston, and J. G. Broughton, 13 Bible House, New-York, which combine solid, useful knowledge with religious instruction and sentiment, infinitely preferable for children to the multitude of trashy and un- natural story-books which have too long been flooded over the community by well- meaning but injudicious " Societies." Also, the " Orient." Is there a reality in Conversion ? In Regeneration ? are the questions discussed in this useful and in- structive volume of 93 pp. 16mo. * " Snow-Flakes," by the same Society, is most handsomely got up as a present, not only for the holidays, but for all seasons. It is full of intensely interesting scientific knowledge, while it strikingly inculcates some of the most important doctrines concerning the character of the great Creator — his wisdom, his power, hi3 beneficence, and his love. Also, Temperance Tales, by Lucius M. Sargent ; very interesting. " Ministering Children," (four books,) The Pilgrim Path; The Wicket-Gate ; Down in a Mine, or Buried Alive ; Elton Wheatley, the Stam- merer, a beautiful little story. TUE CONGREGATIONALISM A Family Religious Newspaper, Is the product of a large number of the best and ablest pens in the denomination, and it meets every reasonable demand, as our rap- idly increasing subscription list fully demonstrates. The following disfcgujshed names are on our list of SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS. REV. JOSEPH F>. THOMPSON, 33. IX, REV. LEONAED BACON, D. D., REV. JOHN TODD, D, D., OAID HAMILTON, Chaplains QUINT and. JAMES, "SPECTATOR," (Washington Correspondent.) In addition to the above, we have miscellaneous articles weekly from a large number of writers of experience and acknowledged excellence, and we intend to meet the wants of every family circle. The best writers of juvenile literature are secured, and no pains or expense are spared to make this department what it should be. Our weekly SUMMARY OF WAR NEWS Is made up to the latest hour, before going to press, with great care, and is acknowledged to be of great value. Our contributors being paid for their labors, we are enabled to act independently, and secure for our columns such, and only such, material as we think best adapted to our purpose. j^g°» It is the constant aim of the publishers to make the Con- gregationalist the best family religious newspaper in the land, and many pronounce it such already. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $2.00 PER YEAR. », .» m „ t< GALEN JAMES & CO. PUBLISHERS, No. 15 CORNHiLL, BOSTON. FIRE ON THE HEARTH, — AND Eurnace Heat Dispensed With. " A hard coal fire, burning fiercely, flat on the hearth, on a level with the floor warming the feet delightfully, with an oval fireplace nearly three feet across, with no visible blower, very little dust, and abso- lutely no gas ; the ashes need removing but once a year, while by the extra heat, pure air direct from out doors, is conveyed t© an up- per room, without the possibility of meeting with any red hot metallic surface, or with any corrupting source whatever — it is simply pure air warmed. A Philadelphia correspondent who has used one of these low-down grates in a room eighteen feet square, for six years, says : " I have never known a day that the fire made in the morning was not equal to the day, no matter what the temperature was outside.'1 To those who dislike furnace heat, and who wish to have at least one room in the house where there are absolutely all the advantages of a wood fire — the oxygen which supplies the fire being supplied from the cellar, and not from the room itself — this open, low down, air- tight, easily regulated grate, or rather, fireplace, with its large broad bed of burning coals, or flaming Kentucky or Liverpool cannel, will be a great desideratum. No one who has a wise regard for the comfort, cheerfulness and health of a family of children, should be without one for a single day. One can be put in at any season of the year, in two days, at an expense of from thirty to fifty dollars accord- ing to the size. This Patent Parlor Grate consumes about the same amount of coal as would a common grate, giving out however, as is supposed, near one-third more heat — the soft, delicious heat of an old fashioned wood fire — (the oxygen being supplied from without,) as any gentleman or lady is invited to see, any cold day, at our office, 42 Irving Place, New York." — HalVs Journal of Health, for Dec, 1859. — MADE by — J±JN15¥LErW& dks DIXOKT, WHO ARE ALSO MANUFACTURERS OF KITCHEN RANGES, and WARM AIR, CORRUGATED CAST IRON FURNACES, For Public and Private Buildings, with Registers <£ Ventilators. REFERENCES GIVEN WHEN REQUIRED. Address,— ANDREWS & DIXON, No. 1324 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. (Opposite the United States Mini.) Hall's Journal of Health, One Dollar a Year. 831 Broadway, New- York. This publication never advises a dose of medicine, being mainly intended to show how health may be maintained ; how the most common diseases may be avoided, what their first symptoms are, and how easily they may be warded off by prompt attention and the use of means which are almost always at hand in any household. Any one of the nine part volumes, bound uniformly in muslin, is sold for $1.25, sent, post paid, for $1.40. These nine volumes, with that for 1863, will be furnished for $10. Volume IX., for 1862, among many other articles, contains One Hundred and Twenty-five Health Tracts, of one page each, on the following subjects : Bad Colds, Debilities, Bheumafcism, Preserves, Eyesight, Nervousness, Catarrh, Small-Pox, Walking, Pain, Dieting, Serenity, Position, Vaccination, Teeth, Miasm, Flannel, Shoes, Deafness, Soldiers, Cold Feet, Hair, Beard, Marriage, Sleeping, Constipation, Burns, Drunkards, Dyspepsia, Sour Stomach, Toe-Nails, Whitlow, Headache, Eating, Backbone, Precaution, Premonitions, Bathing, Longevity, Exercise, Private Things, Neuralgia, " Diarrhea, Poisons, Sunshine, Coffee, Habit, How to Eat, Nursing, "Warnings, Sores, Etc. Etc. " Dr. W. W. Hall, of New- York, editor of the well-known Journal op Health, has published new editions of nis four valuable works upon Bronchus and Kindred Diseases; Consumption ; Health and Disease ; and Sleep. They are filled with sensible, practical advice, given in a comprehensible, fluent style, and naturally treat upon a large variety of topics, among which are consumption, apoplexy, ventilation of rooms, food, lungs, sea-voyages, de- bilitations, cold feet, flannels, and every thing, in fact, conducing to health and disease, protection, prevention, ex- ercise, attire, etc. A vast deal of research, experience, and care are exhibited in the books, and their tendency is to instruct and benefit in the most direct manner. The laws of nature are explained, the necessity of observing them inculcated, and the evils of irregularity, excess, and abuse vividly presented. There is so much valuable in- foimation in these works, and evidently such patient, discriminating labor in their preparation, that a newspaper paragraph fails to render the author justice. But we commend them as useful to every man and woman. Dr. Hall throws light upon certain subjects which are unfortunately too little comprehended — matters obviously not to be dwelt upon here, and what he says is delicatelv and sagaciously told. He warns the public against a certain class of publications on physiology as pernicious, giving conclusive reasons for his opinion.* The four books are well printed and neatly bound, and may be obtained of the Doctor at a price which, considering their intrinsic value, is indeed moderate." — Boston Post. * In Sleep, sent, prepaid, for $1.40, and the others for $1.15 each. ^> 9 Vols, of HALL'S JOURNAL OF" HEALTH, bound in muslin, each, $1.35 2 Vols. FIRESIDE MONTHLY, " " 1.35 1 "Vol. " SLEEP," 1.35 1 "Vol. BRONCHITIS AND KINDRED DISEASES l.OO 1 Vol. CONSUMPTION, l.OO 1 Vol. HEALTH AND DISEASE, LOO Either of the above will be sent, post paid, for 15 cents additional. These fifteen volumes will be sold at the office for $12. They will be furnished to any one who will send forty new subscribers. Either volume will be sent, post paid, for four new subscribers. Subscriptions will come safely thus : Pin a dollar to a sheet of paper, then write the subscriber'* name, town, and county, in Roman letters ; inclose in an envelope, seal it with a wafer ; write on the back, in plain Roman letters, " Hall's Journal of Health, New- York ;" put on a stamp, and then put the letter in the post- office yourself, without saying any thing about it to any body. Doing this, not one letter in a million will fail to reach its destination safely. " SOLDIER HEALTH," full edition, bound in muslin, sent for 81 cents ; in paper, 25 cents ; abridged edition, $20 per thousand ; $2.50 per hundred, 40 cents per dozen, at the office. One dozen sent, post paid, for 50 cents ; five cents for single copies, embodying about one hundred directions for preserving the health, and how to act in various emergencies, in marching, in camp, or battle-field. It is a humanity to furnish a soldier with this little volume, which can be easily carried in a watch-fob, and room to spare. It is believed to be the only volume relating to the health of soldiers for which a second edition has been legitimately called for, while the fourth edition , of this has been already issued. The books on " BRONCHITIS " and ** CONSUMPTION " embody the author's experience and observations in the special and almost exclusive treatment of these maladies for twenty years. The first named de- scribes minutely, and in the plainest language, the nature, causes, symptoms, and distinguishing features of THROAT-AIL, BRONCHITIS, AND CONSUMPTION, Address, DR. W. W. HALL, New-York. SAVING MONEY!!! HALF-PRICE COOKING FUEL-GAS OR KEROSENE. ONE CENT'S WORTH WILL COOK A MEAL FOR SIX PERSONS, IF YOU USE FISH'S PA.TE3STT |k«|r flatissjj Jtpjjaoto, Patented Jtrna 17th., 1863. IRe-issued Dec. 33d, 1863. Patented February 34tlx, 1863. LIGHT AUD HEAT COMBINED. BOILING, FRYING, STEWING, STEEPING, WITH THE FLAME THAT LIGHTS THE ROOM. MANUFACTURED AND FOE SALE BY WM. L>. RUSSELL, Agent, 206 PEARL STREET, Oke Door North of Maiden Lane, New-York. Circulars sent without charge, post paid. Already has the invention found its place in the nursery, in the sick-room, in hospitals and hospital railway-ambulances, in barber-shops, in restaurants, in the student's room at colleges, in chemical laboratories; and for family purposes, where summer fires have heretofore roasted the occupants, they now prepare their meals by means of the Lamp Attachment, at a less cost than they before incurred for kindling-wood, saying nothing about cost of regular fuel. Prices are from Two to Six Dollars, according to size. " The smallest holds a Quart of water, the largest a Gallon. The apparatus is literally all that it claims to be." — Ed. Hall's Jour. Health. INDEX TO f HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. VOL. X. 1863. PAGE Apprentices, 31 Anecdotes, Ill, 112 Agreeableness, 262 Autocrat's Death, 269 Baldness, 22 Bible Confirmations, 50, 79 Burns, 85 Bilious Diarrhea, 163 Blind Boy, 237 Catching Cold, 13 Corns, 19 Cherished Flower, 51 'Cute Things, 66 Clay, Henry, 83 Cures, 84 Coffee, 91,122 Changing Clothing, 86, 115 Constipation, 138 Cholera, 161 Central Park, 167 Croup, 177 Children, 205 Children's Feet, 282 Clerical Support, 229 Curious Epitaph, 231 Cottage, Sea, 238 Consumption Detected, 245 Cancer, 267 Dress, 17 Daughters, 30 Dirt, 47 Dying, 58, 126 Drowning, 156 Dieting, 156 Diphtheria, 159 Dysentery, 162 Disinfectants, 164 PAGE Eatinsr, 9, 116, 216 Eyesight, 101 Emanations, 155 Exercise, 219 Evermore, 243 Eloquence, 265 Farmer Health, 5 Farmers' Wives Overtaxed, 35 Facts, Interesting, 72 Great Eaters, 216 Gruels and Soups, 283 Housewifery, 20 Household Vermin, 92 Haunted Houses, 95 Household Economy, 142 Head Vermin, ". 182 Insanity, 218 Ill-Nature, 257 Life Wasted, 89 Loose Bowels, 160 Logic Run Mad, 217 Lung-Measurement, 221 Loss of Children, 205, 265 Mothers' Influence, 28 Making Money, 176 Medical Items, 214, 284 Month Malign, 215 Manners, 261 Music Lessons, 263 Natives and Foreigners, „ * . 60 Nicholas of Russia, « . . . 269 Notices, 285 IV INDEX PAGE One Acre, 113 Paine, Thomas, 52 Poverty and Disease, 93 Parental Corrections, 191, 232, 253 Potatoes, 21 Premature Deaths, 25 Pulpit Power, 48 Public Schools, 61 Poisons, 90 Philosophy, Ill Piles, 119 Purgative Medicines, 127 Physicians, . . . . 143 Pew System, 149 Physiological Items, 165 Physiology of Worship, 213, 266 Poetry, its Hygiene, Responsibility of Writers, 27 Recreation, 71 Reformers, 74 Randolph, John, 76 Rosetta Stone, 79 Religious Papers, Age of, 81 Resignation, 125 Raising Children, 205 Revenges, 256 Shoes for Winter, 19 Success in Life, 25 Sabbath Observance, 57, 166 Spot, The One, 67 Schools, .61, 88 Sad Reflection, 82 Soldiers,. 93 PAGB Surgery, 102 Specifics, 112 Spring-Time, 114 Sibley, Major, 130 Summer Drinks, 158 Summer Recreations, 204 September,. . . , 215 Summer Mortality, 220 Spirometry, 221 Sill, Door, 239 Style, 263 Stammering, 281 Soups, ..283 Temper Controlled, 29 Thorburn, Grant, 55 Tumors, 105 Temper and Health, 264 The Young Suicide, 276 Unskilled Labor 31 Ventilation, '. 65 Vital Capacity, 245 Wise Workers, 57 Woolen Clothing, 86 White Washes, 87 Worth Remembering, 212 Wife Dying, 241 Wedding-Ring, 242 Wealth, 259 Weather, 268 Youth and Age,.. 240 CONTENTS Bronchitis & Kin- dred Diseases. $1.00 Asthma, Common 44 Perpetual ' Causes & Nature " Symptoms & Treat. Bronchitis, what is " Nature & Cause " Symp. & Treat. Brandy & Throat disease Clerical Health Clerks Croup Cough " Cause of Clergymen " How diseased " Many cases of Dangerous Delays " Exposures Disease Prevented Debilitating Indulgences Expectoration Frail and Feeble Food, Tables of Heart, Contents " Disease of How remain Cured High Livers Inhalation, Medicated Inflammation described Lawyers, Cases of Lungs described " Contents Lake Shore, situation Life, average duration Mistaken Patients Merchants' Cases Nitrate of Silver Over FeediDg Oxygen Breathing Overtasking Brain Phosphates Prairie Situation ^ulse fatent Medicines Respiration Relapses Spirometers Smoking, Bainful elects Shortness ot Breath Sea Shore Sea Voyages Spitting Blood Throat Ail " What is it « Symp* — - ' Cause* " Philosopsv. « History Tobacco, effects of Ttt«isil Cutting " Unwell » Voice Organs described Consumption. $1.00 App, % Natures Arkansas Hunter Air and Exercise Alcoholic Effects Bad Colds Brandy Drinking Braces Consumption Described " Delusive «* Not painless «« Causes of «* Symptoms " Localities " Liabilities . *« Nature of " Curable " Commencing " Seeds deposited " Is it catching ? Cough, Nature of " ' Causes of « Effects of Cluster Doctrine Cheesy Particles Eruptions Earliest Symptoms Exercise essential " Various forms of Expectoration " Sinking in water Great Mistake Hereditariness Hectic Horseback Exercise Impure Air " Effects of Inhalations Lacing Tight Night Sweats Nitrate of Silver Occupation in Out Door Activities Over Exercise Pulse Porter Drinking Respirator, Best Spitting Blood Short Breath Spirometer Sea Voyages Sea Shore Safe Treatment Southern Climate Throat Ail, distinguished from Consump. " From Bronchitis Tubercles Tickling Cough Tonics Tonsils Health & Disease $1.00 Apoplexy Anodynes Anal Itching Appetite Aches Apples Curative Bowels Regulated Bad Breath Baths and Bathing Bleedings Burns Bread Binding Food Constitutions Restored Costiveness Cleanliness Children, Health of Cholera Chills at Meals Coffee Clothing Changes Corns Colds Catarrh Cooling off Slowly Chest Developed Clerical Rules Choosing Physicians Cracked Wheat Corn Bread Dyspeptic Drinking at Meals Decline Dressing Exercise Eating Eyes Food Fistula Fruits Flannel Feet Cold First Things Fainting Gymnasiums Horseback Exercise Injections Inverted Toe Nails Late Dinners Morbid Appetite Neuralgia Pills Pleurisy and Pneumonia Public Speakers Perspiration Singing Stooling Summer Complaint Spring Diseases Urination &c.,*c Sleep/' $1.35 Air, Deadly " Breathing Bad " State of " Of Crowded »« Taints " Noxious « Bath " Country •* Hills " Sea Shore " Close Rooms « Ot Chambers " And Thought Black Hole of Calcutta Bodily Emanations Bad Habits Breath of Life Crowding, effects of Convulsions, Children'o Capacity of Lungs Charcoal Fumes Chambers, Vitiated Chemical Affinities Deadly Emanations Dust Debilitations Emissions Electrical Influences Excessive Child-bearing as depriving of sleep,&o Griecom's Ventilation Gas Burning Human Effluvia Houses and Cottages House Plans " Warming " " by steam « « by open fire plac. Indulgence, over " Measure of Invisible Impurities Masturb Moderations Marriage a safeguard Nocturnal Ems Nursing at Night Pure Chambers Physiology Books " " Their bad effects Papered Rooms Pernicious Instruments Population Control Ruined Youth Second Naps Sleep of Children Sleeping with others " Old with young " Strong with feeble " with Consumptives « with Children « Well ** How learned Ventilation Youth's Habits " " How remedied &c. Ac. The above books are sold at the prices annexed, at 831 Broadway, New York. If oaf* dered by mail, send 15 cts. for postage. Address simply " Dr. W. W. Hall, New York." Hall's Journal of Health, SI a year ; bound vols. $1.25 each ; postage 15 cts. additional. HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. Our Legitimate Scope is almost boundless : for whatever begets pleasurable and harmless feelings, promotes Health ; and whatever induces disagreeable sensations, engenders Disease. WE AIM TO SHOW HOW DISEASE MAT BE AVOIDED, AND THAT IT IS BEST, WHEN SICKNESS COMBS, TO TAKE NO MEDICINE WITHOUT CONSULTING A PHYSICIAN. Vol. XI.] MARCH, 1864. [No. 8. PARENTAL CORRECTIONS. History records that one of the pyramids was built at the cost of a kiss of the king's daughter, for every man who fur- nished a stone for its construction. Walking down-town the other da}*, with a retired merchant of great social and private worth, the remark was made as we passed a splendid hotel, its white marble front glistening in the morning sun, "Every stone in that building cost the ruin of a young girl, if newspa- per report be true ;" as the builder .owned a large property in Mercer and Church streets, the locality of assignation-houses. " What, Doctor, do you think is the chief source of supply for the victims of the great social evil of large cities?" " Unhappy homes," was the instinctive reply. A distinguished judge once said, at the close of a long life, that most of ail the male criminals brought be fore him were found on investigation to have made the first steps toward ruin between the ages of eight and sixteen. Putting all these things together, the inference may be safely drawn, that a large share of all the unhappiness and crime in the world arises from the character of parental management, its failure to be of a kind to make home the happiest place for the child. If children are indulged too much, they soon be gin to feel the least restraint, the slightest opposition to< their wishes, an intolerable burden, and their spirits chafe like a caged tiger. Too much restraint, on the other hand, an in- cessant fault-finding, an everlasting laying down of rules and regulations, intemperate chidings, altogether disproportioned to - 48 hall's journal of health. the offense ; a habitual rehearsal of the faults of children to all visitors indiscriminately, and ruthless reprovals in the presence of others, their friends and playmates — each and all of these barbarities, as they may be very properly termed, have the very natural effect to sour the young heart, to make it feel as if the parent, who ought to be the best friend, is really the greatest tormentor ; then a feeling of defiance and desperation succeeds, and by degrees the settled purpose is formed, of seeking means to escape from a control which has now grown up to be consid- ered arbitrary and tyrannical to a degree not to be borne anoth- er hour; and often, in a fit of passion, a step is taken which can never be recalled. When a daughter begins to feel, with or without cause, that she has not her mother's sympathies, that her mother does not enter into her years, and is deficient in that tenderness which is naturally looked for, she turns all the more eagerly to the attentions, the deference, and the consideration which the young man shows her, and before she is aware of it, she is ruined forever ! The undutiful step-mother has driven countless thousands from once happy and virtuous homes to crime and infamy Harsh, unfeeling, inconsiderate teachers have many times driven the young to desperation or hopelessness. In the last year's Journal three articles, with most impressive illustrations, were published, and now three more are given, in the hope of com- pelling a very general attention to this most important subject. The first incident occurred within a few miles of our birth- place. " Some three years ago a household in the city of Covington was thrown into commotion by the sudden disappearance of a daughter twelve years of age. She was tracked to the ferry- boat, but whether she passed safely over or had been drowned was not discovered. Patient and anxious waiting brought no tidings of her. The frenzied and unhappy father, although in moderate circumstances, sought the newspaper-offices, and adver- tised a reward of one thousand dollars to whoever should restore his missing child. All proved unavailing. Some time after- ward the corpse of a young lady was found in the river near Vevay, Indiana, and hearing of it he went there, but it was not his daughter. PARENTAL CORRECTIONS. 49 a Time went on, and no tidings came of the lost child. She was dead to them, but they could not visit her grave. About twelve months since, the stricken family removed to Mexico and took up their abode in a country foreign in language and cus- toms, in features and in habits, from that in which they had met with their great loss. It might wear away their thoughts from sadly ruminating on the past, and enable them, in a region more devoted to religious duties, to look more hopefully toward the great future. There they still are. " About a week since a steamer arriving from Memphis was crowded with passengers, who were upon the guards straining their eyes to gather into one look the multitudinous objects which throng the public landing. One, however, a young girl budding into womanhood, sought the outer rail and looked wistfully over the naked shore of Covington to where, hid away under a clump of trees, was the cottage of her childhood, hop- ing in vain to see the curling smoke announce to her a warm welcome within. Quickly she passed over the ferry where long since she had disappeared. ISTo one noted or knew her, and she went without interruption to the door of her father's house. It answered not her knock; weeds had grown up rank and rough where she had left flowers, and no signs of human life were to be found there. " It was the turn now of the wayward child to weep, and when by inquiry she found how far and almost hopelessly she was separated from her parents, she began to feel desolate. Piqued at some chiding or some punishment of her mother, she had gone upon a steamboat, where a female passenger hired her as a nurse. After a little while the war broke out, stopping all intercourse with the South by the river, and, though she soon found that untried friends but seldom prove steadfast in trouble, and that the harshness of a parent is melting kindness besides that of a stranger, yet she was unable until lately to return. A kind lady of Covington has given shelter to the wanderer until her return is made known to her parents." THE HARSH TEACHER. Says an exchange : " We listened, the other day, to an emi- nent divine, one of America's most gifted and honored sons, as he gave some account of the ' wrongs of his boyhood.' 50 " £I went away to school,' said he, ' when I was seven years old. My teachers never understood me ; my first teacher as- sumed that nothing was easier than to understand children. Hence he never took pains to study the character of a child.' " ' You have blotted your book, sir — how is that? Do you mean to disobey me ? Have I not told you that I would have clean writing-books V said my master. " ' I have not blotted my book,' said I stoutly. " ' Who has blotted it, then? No one has had it but your- self. Do you accuse any one else ?' " ' I do not accuse any one, and I have not blotted my book.' " I spoke in good faith, though impudently. I had no knowl- edge of having blotted my book. " ' Hold out your hand, and be punished for disobedience and lying.' "I held out the hand that my mother had so softly kissed. I was not eight years old. The master ferruled me till he was tired, and I never shed a tear. My ej^eballs seemed on fire. The teacher rested, and then whipped me again ; I did not weep or cry out. " ' You shall beg to be let off, sir,' said he. I did not beg. I endured all he chose to inflict, and he was obliged to leave me at last, worn out by my obstinacy. " 'The worst boy I ever saw,' said he. { You will come to the gallows yet. You have not human feelings.' " I looked at my swollen and discolored hand. Oh ! if any one had kissed that little hand instead of beating it, I could have hid my face in his bosom, and wept for every insult I had committed or ever should commit. I believe I registered a vow in heaven, then, to be always kind to little children." AN OLD MAN'S STORY. "I am an old man ; yet it seems a very short time since I climbed the tall poplar-tree that grew before the vicarage, in search of the starling's nest. I can fancy I hear the shout that greeted my descent with the long-coveted prize, and feel again the crimson mounting to my cheeks as it did when, turning to the vicarage, I saw an expression of pain on the pale face of rrt father as he stood at the study- window. PARENTAL CORRECTIONS. 51 " It seems to me but yesterday since I stood in the center of that group of lads, and now 1 They are all gone, the old familiar faces.' " Dick, the surgeon's son, died many years ago in India. Harvey Vernon, the bravest of them all, was slain on the field of Waterloo ; and when the village bells rang for the victory, the rudest fellow in the village was touched as he passed the Grange and saw the blinds down and knew of the breaking heart of old "Widow Yernon. V It was a sad day for us at the vicarage, especially for Emily. My father staid in his library all day, though I do not think he read a page in any of his books — even in his favorites, Sopho- cles and Horace. 11 Emily and my mother were in my mother's chamber all the day. From that day Emily gradually drooped and faded. Her beautiful face grew more exquisitely beautiful — her dark deep eyes became more full and lustrous, but they wandered restless- ly, as though seeking some missing resting-place ; her golden hair (I have still a thick lock of it amongst an old man's memo- rials of other days, ' the days of auld lang syne ') hung more carelessly about her shoulders, and her pale cheeks were suffused with a rosy tint that gradually deepened into a burning crim- son, while her sweet voice sunk almost into a whisper. As I looked at her, her startling beauty reminded me of the language of the book my mother used to read to her as she lay on the couch in the drawing-room. Her ' face was as the face of an angel.' " Ah me ! how I am wandering from the circumstance I sat down to write about ; but you must" forgive an old man, for whenever I think of Emily, it is always so. Let me see — yes, I remember perfectly. " It was Christmas eve, in the year 1791, and the snow had been falling heavily all the day, blotting out the hedges and walls which surrounded the vicarage, and burying the sun-dial that Willie and I had carved with great pains during the long winter evenings. " I had come from my father's study, where I and Willie had been having our usual lesson in Latin. Willie was a high-spir- 52 ited lad, of a very loving and affectionate disposition ; though, when excited or in a passion, his temper was fearful to behold, and his eyes flashed with a strange light that made us all trem- ble, except my father. " It was some time before my father came down ; but when he did, we heard him lock the study-door after him, and he came down alone. He looked very stern and angry ; he was in one of those moods which sometimes took possession of him when he was disturbed. Though my father was always silent when in these moods, yet I always thought there was a vivid resemblance between them and "Willie's outbreaks of passion. " ' Willie will not come down to-night,' said he ; ' I have left him in the study, with a lesson that will keep him all night.' I thought I saw a tear start from my mother's eye, as she turned her face to the window and looked out upon the snow, which still continued to fall heavily. "It was the anniversary of Emily's birthday, and we were expecting a party of her young friends, (children of the neigh- boring gentry,) to pass the evening at the vicarage. " It began to grow dark about four o'clock, and then our company began to arrive. There were, first, the children of 'Squire Harcourt, who came wrapped in soft furs and shawls, in the old-fashioned cozy family carriage, with its couple of do- cile grays. Then came Harry Yernon, and his sisters, Emily and Agnes ; and, as the time wore on, about a score of young people were assembled at the vicarage. It was a merry party. My father, whom it would be an injustice to represent as an unkind man, threw himself into the spirit of our merriment as though he had been one of us. The furniture, excepting the old-fashioned piano, had been removed from the drawing-room, and it and the sitting-room had, by the removal of a partition, been thrown into one, making a large and commodious room, which had been plentifully hung with holly and other ever- greens. The red berries gleamed like tiny masses of fire be- neath the dark green glossy leaves, and here and there my sister's hands had gracefully arranged bunches of many -colored ribbons. " Many inquiries were made for Willie, and for a moment or two a shadow seemed cast upon the pleasure of the children PAEENTAL CORRECTIONS. 53 when they were told that Willie, the presiding spirit of fun in every juvenile party, would not be with them ; but all feeling of disappointment vanished as the time wore on — except from one gentle, loving spirit. "I knew that my mother was thinking of the dear boy in the room above us, for Willie was my mother's favorite. She was thinking of a handsome face pressed against the door, and of a tiny ear close to the key-hole, listening to the voices of the merry groups below. She knew these sounds would be exquis- ite torture to the prisoner. She knew how that quick, eager spirit would fret in the study above, like a wild bird in a cage. " Sometimes I saw her whisper to my father, and then his face grew hard and dark, and my mother's yet more sad and pained. "My sister played, with exceeding grace, some simple airs upon the old piano ; and then, the boys choosing their partners from the little maidens who stood with eager, blushing faces and beseeching eyes, beneath the holly in a corner of the room, the dance began. " While this was going on I saw my father put something into my mother's hand ; it was the study-key. With a grateful smile — oh ! how sweet that smile was ! — she left the room. I stole after her to the foot of the wide, old-fashioned staircase ; I saw her glide swiftly up the stairs ; and I could hear when she unlocked the door ; and when she opened the door to pass in, the moonlight streamed brightly through the doorway on to the dark landing, and as its light fell on the face of the old clock which stood there, I saw it wanted but a few minutes of ten o'clock. " I had not stood more than a minute at the foot of the stairs, when I heard my mother cry : ' Willie !' Then I heard a pierc- ing scream, and she suddenly passed me, her face white as the snow that lay outside on the steps, and rushing into the room where my father was playing with the children, went straight up to him, and crying, ' Willie's gone ! 0 Willie, Wil- lie darling !' fell fainting at his feet. " My sister immediately left the piano, and with the aid of some cold water my mother was restored very soon. Of course, this put an end to the festivities, and the children were soon on 54 hall's jouenal of health. their way home, except Harry Vernon, who staid to assist in the search for the missing boy. Afterward my mother told us, that as she was endeavoring to amuse a group of the younger children, she heard Willie's voice distinctly calling, ' Mamma ! mamma !' She instantly got the key, as I have before related, and went up to the study. As soon as she opened the door, she felt the window was open, by the rushing of the cold frosty air past her. The instant she entered the room she felt a tre- mor seize her ! Why did not Willie spring to meet her ? She felt in a moment that Willie was not there ! The study-lamp was flickering out ; there stood my father's easy -chair opposite a table on which lay his books and manuscripts, and amongst them poor Willie's soiled and hated Latin Grammar. "He must have climbed clown the side of the old house, by the aid of the ivy -stems which grew up to the pinnacles of the gables on to the top of the antique portico, and from thence have leaped to the ground. Willie, agile as a squirrel, could easily have accomplished this. "In a few moments from the discovery of his absence, we — that is my mother and father, Harry and myself, and two serv- ants, one of them old Walter, who passionately loved Willie — were out in search of the missing one. " The snow was still falling heavily, but by the light of the moon, which was at full, we could see almost as distinctly as by daylight. "Strange to say, my mother went instinctively toward a deep pool of water, called by the villagers the Black Pool— so called because of its depth. Near it, and overshadowing it, grew an old gnarled thorn-bush, which, after many winters' frosts and snows, still preserved its vitality. It was a pleasant place in summer. He was found drowned! Every means were used for his restoration, while old Walter was sent off on the brown mare to the doctor's. We heard the dull, heavy sound of her hoofs upon the snow, as she went off at a swift pace down the carriage-drive. In a short time she came back, bring- ing the doctor. " My mother was bending over Willie, and nervously sway- ing herself backward and forward, when he came in ; but she arose immediately, and with wide, flashing eyes, cried : PARENTAL CORRECTIONS. 55 "'0 doctor! save my boy ! 0 Willie! Willie darling! Speak to me, my child !' "I never read David's thrilling lament, '0 Absalom! my son, Absalom ! ' without thinking of my mother's great agony in Willie's chamber. The doctor was a remarkably skillful man ; but it seemed a hopeless case. How my mother's eager eye fol- lowed all his movements i * At last, when we were about despairing, Willie gently open- ed his eyes — those magnificent eyes of his ! There was an un- speakable ecstasy on my mother's face, the like of which I have never seen since and never expect to see again. It was coming light when the doctor left us, and Willie was in a refreshing sleep. " The many-colored rainbow of hope now hung over the vicarage — alas! soon to fade away, leaving us but the cold rain and dark clouds of a great sorrow. "After an hour or two of sleep, Willie awoke, and told my mother how he heard the shouts and laughter of the children in the drawing-room, and how the music seemed to taunt him ; and then how he became afraid, and dared not look where the shadows lay in the library ; and how, as he watched the moon rise through the poplars before the window, he was tempted to climb down the ivy-stems ; and how he had wandered to the Black Pool, and been tempted to spring across it to get a bunch of crimson berries that hung from a branch on the other side, thinking he would give them to her ; and how he had missed his footing and fallen backward into the pond. Then he told her how he arose to the surface — and how he was falling into a sweet and pleasant slumber at the bottom, with thoughts of her passing dream-like through his mind — and how he felt some hand touch him, and an exquisite sensation of pain as if he were dying — and that was all he knew. " How my mother wept and smiled, clasped him to her bo- som, and called him her darling Willie ! I need not tell you how my poor father kissed him and asked — ay, he, the stern disciplinarian, asked — pardon of his own child. Willie, fa- tigued with his long talk, fell asleep again; but it was a troubled, broken slumber. His cheeks grew crimson, and his breath quick and hot, and he trembled as though he were very cold. 56 V The doctor came again, but this time he shook his head, and said there was no chance for him. My mother and. rather watched him night and day ; but he grew worse and worse Now he would talk of the wild bees' nests he had found, a few days ago, in a bank in the wood ; then he would shout, as if at play ; and then, whilst my father covered his face with his hands, and the big tears trickled through his fingers in an agony of grief, he would try to repeat his Latin, and failing to do so correctly, he would begin again, saying in beseeching tones : ' 0 papa ! forgive me ! I can not !' "Willie died one morning, just as the old year was dying amidst frost and snow, repeating his Latin lesson, as my mother held his head with its splendid dark locks on her bosom, and his little hand lay in my father's trembling palm. FRENZY " ' Abe you ready for me ! have you got the money?' and he went on heaping on me the most bitter taunts and opprobrious epithets ; while speaking, he drew a handful of papers from his pockets, saying : ' I got you into your office, and now I'll get you out.' I can not tell how long these threats and invectives lasted. At first, I kept interposing, trying to pacify him. But I could not stop him. Soon, my own temper was up. I forgot every thing but the sting of his words. I was excited to the highest degree of passion ; and in my fury I seized a small stick of wood and dealt him an instantaneous blow, with all the force that passion could give it. I did not know or think or care where nor how hard I should strike, nor what would be the effect. He fell instantly dead ! I then cut up his body, hid a portion of it, and burned the remainder in a furnace." This was the confession of a highly educated man, just before he suffered the ignominious penalty of murder ; the murder of the best friend he had on earth ! It was done in an ecstacy of passion, in a "phrenzy," from a Greek word phrene, which means the mind ; or a state of the brain in which the mind is excited to a pitch which places it beyond all human control ; it is a moment' ary madness. The lesson sought to be impressed by this nar- FRENZY. 57 ration, is the danger of cherishing any mental excitement; and the consequent duty of studying how, in all possible ways, tc keep the mental faculties in a uniformly calm, quiet, and delib- erate condition. In the incident above, it was proven that half an hour before, the murderer had closed a philosophic lecture ; and as he stepped from the rostrum into his own room, was met as above detailed, by a rich, remorseless creditor. In a very few minutes the calm philosopher was transformed into an ungovernable fury, by the utterance of a dozen taunting words ; and had no more control over himself than an infant over an already sped thunderbolt. Cases are given in standard medical works, where the mental excitement has reached such an intensity, that the individual has fallen dead on the in- stant; even greater calamities are recorded; the loss of the mind forever, and the hapless victim has raved and raged in impotency behind the bars of a maniac's cell for the remainder of a long life ; a fate surely worse than death ! Sometimes the mind has gone out in eternal night with a fearful screech, com- bining the yell of the savage with the expressions of a demoniac. Lesser degrees of mental excitement have found vent in words and manner so expressive, as to excite an nricontrollable hor- ror in the minds of some of the hearers, and wilted the hearts of others, to bud and bloom no more. A single word uttered by a child to a parent, in a moment of excitement ; of a parent to a child ; of a husband to a wife, has many a time, before now, quenched every spark of human emotion and of human love, and a hate has sprung from the ashes, as virulent as the deadly upas, only to go out in the night of the grave. Human happi- ness, and life itself, then, often depends on a failure to control the mental emotion. An effort to practice such a control should be early made ; the earlier the better. And let it be particu- larly remembered, that the most effectual practical manner of doing this, is to cultivate a habit of speaking in a low, slow, deliberate tone of voice, under all circumstances ; but whenever the circumstances are exciting, speak not a syllable until the thought, embodied in words, stands out plainly before the mind, " My God and Father is here," and then speak accordingly. The reason of this lies in the curious fact, that the mind has a faculty of being persuaded to believe what the lips express, al- 58 hall's journal of health. though every word is a falsehood ; for in the excited condition, that which is called imagination runs riot, and makes the merest presumption appear for a moment to be an actual fact. This is an every day occurrence in domestic life, where an ex- cited husband or wife begins to talk of a supposed insult, or deviation of a servant ; and the more they talk, the greater ap- pears the aggravation. Eeader, keep ever before you the fear of "frenzy," for in an unguarded hour, within any dozen minutes, it may lead you to utter a word against a heart that loves you, whose wound no tears can ever wash away ; may lead you to commit an act which will send you to the gallows or a mad-house ! DEATH. Death is the cessation of life. When by a wound, concus- sion, or mental shock, the action of the heart is destroyed, the brain ceases to live at once, because life-giving blood ceases to be sent to the brain and it dies, as a fish dies without water. It is desirable to know in all cases that death has certainly taken place, to avoid the horrible fate of being buried alive, which perhaps has not occurred a dozen times since the world began; perhaps not once, unless by deliberate design, as a murder or execution. The credulous Fontenelle, who died a hundred years old in 1757, gathered from all history only a hundred cases, without any proof of their truthfulness. It is true that persons disinterred have been found turned over in their coffins, their grave-clothes disarranged and even torn. Sounds have come from coffins while being let down into the grave or soon after, but no authenticated account has ever come to the writer's no- tice of a person coming to life after the coffin has been screwed down ; and yet coffins have been found burst open, and appear- ances have been observed which would naturally be exhibited after some desperate struggle. But it is the nature of all dead bodies to swell ; this process commences on the instant of life's cessation, because decomposition begins preparatory to the cor- ruption which precedes our return to that dust from which we came. This decomposition generates gases, which keep on ex- panding until they compel an outlet. There is a well-authenti- cated case, (and various similar instances,) where a body, after DEATH. 59 being laid on the dissecting-table, was suddenly heaved up and thrown on the floor in the presence of the young medical stu- dents ; it was by the force of the exploding gas which had been .generated within the body, which had been "found drowned." Persons may have been put in a coffin before they were per- fectly dead, but it is absurd to suppose that life is possible after an interval of perfect seclusion from fresh air from the time of fastening the lid until the coffin reaches its last resting-place. The action of the gases in the cadaver will naturally and suffi- ciently explain all the appearances observed on occasions of opening the coffin after burial. The description which Hippo- crates, the " Father of Medicine," gave of death over two thousand years ago, has never been improved upon. " The forehead wrinkled and dry ; the eye sunken ; the nose pointed, and bordered with a violet or black circle ; the temples sunken, hollow, and retired ; the lips hanging down ; the cheeks sunken ; the chin wrinkled and hard ; the color of the skin leaden or violet ; the hairs of the nose and eyelashes sprinkled with a yellowish, white dust." This is as to the face ; and when all observed, we may know that that face can never be lighted up to life again. But there are other proofs which do not leave the shadow of a doubt, as when the heart ceases to beat ; the skin is pale and cold ; a film is over the eye ; the joints, first rigid, have become flexible ; and a dark greenish color begins to form about the skin of the abdomen, the infallible sign of beginning corruption. But as we would have it done to us as the last re- quest, let us with the utmost willingness allow the poor help- less, unresisting frame remain at least forty-eight hours under the unfastened lid after the surest proof of all has been noticed, the cessation of all movement of the chest and abdomen, for then the breath of life has gone out forever. The moments immedi- ately preceding death from disease are probably those of utter insensibility to all pain, or of a delightful passivity, from that uni- versal relaxation of every thing which pertains to the physical condition. Hence Louis XIY. is reported to have died saying : " I thought dying had been more difficult." The greatest sur- geon of all ages, William Hunter, while dying said : " If this be dying, it is a pleasant thing to die." Dear reader, may you and I so live, that in the practice of bodily temperances and moral purities, death may be to us the gate of endless joy and sinless bliss. 60 hall's journal of health. FIDELITY. Some four years ago, a Baltimore gentleman had large inter- ests at stake in St. Petersburg!^ which required prompt and very close attention. Among all he knew, there was one man who seemed to him to possess the requisites for managing all matters faithfully, justly, and well; upon this individual he called, and explained to him at length the nature of the busi- ness, and the judgment and discretion requisite in bringing it to a satisfactory adjustment, concluding by saying: -'If you are willing to go, I will give you twenty -rive hundred dollars a month, but I wish you to take your time ; do not hurry away a day sooner than is requisite to fully arrange all details and close the business in such a way, that any trouble hereafter shall be in a measure impossible." "I will go," said Mr. L. He was absent many months ; and on his return, gave the fullest expla- nation to his employer, who, on gathering up his papers, express- ed his satisfaction as to the manner in which his agent had acted, and handed him a check, which Mr. L. put in his pocket, with- out looking at it, supposing it was the amount due him accord- ing to the original understanding. But when he returned to his family he found, on reading the paper, that it was a token (irrespective of the original agreement) of Mr. W.'s apprecia- tion of " fidelity " to an important trust, in the shape of a check for fifty thousand dollars. This morning's paper, of Thursday, August twenty-first, 1862, announces that a young man, the confidential clerk of a gentleman of wealth in New-York, had been intrusted by his employer with the duty of collecting sev- eral bank checks of several thousand dollars each. The young man did not return that day. But having acted with the strict- est fidelity to the interests of the house for some years, no suspicions were harbored. When, however, he was not found at his place the next morning, some misgivings were slowly awakened; and, investigation discovered that the money had been collected, and that the unfaithful clerk had left the city. He was followed by the officers of the law, who found him secreted in the upper room of a hotel in a distant place in the interior of the State. He was returned to the city in irons, and confined in a felon's cell, and awaits the fearful punishment 61 of wrong-doing. He said to the officers, that as soon as he left the city he became so nervous and conscience-stricken, that he did not know what course to pursue, and wandered around from place to place, without aim or end ; the miserable victim of unappeasable remorse. In the former case, fidelity to trusts committed, has enriched a whole family for life ; there being "thrown in" the sweet and comforting reflection, that their fortune was owing to a father's manly fidelity ; the other, for the want of it, begins life at twenty-three, behind the bars of a jail, with no other rational prospect than that of suffering under the writhings of an outraged conscience, as long as life endures. The former will live in the serene contemplation of duty done, so promotive of health and happiness and a good old age ; while the other, under the wasting influence of unavailing regrets, of sharp-pointed memories, and of bitter remorse, will doubtless sink into a premature grave, where body and memory will rot together. ' "THE MITTEN." Seventeen years ago there was a fair girl so pure, so lovely, so refined, that she still rises to my mind as almost akin to angels. She was wooed and ultimately won by a handsome young man of considerable wealth. He sported a fine team, delighted in hunting, and kept a fine pack of hounds. He neither played cards, drank wine, nor used tobacco. He had no occupation, no calling, no trade. He lived on his money, the interest of which alone would have supported a family handsomely. I never saw the fair bride again until a few days ago. Seventeen years had passed away, and with them her beauty and her youth ; her husband's fortune and his life, dur- ing the latter part of which they lived in a log-cabin on the banks of the Ohio river, near Blennerhasset's Island ; a whole family in one single room, subsisting on water, fat bacon, and corn bread. The husband had no business capacity. He was a gentleman of education, of refinement, of noble impulses; but when his money was gone he could get no employment, simply because he did not know how to do any thing. For a while he floundered about, first trying one thing, then another, but 02 HALLS JOURNAL OF HEALTH. " failure " was written on them all. He however finally ob- tained a situation ; the labor was great, the compensation small; it was that or starvation ; in his heroic efforts to discharge his duty acceptably he overworked himself and died, leaving his widow and six girls in utter destitution. In seventeen years the sweet and joyous and beautiful girl had become a broken- hearted, care-worn, poverty-stricken widow, with a houseful of helpless children I Young woman ! if a rich young man asks you to marry him, and has no occupation, or trade, or calling, by which he could make a living if he were thrown on his own resources, you may give him your respect, but "give him the mitten." Whatever may be a young man's qualities, if he is fond, very fond of going to the theater, " refuse " him. If a young man shows by his conversation that he is an ad- mirer of fast horses, and is pretty well acquainted with the qualities and " time " of the best racing nags of the country, when he asks your hand, " give him the mitten" only. If you ever hear a young man speak of his father or mother disrespectfully, contemptuously, do not encourage his attentions ; he will do the same of you, and in many ways will make your heart ache before you die. If you know a young man likes to stand around tavern-doors, at the street-corners, and about " groceries," cut your hand off rather than place it in his ; he is worth only the " mitten." If your suitor can tell you a great deal about cards ; seems familiar with a multitude of " tricks " which can be performed with the same, and is himself an adept in such things, let him win all the money he may from others, but let him not " win " your heart, for he will "lose it" in a year, and leave you a broken one in its place. If you know of a " nice young man " who will certainly heir a large estate, who is of a " highly respectable family," who seems to be at home as to the usages, customs, and proprieties of good society, and yet who is indifferent about attending church on the Sabbath-day, who speaks disparagingly of clergy- men, who talks about religion in a patronizing way as r a very good thing in its place," particularly for old women, weak young girls and children, never marry him should he ask you. HOW TO RISE. 63 Such a man can never warm a woman's heart ; will never twine around it the tendrils of a true affection, for he is innately cold^ unsympathizing and selfish, and should sickness and trouble come to you, he will leave you to bear them all alone. Idleness, the having no occupation, will always and inevita. bly engender moral and physical disease ; and these traits will be more or less perpetuated in the children born to such ; the brunt of these calamities has to be borne by the mother, and in the bearing up against them, how many a noble-hearted woman has sorrowed, and grieved, and toiled herself into a premature grave, may never be known, but the number can not be ex- pressed in a few figures. Therefore, my sunny-faced daughter, if you do not want to grow old before your time, to live a life of toil and sorrow, and then prematurely die, give not your hand, but only " the mitten "to a young man, however well born or rich, who has not a legitimate calling by which he could " make a living " if he were by some fortuity left penni- less. HOW TO RISE. French statisticians say that the "well to do" live about eleven years longer, on an average, than those who work from day to day for a living, who, if they fail to get work to-day, will have no bread to eat to-morrow, unless they obtain it on credit, borrow, beg, or steal. Hence, it is clear that the moral debasements of the last two, and the wearing economies and anxieties attendant on the first named, tend to shorten human life. If, then, the young can have pointed out to them a sure means of rising in the world, of attaining a happy competence, it is the legitimate province of the physician to indicate what these means are, as applicable to a large class of readers. Let every young man and young woman bear in mind always, that their destiny in life depends on their individual character ; that what that is they will inevitably be ; because the character of a man is indicated by his actions. These actions are read by the ob- servant, and they are "placed" accordingly. Hence, all should study propriety of deportment; not only as to the greater, but in regard to things which may be considered of scarcely any importance. 64 hall's journal of health. A shrewd young, man, one who is destined to " rise in the world," would never select that girl for a wife who would sit down on a book which chanced to lie on a chair or sofa, who would tread on or over a pocket-handkerchief, or any article of clothing on the floor, rather than stoop to pick it up. A young lady of taste and refinement would scarcely accept the attentions of a young man the collar of whose coat was usually speckled with dandruff, or whose finger-ends were fringed with black, or whose shirt-bosom was often spotted with tobacco-juice, or was uniformly ruffled or soiled. Those who are so full of the milk of human kindness as to promise unhesitatingly almost any thing asked of them, and are just as full, later on, of excellent reasons for not having fulfilled these promises, can never make their way into the con- fidence and respect of the thrifty and the good. A man of good repute in Wall street, the other day ap- plied to a well-known citizen to rent from him a furnished house. He was refused. A mutual friend expressed surprise. " He stands well on the street." "Yes." "His family are highly esteemed." " Yes." " He is known to be punctual in all his pecuniary engagements." "Yes." " Well, why won't you let him have your house, at your own price, while you are away?" " Because he came into my parlor and sat on my sofa with his hat on. Such a man can not have habits of personal neat- ness. He would spit on my carpets ; he would break my chair- backs by tilting them against the wall, and soil it with his un- kempt hair. The presumption is, his family are like him ; at all events, he alone could injure my furniture more in six months than would be the profits of renting. No, sir ! A man who sits in my parlor with his hat on, the first time he ever en- tered it, can not rent my house at any price." Each defect in a person's character is read by the observant as easily as the scarlet letter on the back of the erring. Let the young remember that the character will "crop out" in the manners, in the little acts of life, and that, if these are unex- ceptionable, and if they are uniformly neat, methodical, prompt, and energetic, these qualities will prove a passport to "good places," and to that thrift which brings with it a quiet mind and length of days. PUBLIC NOTICE. 65 PUBLIC NOTICE. Hereafter, the price of Hall's Journal of Health will be One Dollar and a half a year ; single numbers Twelve Cents. Our readers will, we are sure, appreciate the ne- cessity of this increase in charges without any further explanation. All our publications — " Bronchitis," ." Consumption," "Health and Disease," " Sleep," the two Bound Volumes of "The Fireside Monthly," (now discontinued,) and the ten Bound Volumes of " Hall's Journal of Health " — are at the uniform price of $1.25 each. By mail, post-paid, $1.50 each. Home on the Hudson. — For sale, one of the finest Country Seats on the east bank of the Hudson, sixty-six miles from town, and commanding a oeautiful river view. About forty acres, four square, every foot productive. A handsome double mansion, with all the modern improvements of furnace, gas, range, with hot and cold water in the chambers, bath-room, laundry, etc., porter's lodge, ice-house well tilled, and commodious stables and carriage-house. All the buildings in the most complete repair. Over two thousand ornamental, shade, and fruit trees have been set out within the last ten years ; large garden, with every variety of small fruit, etc. Unsurpassed for healthfulness. Ready for immediate occupancy. Carpets, mirrors, book-case3 in library, gas chandeliers, etc., will go with the house. A large portion of the purchase money can remain for a term of years on bond and mortgage if desired. Reference is made to Dr. W. "W. Hall, of ftew-York, Theodore B. Wetmore, Esq., of 31 Pine street, New-York, whose country seat adjoins the place ; to Daniel Denny, Esq., President of the Hamilton Bank, Boston ; Hon. Erastus Brooks, New-York, of Baltimore, Benj. T. Treedick, Esq., of Philadelphia, and Dr. Pliny Earle, at the United States Lunatic Hospital at Washington, D. C. The New-York Evening Express says of this valuable property that it is one of the most beautiful and healthy country seats upon the Hudson, complete in house, grounds, and stables, all properly furnished and fit to be occupied at once. Over two thousand fruit and ornamental trees are upon the place. The owner parts with this property only because he is about to leave the State. Beautiful Hair. — u Dodge's Tincture," applied monthly, keeps the scalp free from dandruff, promotes, by its cleansing, agreeably stimulating properties, the growth of the hair where any other agent can, is an admirably soothing curative of wounds and sores of the scalp, and has now been discovered to destroy instantly, by one application, all vermin infesting the hair of children and domestic pets, and of persons sleeping in strange beds and otherwise. Small bottles, 25 cent3 ; Quarts, $1.50. P. C. Godfrey, 831 Broadway, New- York. Economy, Light, and Cookery — W. D. Russell, of 206 Pearl street, New-York, has patented a lamp attachment by which water is boiled and a comfortable meal prepared by a common lamp, which at the same time lights the room without inter- fering with the comfort of the person reading, writing, sewing, etc. Price 50 cents. 66 hall's journal op health. The "Medicine Shelf," published by the American Tract Society, 28 Cornhill, Boston, and by J. G. Broughton, 13 Bible House, New-York City, abounds in striking illustrations of useful and practical truths, in eighteen chapters, (315 pp. 16mo,) on Lifting the Curtain, My Neighbors, Square Corners, Sin and Sorrow, One Right Way, etc. Also, "Pictures and Lessons" for Little Readers, being nmety-six pictures and as many lessons, theoretical and practical, for young readers ; every one of which will be literally devoured. " Sandy Maclean and two other Stories," all deeply interesting. Sargeant's Temperance Tales is well worthy of a place in every family, literally, whether temperate or intemperate. A most valuable present for any one to make to any one. ."Home Stories for Boys and Girls," forty-seven stories. It is one of the most beautiful, interesting, and instructive volumes for children we have seen for many a day. Money can not be better laid out for family reading than by spending it at the New-York Bible House, number thirteen. We suppose the " other " Tract Society and the old- school Sunday-School Publishing House are reposing in their dignity, and are wait- ing for customers to come to them, for we seldom see any of their issues on our table, while the new-school branch are wide awake, and are making most of their time by letting the people know what delightful and useful reading they are pre- paring for them every week, for every week they have something new, and as good as it is new, and take pains to have them noticed in periodicals which go to fami- lies and households all over the land. Another of their interesting publications is " Our Father Who Art in Heaven," a story illustrative of the Lord's Prayer. Also, " Reposing in Jesus," or, the true secret of grace and strength, by G. W. Mylne, a book which every heart Christian can always feed upon and grow and thrive. Photographic Magnifier and Stereoscope Combined — sent by mail for $1.50 — adds greatly to the beauty, interest, and value of all Stereoscopic and Photographic Pictures ; it makes the Photographic Album more interesting, because it magnifies and brings out the features with such a life-likeness as to delight every one who takes up the instrument. A New Edition of our Book on Sleep is just issued, treating of all subjects connected with the hours of sleep, and is of personal and practical application to all classes, ages, and conditions, especially to that multitude of youth who have been beguiled by advertisements in the daily papers under the headings of " Man- hood," "Nervous Debility," "Physiology of Marriage," "Restored Powers,' "Marriage Guide," etc. By mail, $1.50. " Health and Disease " is entirely exhausted, but is promised by our printer to be ready by the tenth of March ; $1.50 by mail. Our new book of " Two Hundred Health Tracts," with monograms on various interesting subjects, will appear at the same time. Price $1.75. By mail, post-paid, $2. Persons will be supplied in the order of their application. F HEALTH TRACT, No. 201. APOPLEXY Means "stricken from;" a description given by the Greeks, under the feeling that it was of unearthly origin. The person falls down as if suddenly struck with death. There is neither thought, feeling, nor voluntary motion. There is no sign of life, except that of deep heavy breathing. It comes on with the suddenness of the lightning's flash, and with as little premonition. A common fainting fit occurs suddenly, but there is no breathing, no pulse, and the face is pale and shrunken. En apoplexy, if the person is not really dead, the face is flushed, the breathing loud, and the pulse full and strong, usually. In mild attacks, a person is found in bed of a morning apparently in a sound sleep ; but if so, he can be easily waked up. In apoplexy no amount of ^baking makes any impression. The earliest Greek writers described apoplexy with a minute accuracy, which has scarcely been ex- ceeded since, showing that it is a malady belonging to all time. To pass from ap- parent perfect health to instant death on entering one's own dwelling, or sitting down to the family table, or while at the happy fireside, in the loving interchange of affectionate offices, strikes us as being perfectly terrible. But the terror belongs to the witnesses ; the victim is as perfectly destitute of thought, feeling, sensation, and consciousness, for the time being, as if the head had been taken off by a can- non-ball. In many cases, after lying for hours and even days in a state of perfect insensibility, the patient wakes up as if from an uneasy sleep or dream ; but often, a3 many sadly know, there is no return to life again. The essential nature of the disease seems to be such an excess of blood in the brain that its appropriate ves- sels or channels can not contain it, and it is " extravasated," let out, upon the sub. stance of the brain itself, and thus arrests the functions of life. Persons with short neck, who are "thick-set," corpulent, are almost the sole actual subjects of apoplexy, when not induced by falls, blows, shocks, and over-doses of certain drugs. Apoplexy is an avoidable disease, except in some cases of accidents, which we can neither foresee nor prevent; it is, essentially, too much blood in the brain. This blood is either sent there too rapidly, or, when there, is detained in some unnatural manner, the essential effect being the same. Whatever "excites the brain" does so by sending an unnatural amount of blood there ; such as intense and long thought on one subject, all kinds of liquors; any drink containing alcohol, whether ale, beer, cider, wine, or brandy, excites the brain and endangers apoplexy. So will a hearty meal, especially if alcoholic drinks are taken at the same time ; going to bed soon after eating heartily, sleeping on the back, if corpulent, may bring on an attack any night ; so will a hot bath, so will a cold bath soon after eating. The ultimate effects Of all opiates are to detain the blood in the brain, while the things just men- tioned send it there in excess. The great preventives are warm feet, regular daily bodily habits, eating nothing later than three o'clock p.m., and the avoidance of opiates, tobacco, and all that can intoxicate. In case of an attack send for a physician. Meanwhile, put the feet in hot water, and envelop the head with cold ; ice is still better. It is safer to live in a hilly than level country, in town than country. Winter is more dangerous than summer. The liability increases rapidly after forty years of age, greatest at sixty, when it gradually diminishes. Statistics seem to show that the most dangerous years are forty-eight, fifty-eight, sixty- six, while forty-six and forty-nine are almost exempt. The well-to-do are more liable than the laboring. Sudden changes of weather promote attacks. Let the liable, especially, live in reference to these well-established facts. NOTICES. " Golden Stories," published by Mr. Wood, 61 Walker street, embrace five delightful little books, in uniform binding, for young children : " The White Kit- ten," " The Tent in the Garden," " Loving Words or Loving Deeds," " The Water- Melon," and " Willie Wilson, the Newsboy." This House, it will be remembered, has had for many years the most extensive assortment of medical publications of any other establishment in the country, besides a large collection of miscellaneous books, all of sterling value. Almanac for 1864. Being the Tenth Illustrated Register of Rural Affairs. By Luther Tucker & Co., Albany, N. Y. Sent free by mail for twenty-five cents, giv- ing a vast amount of useful, reliable, and practical information to farmers upon every variety of subject connected with the cultivation of land. The Mother's Journal, monthly, $1 a year, New-York, by Mrs. Caroline 0. Hiscox, is filled with articles of sterling value ; the selections are made with a wise dis- crimination, nothing frivolous ever appears in its fair pages. It merits a very general circulation. " It Beats the World," said our good-natured old colored laundress the other day, in admiration of the " Universal Clothes-Wringer," and her reasons were terse and laconic : " It saves work and clothes too." Weather Indicator. Charles Wilder, of Peterboro, N. H., manufactures Wood- ruff's Barometer, which combines in a remarkable degree cheapness, accuracy, sim- plicity, durability, and portability. Prices from $5 to $20. Photographic Magnifier, a most charming accompaniment to photographic albums. $1, $1.50 and $3. The Photographic Magnifier affords the sweetest of all pleasures, as often as used for inspecting the portraits of those dear to us. Sold by P. C. Godfrey, 831 Broadway, New-York. To Youth. — A warning against advertisements headed Physical Debility. Con- fessions of an Invalid. Marriage Guide. Warning to Young Men. Manhood Re- stored. Essence of Life. Advice to the Married. Early Indiscretions. Loss of Memory. Nervous Debility. See Hall's Journal of Health for December, 1863. Sent post-paid for twelve cents. Personal. — Our office for medical consultation temporarily, is at 831 Broadway, New-York, from eleven to one o'clock, daily. Ladies who desire a consultation are requested to notify us, when we will appoint a specific hour. Gentlemen who can not be in the city during the above hours can arrange a special appointment. We do not desire interruption at present, except from eleven to one, unless necessary. The last editions of "Health and Disease" and "Sleep" are exhausted ; new editions will be printed about first of February. Any one of our books will be sent post-paid to any person sending us four new subscribers. John G. Broughton, Esq., No. 13 Bible House, New-York, has sent us four pub- lications of the American Tract Society, No. 28 Cornhill, Boston. " Temperance Tales," by Lucius M. Sargent, is an invaluable book for all classes, but especially for the young. " Pleasant Tales," in prose and verse, with twenty-six engravings. Contents : Mark's Temptation ; Bill and his Bible ; A Lesson from the Birds ; True Courage, and fifty-four ! other useful and most interesting stories, sent for forty cents ; also, " Black and White," by Mrs. Jane D. Chaplin, which will fir.d thou- sands of admiring and sympathizing readers. Christ the Children's Guide, by Rev. J. S. Sewall, a sweetly instructive little book of thirty-six pages. HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. Our Legitimate Scope is almost boundless : for whatever begets pleasurable and harmless feelings, promotes Health ; and whatever induces disagreeable sensations, engenders Disease. 7S AIM TO SHOW HOW DISEASE MAY BE AVOIDED, AND THAT IT IS BEST, -WHEN SICKNESS COMBS, TO TAKE NO MEDICINE WITHOUT CONSULTING A PHYSICIAN. Vol. XL] APRIL, 1864. [No. 9. NEVER Never taste an atom when 3*011 are not hungry ; it is suicidal,. Never enter an omnibus without having the exact change. Never stop to talk in a church aisle after service is over. Never hire servants who go in- pairs, as sisters, cousins, or any thing else. Never blow your nose between your thumb and fingers. Never deposit the results of a "hawk" or cough on the side- walk. Never pick your nose in company. Never open your handkerchief to inspect the product of a "blow." Never speak of your father as - the old man." Never reply to the epithet of a drunkard, a fool, or a fellow. Never speak contemptuously of womankind. Never abuse one who was once your bosom-friend, however bitter now. Never smile at the expense of your religion or your Bible. Never stand at the corner of a street. Never take a second nap. Never eat a hearty supper. Never insult poverty. Never eat between meals. HEALTH TBACT, No. 200. WEATHER AND WEALTH. " What has the weather to do with business ?" was the reply of a cheery-faced and successful business man, to the inquiry: "Are you out such a day as this?" Such an hour of sleet and storm and angry howling winds is seldom seen in these latitudes. It was approaching three o'clock, and the bank account had to be made right, or financial ruin would have been the result. Suppose the storm had been ten times more tempestuous, the wind ten times more boisterous, the cold twenty degrees below zero, the City Hall clock would have struck three just as soon, and the bank notary would not have delayed one second later to have written the fatal word, " protested ;" for business knows no law but that of promptitude ; it knows no excuse ; death even is no apology for the failure to meet a bank engagement. He who will succeed in making a fortune in a large city, must meet his engagements in all weathers. It is precisely so in relation to health and disease. Moderate, daily exercise in the open air, with a cheerful spirit and an encouraging remuneration, is worth a thousand times more than all the remedies in the materia medica for the removal of ordinary ailments, when conjoined with temperance and cleanliness. But the same principle must be applied as in the successful prosecution of business. The exer- cise must be performed regardless of the weather. Not that exercise in bad weather i3 especially promotive to health ; it is not as favorable to that end as good weather. But if exercise is needed at all, it is not the less necessary because it is raining, or very cold, or unendurably hot. If a man is hungry, he is not the less hungry because he can get nothing to eat. The necessity for exercise as a means of health is abiding ; what makes the rule imperative, " Go out in all weathers " is, that we eat in all weathers ; and if we exercise only when the weather is per- fectly suitable, half the time would be lost in our changing climate. But the very energy and moral courage which enables a man to take out-door exercise, re- gardless of the weather, is of itself a potent means for the cure even of serious diseases. The man who offers bad weather as an excuse for not going and paying a debt, will never succeed in business ; nor will he get well, who, for that reason, fails to take his daily exercise, when it is an indispensable means of cure. It is precisely the same in religion ; he who is swift to offer bad weather as an excuse for be- ing absent from the worship of the great congregation on the Sabbath-day, or from other properly appointed " means of grace," never did make an efficient church member, will have nothing "added" in his napkin at the great accounting day! It is the man who is faithful to his duty, always, " regardless of the weather," or any thing else, who will hear the glad greeting from the Heavenly Judge, " Wklx »onb l" i THE FIRST WEDDING. The First Wedding. — We like the short courtships, and in this Adam acted like a sensible man — he fell asleep a bache- lor, and awoke to find himself a married man. He appears to have popped the question almost immediately after meeting Miss Eve, and she, without flirtation or shyness, gave him a kiss and herself. Of that first kiss in the world we have had our own thoughts, however, and sometimes, in a poetical mood, wished we were the man that did it. But the deed is done— the chance was Adam's, and he improved it. We like the notion of getting married in a garden. Adam's was private. No envious aunts and grunting grandmothers. The birds of the heavens were the minstrels, and the glad sky flung its light on the scene. One thing about the first wedding brings queer things to us in spite of its scriptural truth. Adam and his wife were, rather young to marry ; some two or three days old, according to the sagest elder ; without experience, without a house, a pot or kettle ; nothing but love and Eden.— M. M. Noah. Marriage. — Marriage is to a woman at once the happiest and saddest event of her life; it is the promise of future bliss, raised on the death of present enjoyment. She quits her home, her parents, her companions, her amusements — every thing on which she has hitherto depended for comfort, for affection, for kindness, and for pleasure. The parents by whose advice she has been guided — the sister to whom she has dared to impart the very embryo thought and feeling — the brother who has played with her, by turns the counselor and the counseled, and the younger children to whom she has hitherto been the mother and playmate — all are to be forsaken at one fell stroke — every former tie is loosened — the spring of every action is changed; and she flies with joy in the untrodden paths before her, buoyed up by the confidence of requited love, she bids a fond and grateful adieu to the life that is past, and turns with excited hopes and joyous antici- pation to the happiness to come. Then woe to the man who can blight such fair hopes — who can treacherously lure such a heart from its peaceful enjoyments, and watchful protection of home — who can, coward like, break the illusions which have won her, and destroy the confidence which love had inspired. Woe to hiin who has too early withdrawn the tender plant from the props and stays of moral discipline, in which she has been nurtured, and yet makes no effort to supply their places ; for on him is the responsibility of her errors — on him who first taught her, by his example, to grow careless of her duty, and then exposed her, with a weakened spirit and unsatisfied heart, to the wild storms and the wily temptations of a sinful world. — Anon. A Valuable Table.— I notice in the Farmer of July 26 an article under the above caption, which would be valuable if it was correct ; but I find so much discrepancy in it that I am constrained to write. When I was a boy I learned from Adams7 old arithmetic that 268.8 cubic inches make a gallon dry measure, and on that supposition, the first box, 24 by 16 by 28 inches, said to con- tain five bushels or one barrel, is correct, if you call 40 gallons a barrel ; but that is not the way we reckon barrels here. No matter — it is the boxes we are after now: all correct, so far. But the second box, said to contain half as much as the first, is of the same length and breadth, and should be 14 inches deep instead of 12 inches. The third box, 26 by 15.8 by 8 inches, said to contain one bushel, does contain over a bushel and a half. The fourth box, 12 by 11.2 by 8 inches, said to contain one peck, does contain just half a bushel. The fifth box, 8 by 8 by 4.2 inches, said to contain a gallon, is correct. The sixth box, 4 by 8 by 4.8 inches, said to contain a half gallon, is 19.2 cubic inches too large. The seventh box, 4 by 4 by 4.1, said to contain a quart, is 1.6 cubic inches too small. Now I have my hand in, if you have room to spare, I should like to give a simple rule to ascertain the correctness of grain measures in the form commonly used for half-bushels, pecks, etc. — that is, the round or circular form. First, to find the area of any circle, multiply the square of its diameter by .7854, that is the decimal form of 7854-10,000, and the product will be the answer. And now for the half- bushel. THE MOTHER. Measure the diameter carefully in inches and fractions of an inch, (a carpenter's square will answer all practical purposes, but the Gunter's scale is better, because it gives the fractions in decimal form,) then multiply its square by 7854, as directed above, and you have the number of square inches checked right out on the half-bushel bottom, by which divide the num- ber of cubic inches in half a bushel, and the quotient will be the required depth in inches and fractions of an inch. Now measure perpendicularly, and if not correct, cut down the top or move the bottom outward or inward. The Mother.- — She came leaning on the arm of her daugh- ter, and wrapped in a thick cashmere shawl, which alone indi- cated the extreme delicacy of a constitution that could not endure exposure to a breeze so gentle as that which pervaded the apartment. One needed to bestow but a moment's glance on the mother to see whence the mountain girl inherited the spiritual expression which at times imparted such holy .sweet- ness to her face. Nothing could exeeed the elevated, the almost unearthly sanctity which marked the countenance, the manner, and even the voice of the slender, shadow-like woman, the marble pallor of whose face seemed enhanced by the bril- liancy of her dark, lustrous eyes, and whose black, wavy hair drooped over her sunken cheek as if it were a mourning badge, a token of the decay of her early bloom. There was no undue claim to sympathy, however; no affectation of weakness in the gentle, hostess-like manner of the invalid, who, although she spoke English but imperfectly, made a successful use of her knowledge of the language in welcoming Meredith under her roof, accompanying her broken words with a kindness of tone and earnestness of gesture which left little for the tongue to express. Mother — O word of undying beauty ! Thine echoes sound along the walls of time until they crumble at the breath of the Eternal. In all the world there is not a habitable spot where the music of that holiest word is not sounded. Ay, by the golden flower of the river, by the crystal margin of the forest tree, in the hut built of bamboo-cane, in the mud and thatched cottage, by the peaks of the kissing mountains, in the wide- spread valley, on the blue ocean, in the changeless desert, where the angel came down to give the parched lips the sweet water of the wilderness ; under the white tent of the Arab, and in the dark-covered wigwam of the Indian hunter — wherever the pulses of the human heart beat quick and warm, or float feebly along the current of failing life, is that sweet word spoken like a universal prayer. The Motherless.— They are motherless J Oh ! gently, gently keep back those bitter words. Avert that cold, cruel stare. See you not the tearful eyes ? Alas ! that sorrow should ever make a child's heart its home ! They are motherless ! Stranger hands ministering to their daily wants ; stranger hearts wearying of the irksome duty. No fond, sweet kisses of warm embrace ! No gentle words of comfort and love I No soft folding of little hands in prayer ! No mother ! Missing the low, sweet cadence of her voice ; missing that " Good-night ! " seeking, seeking all in vain, that ark for the weary dove — a mother's heart. Draw the little forms near to your heart. Pillow the aching head upon your bosom. Think of your sunny childhood — your mother's earnest love, her gentle care, her patient forbear- ance, her precious forgiveness. Then only in kindness let your hand rest on each honored little head ; only in love reprove that stricken little flock. Oh ! let yours be the hand that will lead them in the green pastures, and by the still waters of the precious Saviour's love ! Let yours be the blessed benediction : " Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, ye have done it unto me." Ee- member their angels do always behold the face of our Father in heaven. Then, it may be that a child's hand shall lead you to that heavenly home — a child's hand place the crown upon your head. Speak gently to the motherless! A weight of woo they boar ; Greet them with looks of tenderness — Oh ! add not to their care. Speak gently to the motherless When tears their eyes bedim ; And lead them unto Him. Then yours shall that blessing be — ** Friends ye have done this unto me I " A SWEET PHILOSOPHY. A Sweet Philosophy. — The celebrated teacher, Eabbi Meir, sat during the whole of one Sabbath-day in the public school, instructing the people. During his absence from the house, his two sons died — both of them of uncommon beauty, and enlightened in the law. His wife bore them to her bed chamber, laid them upon the marriage-bed, and spread a white covering over their bodies. In the evening the Eabbi came home. She reached him a goblet. He praised the Lord at the going out of the Sabbath, drank, and asked: 11 Where are my two sons, that I may give them my bless- ing ? I repeatedly looked round the school, and I did not see them there. Where are my sons, that they, too, may drink of the cup of blessing ?" " They will not be far off," she said, and placed food before him, that he might eat. He was in a gladsome and genial mood ; and when he had said grace after the meal, she thus addressed him : " Eabbi, with thy permission I would fain propose to thee one question." "Ask it, then, my love," he replied. "A few days ago a person intrusted some jewels to my cus- tody ; now he demands them again. Should I give them up ?" " This is a question," said Eabbi Meir, " which my wife should not have thought it necessary to ask. What ! wouldst thou hesitate or be reluctant to restore to every one his own?" " No," she replied ; " but yet I thought it best not to restore them without acquainting thee therewith." She then led him to the chamber, and stepping to the bed, took the white covering from the dead bodies. "Ah I my sons, my sons !" loudly lamented the father. " My sons, the light of my eyes, and the light of my under- standing ! I was your father, but you were my teachers in the law." The mother turned away and wept bitterly. At length she took her husband by the hand and said : " Eabbi, didst thou not teach me that we must not be reluctant to restore that which was intrusted to our keeping ? See, the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord." "Blessed be the name of the Lord!" echoed Kabbi Meir ; " and blessed be his name for thy sake, too ; for well it *s written : ' Whoso hath found a- virtuous wife hath a greater treasure than. costly pearls. She openeth her mouth with wis- dom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.' " How to Admonish.— We must consult the gentlest manner and softest seasons ; for advice must not fall like a vio- lent storm, bearing down and making those to droop whom it is meant to cherish and refresh. It must descend as dew upon the tender herb, or like melting flakes of snow ; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon and deeper it sinks into the mind. If there are few who have the humility to receive ad- vice as they ought, it is often because there are as few who have the discretion to convey it in a proper vehicle, and to qualify the harshness and bitterness of reproof, against which corrupt nature is apt to revolt, by an artful mixture of sweet and pleasant ingredients. To probe the wound to the bottom, with all the boldness and resolution of a good spiritual sur- geon, and yet with all the delicacy and tenderness of a friend, requires a very dexterous and masterly hand. An affable de- portment and a complacency of behavior will disarm the most obstinate. Whereas, if, instead of pointing out their mistake, we break out into unseemly sallies of passion, we cease to have any influence over them, or rather create a feeling antagonistic to the advice we wish to give them. Prejudice. — All men are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to be tenacious of the opinions they profess ; and yet almost all men are guided by the under- standings of others, not by their own, and may be said more truly to adopt than to beget their opinions. Nurses, parents, pedagogues, and after them all, and above them all, that uni- versal pedagogue system fills the mind with notions which it has no share in framing ; which it receives as passively as it receives the impressions of outward objects, and which, left to itself, it would never have framed, or would have examined afterwards. Thus prejudices are established by education, and HOW LADIES SHOULD DRESS. 77 habits by custom. We are taught to think what others think, not how to think for ourselves ; and whilst the memory is loaded, the understanding remains unexercised, or exercised in such trammels as constrain its motions and direct its pace, till that which is artificial becomes in some sort natural, and the mind can go to no other. It may sound oddly, but it is true in many cases, to say, that if men had learned less, their way to knowledge would be shorter and easier. It is, indeed, shorter and easier to proceed from ignorance to knowledge than from error. They who are in the last must unlearn be- fore they can learn to any good purpose ; and the first part of this double task is not in many respects the least difficult, for which reason it is seldom undertaken. — Literary Journal. How Ladies should Dress.— As you look from your windows in Paris, observe the first fifty women who pass ; forty have noses depressed in the middle, a small quantity ot dark hair, and a swarthy complexion. But, then, what a toilet ! Not only suitable for the season, but the age and com- plexion of the wearer. How neat the feet and hands ! How well the clothes are put on, and more than all, how well they suit each other ! Before English women can dress perfectly, they must have the taste of the French, especially in color. One reason why we see colors ill-arranged in England is that the different arti- cles are purchased each for its own imagined virtues, and with- out any thought of what is to be worn with it. Women, while shopping, buy what pleases the eye on the counter, forgetting what they have at home. That parasol is pretty, but it will kill, by its color, one dress in the buyer's wardrobe, and be un- suitable for the others. To be magnificently dressed costs money ; but to be dressed with taste is not expensive. It re- quires good taste, knowledge, and refinement. Never buy' an article unless it is suitable to your age, habit, style, and the rest of your wardrobe. Nothing is more vulgar than to wear costly laces with a common delaine, or cheap lace with expen- sive brocades. What colors, it may be asked, go best together ? Green with violet ; cold with dark crimson, or lilac ; pale blue with scarlet ; pink with black or white ; and gray with scarlet or 78 pink. A cold color generally requires a warm tint to give life to it. Gray and pale blue, for instance, combine well, both being cold colors. White and black are safe wear, but the lat- ter is not favorable to dark or pale complexions. Pink is to some skins the most becoming ; not, however, if there is much color in the cheeks and lips, and if there be even a suspicion of red in either hair or complexion. Peach color is, perhaps, one of the most elegant colors worn. Maize is very becom- ing, particularly to persons with dark hair and eyes. But whatever the colors or materials of the entire dress, the details are all in all ; the lace around the bosom and sleeves, the flowers — in fact, all that furnishes the dress. The ornaments in the head must harmonize with the dress. If trimmed with black lace, some of the same should be worn in the head, and the flowers, which are worn in the hair, should decorate the dress. — All the Year Round. Ingratitude to Parents. — There was once a father who gave up every thing to his children — his house, his fields, and goods — and expected that for this his children would sup- port him. But after he had been some time with his son, the latter grew tired of him, and said to him : " Father, I have had a son born to me this night, and there, where your arm-chair stands, the cradle must come. Will you not, perhaps, go to my brother, who has a larger room ?" After he had been some time with the second son, he also grew tired of him, and said : " Father, you like a warm room, and that hurts my head. Won't you go to my brother, the baker ?" The father went, and after he had been some time with the third son, he also found him troublesome, and said to him : " Father, the people run in and out here all day, as if it were a pigeon-house, and you can not have your noonday sleep. Would you not be better off at my sister Kate's, near the town-wall ?" The old man remarked how the wind blew, and said to him- self: "Yes, I will do so ; I will go and try it with my daugh- ter. Women have softer hearts." But after he had spent some time with his daughter, she grew weary of him, and said she was always so fearful when her father went to church, or ENTERING A BOOM. 79 any where else, and was obliged to descend the steep stairs, and at her sister Elizabeth's there were no stairs to descend, as she lived on the ground-floor. For the sake of peace the old man assented, and went to his other daughter. But after some time she, too, was tired of him, and told him, by a third person, that her house near the water was too damp for a man who suffered with gout, and ner sister, the grave-digger's wife, at St. John's, had much drier lodgings. The old man himself thought she was right, and went outside the gate to his youngest daughter, Helen. But after he had been three days with her, her little son said to his grandfather: "Mother said yesterday to cousin Elizabeth^that there was no better chamber for you than such a one as father digs." These words broke the old man's heart, so he sank back in his chair and died. — Martin Luther, Entering a Room.— I have sometimes envied the cool- ness and self-possession of those gentlemen who, fortified by long practice, can enter a drawing-room, having no previous knowledge of its inmates, with as much sangfroid and indif- ference as if they were lounging into a box at the opera, and commence a conversation without exhibiting the slightest em- barrassment. Yet, after all, I doubt whether they are to be en- vied, for I apprehend that such demeanor must be the result either of remarkable self-complacency or of callousness of the heart and imagination. It argues the absence, I think of that chivalrous feeling toward the fair sex which in the middle ages was carried to so extreme a length that, in the words of an old writer of romance, " a true knight should stand more awed and abated in the presence of beauty than if he were summoned before the' throne of the most puissant emperor of the world." — Norman Sinclair, A G-ood Woman Never G-rows Old.— Years may pass over her head, but if benevolence and virtue dwell in her heart, she is cheerful as when the spring of life opened to her view. When we look at a good woman we never think of her age; she looks charming as when the rose of youth first bloomed on her cheek. That rose has not faded yet ; it will never fade. In her neighborhood she is the friend and bene- 80 factor. Who does not respect and love the woman who has passed her days in acts of kindness and mercy ? We repeat, such a woman can never grow old. She will always be fresh and buoyant in spirits, -and active in, humble deeds of mercy and benevolence. Flowers for Winter.— Flowers intended for winter blooming need a season of repose, especially tropical plants, such as geranium, fuchsia, etc., which should be allowed rest from growth during the months of July and August,^ by al- most entirely withdrawing the supply of water. Of course the leaves will fall off, but the plants will be fitted to start into fresh and vigorous growth as soon as the water is again sup- plied. .Previous to this, the branches of the fuchsia should be pruned in. and water given sparingly at first, increasing the supply as the young shoots grow. Resurrection Flower.— Dr. Deck, of this city, has in his possession an extraordinary floral production. While on a visit to Egypt, inspecting some lead and copper-mines upon the Upper Nile, an Arab was taken ill, and the Doctor ren- dered him medical aid ; and when the Arab recovered, he gave the Doctor this extraordinary plant ; and the history furnished of it was, that it was taken from the bosom of an embalmed Egyptian princess, found in one of the vaults containing the remains of Coptic royalty. It is, to all appearance, a dry, dead substance, resembling the flattened head of a poppy, or the cup of an acorn, with a short, woody stem. But upon placing the stem in water, the corolla begins to expand, like a sunflower or dahlia, and in the course of fifteen minutes it will not only unfold, but it will turn its entire leaves backward, until they hang downward in a fringe, like the passion-flower, leaving an exquisite purple heart exposed, and forming a blos- som of symmetrical beauty. Since it has been in Dr. Deck's possession it has blossomed some eight or nine hundred times. Two other specimens of this rare flower are known to exist ; one was owned by the celebrated Baron Humboldt, and the other by a distinguished European savan. Dr. Deck's rational theory is, that it is a seminal vessel, and may drift about, with its seed carefully folded up, for ages in the desert, and only when it reaches the moisture of an oasis vegetates and blooms. FIVE minutes' value. 81 Not the only specimens, neighbors of the Banner of Light. We can illumine you a little, and tell you that the California Farmer's collection has two specimens of the Resurrection- Flower, and therefore we are as rich as the Baron Humboldt and the distinguished European savan, and California will always have her share of rare and beautiful plants from all parts ot the world. — California Farmer. Five Minutes' Value. — A number of years ago, it was a custom of the orthodox churches in Boston to furnish about a dozen teachers, who would voluntarily go to the prison on Sabbath forenoon, to instruct classes of the convicts in a Sab- bath-school in the chapel. Hon. Samuel Hubbard was one cf those who went. Near the close of the time devoted to instruction, the chaplain said : "We have fine minutes to spare. Mr. Hubbard, will you please to make a few remarks ?" He arose in a calm, dignified manner, and looking at the prisoners, said : " I am told that we have ^.ve minutes to spare. Much may be done in five minutes. In five minutes, Judas betrayed his Master, and went to his own place. In five minutes, the thief on the cross repented, and went with the Saviour to Paradise. No doubt many of those before me did that act in five minutes which brought them to this place. In five minutes, you may repent, and go to Paradise — or will you imitate Judas, and go to the place where he is ? My five minutes have expired." Life Uncertain.— Life is beautifully compared to a fountain filled up by a thousand streams that perishes if one be dried. It is a silver cord twisted with a thousand strings that parts asunder if one be broken. Frail and thoughtless mortals are surrounded by innumerable dangers, which make it much more strange that they escape so long than that they almost all perish suddenly at last. We are encompassed with acci- dents every day to crush the moldering tenement that we inhabit. The seeds of disease are planted in our constitution by the haud of nature. The earth and the atmosphere, whence we draw our life, are impregnated with death— health is made 82 to operate its own destruction. The food that nourishes the body contains the elements of its decay ; the soul that animates it by a vivifying fire, tends to wear it out by its action ; death lurks in ambush along our path. Notwithstanding this is the truth, so palpably confirmed by daily examples before our eyes, how little do we lay it to heart. We see our friends and neighbors perishing around us, but how seldom does it occur to our thoughts that our knell shall, perhaps, give the next fruitless warning to the world? There is something eminently tragic in the lives of almost all the princes and princesses of the great Muscovite Kingdom. Some die by the dagger, some by poison ; some are dropping off suddenly in a mysterious manner, and others are ailing for years under the influence of a malady of which nobody knows the cause, and for which no physician can give advice. There has scarcely been one sovereign of Eussia whose death ap- peared quite natural. Even the predecessor of the present Czar died with a mysterious suddenness, although he was one of the healthiest and strongest men in Europe, hardened like a moun- taineer, simple and frugal in his habits, and accustomed to fatigue and the extremes of heat and cold. Ever since his death his widow has been suffering likewise, in a manner as yet unexplained. All the mineral springs of the continent have been appealed to in vain for a cure ; in vain, too, the genial climate of Naples, Kome and Nice has been tried. Hopeless and helpless the Czarina now returns to the cold grandeur of the north — returns to die. How to Save a Drowning Person.— It may not be generally known that when a person is drowning, if he is taken by the arm from behind, between the elbow and shoulder, he can not touch the person attempting to save him, and what- ever struggles he may make will only assist the person holding him in keeping his head above water. A good swimmer can keep a man thus above water for an hour. If seized any where else the probability is that he will clutch the swimmer, and perhaps, as is often the case, both will be drowned. MENTAL REST. 83 MENTAL REST. When a locomotive is under full headway it can not be safely stopped in a moment ; the stream of steam must be gradually turned in another direction, and made to play on thin air, or on the fly-wheel, as well as to have its supply cut off. So when the nervous energy of the human system has been acting on the brain under a "full head" for an hour or more, as in the per- formance of the most harrowing tragedy, or in the delivery of an impassioned address, or in the execution of some momentous surgical operation, it is not safe to arrest instantly the outgoing of that power through the brain ; the fact is, it is not possible if the performers just named were carried direct from the theater of their operations to a prison or vacant room, and were so bound that bodily motion was impossible, the mind would run in cease- less circles over the performances, would be vainly striking against the air, and sleep would be impossible, except as a result of sheer exhaustion ; even then it would not bring its natural renovation ; the tragedian, in spite of himself, would go over his part ; the orator would rehearse his sentences ; the advocate would joint together again his points and proofs ; the minister repeat his weighty appeals ; and the surgeon perform again his terrible operations, all in the mind, vainly, and with the almost invariable accompaniment, disagreeable and wearing — to wit, measuring the effects which might have resulted from certain variations in their respective performances, the surgeon would think that his operation might have been sooner performed, or would have had a more favorable recovery if he had done this, that, or the other thing which he had not done ; the clergyman will have his conscience touched by the reflection that if he had applied another text of Scripture, or presented another line of argument, or had summoned a deeper feeling of the heart, his discourse would have made a more lasting impression, and might have eventuated in more ineffaceable convictions. In one sense, these are vain thoughts ; they increase the exhaus- tion attendant on the previous actual labors, and are altogether unprofitable. The greatest lady tragedienne of modern times, Rachel, after an exciting performance, would go home, and although past midnight, would sometimes spend an hour or more in the physical effort of moving the furniture of one room 84 hall's journal of health. into another, and in arranging it, as if it were to remain so for months, as a means of calming the mental excitement, so that she could go to sleep ; the philosophy of the matter was that the nervous energy was diverted from the brain, and compelled, in a measure, to pass out of the system through muscular action while the mental exercise necessary was such as to engage a different portion of the brain altogether, allowing those organs opportunity of quiescence, which had been so lately exercised to an unwonted degree. Our clerical readers know it often hap- pens that Sunday night is the worst night for sleep in the week, especially for those lazy and improvident and unsystematic un- fortunates who put off their preparation for the Sabbath until the very last moment, as it were, and hence have to sit up late on Saturday night, and even encroach on the sacred hours of the Sabbath, thus profaning holy time, in the feeling that the end sanctifies the means, or that it is a perfectly legitimate labor, for- getting that it is an unnecessary labor, as it might and ought to have been done in proper work-days. As we were saying, clergymen sometimes can not get to sleep for hours after preach- ing at night ; let such take a lesson from the above recital, and in- stead of going to bed as soon as they get home, let them perform some muscular movements, with the end above named in view ; or, if that be not practicable at times, they should divert the cur- rent of nervous energy from the organs of the brain which have been unusually exercised, to the consideration of subjects which will employ other organs. This may very well be done by reading a number of short articles on every variety of subject and by various authors, such as we have strung together in the preceding pages. This is very much on the same principle that one set of muscles are rested by the exercise of another set, which allows them to be quiescent. There are times to all, when the most industrious are utterly indisposed to do a single hand's turn, when the most diligent readers and thinkers lose the power of concentration, and would entirely fail to interest the mind in reading the most exciting history ; neither can they go to sleep, which indeed would be the very best thing they could do ; and then again, in times of great calamity, or trouble, or despondency, which unfortunately come to all, sooner or later, it will answer an excellent purpose to divert the mind and rest it by reading a variety of short ar- MENTAL EEST. 85 tides, which, require no lengthened thought, no special mental effort to take in ; even in these cases the reading may sometimes be almost mechanical, yet every now and then a paragraph will be met with which will compel attention more or less ; some- times from its incongruity, its oddity, its fun, its ridiculousness, or its profundity. Some of our weekly exchanges are valuable in this regard, by having half a column or more of miscellanies, brevities, jottings-down, etc. ; these afford the means of mental diversion, recreation, and rest, which are of great value in con- nection with the subject in hand. The Home Journal of New- York has a column or two of such reading every week, of great hygienic value. The striking sentences which are met with in reading some new book, and which are industriously penned for the entertainment of its readers, aside from their intrinsic merit, are worth more than money, if used in the ways and at the times referred to in this article. When a man " don't feel like doing a single thing," he is in danger, because he is very apt, under such circumstances, to dawdle or mope about and do nothing, the very state of mind which the great adversary delights to find, and is sure to take advantage of, " For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do," as the unequaled Isaac "Watts has written. Eather than allow perfect idleness under any circumstances read the newspaper with its short and varied articles, even its advertisements, or even an antiquated scrap-book, as a healthful mental diversion, recreation, and rest under the circumstances adverted to. To the Christian heart, to that happiest of human kind who can receive with an unquestioning confidence and childlike trust all that the Bible says, the Psalms of David and the Proverbs of Solomon are of incalculable value in this connection ; they make the body forget its weariness, they bring comfort to the despond- ing, cheer to the broken-hearted, courage to the fallen, and faith and rest and hope and happiness to all. HEALTH TRACT, No. 195. EMANATIONS. Philosophers have said that light and heat are ponderable bodies, and that although these have been coming out from the sun for six thousand years, that immense illuminary has not appreciably diminished in size. The sweetest rose of the beautiful May throws out its delightful fragrance from the first flush of the spring morning until dewy eve, and remains as sweet as ever and quite as large. The face and air of beauty charmed a thousand hearts yesterday ; a thousand more feed upon it to-day, and other thousands of eyes will look upon it to-morrow with a lingering rapture, and the next day it will be not less beautiful than it was a week ago. Influences go out hourly from the wise and good, and as years roll on these influences gather force, while the wise become wiser, and the good better, hour by hour. So with business men of integrity, of sterling and tried principles, they throw out an influence from themselves which is a power for good in every community, to restrain the wrong-doer, and awe villaiuy. All these are " emanations," influences ; material, moral, social ; there are also 11 emanations" malign. In an autumn morning of the sunny South, or amid the flower-clad prairies of the wide-spreading West, or on the shores of our own Northern lakes and inland seas and crystal flowing streams from among the mountains, as delicious as the still air is, it is more so in the cool of the evening after the sun has gone down from the sky ; and yet that balmy atmosphere is so loaded with miasmatic poison that it breeds disease and pestilence and death in a night ; it will do the same on successive nights, to one or a million of human beings, without any appreciable diminution in either the amount or malignity of its venom ; and so ethereal is it that no alembic of the chemist has ever been able to detect its presence, even to the amount of a single atom. The very sight of filth and squalor and rags, of a victim of the horrifying small- pox, of the wretch whose whole body is a mass of festering corruption — any of these fill the most transient observer with unutterable disgust. Proximity to moral worth, to maiden purity, to virtuous womanhood, to high Christian character, as infallibly elevate, ennoble, and sanctify, as associations with lawlessness, bestiality, and crime, degrade and ruin and destroy. If then we desire that emanations should go out from us fairly loaded with influ- ences and powers which are healthful, beautiful, elevating, and benign, we must be clean in person, as well as pure in heart ; we must strive to be as faultless in dress as we desire to be engaging in manner ; we must bring to our assistance all the aids of taste and art in order to present to the world as far as possible a comely and perfect physique ; just as reason and grace are summoned to help us attain a high moral and religious character. In plainer phrase, if your clothes are dirty, wash them, or stay at home ; if they are ragged, patch them, or keep out of the street ; if you are deformed, employ a tailor or dressmaker of genius ; if you have lost a limb, get a Palmer leg ; if you have a snagglcd tooth, consult Allen of Bond street, for comeliness is a duty as much as health, and so is religion 1 HEALTH TRACT, No. 1S6. EATING ECONOMICALLY. One of the good results of the existing civil war will "be to inaugurate habits of economy throughout every department of social and domestic life, which will save millions of money every year, so that, in spite of increased taxation, multitudes of careful, thrifty families will be quite as well off as to money matters, as they would have been had there been no war, while, at the same time, they will have acquired a higher moral and social character than they had before, because economy implies carefulness and self-denial, and these are certainly elevating, as we know that waste and self-indulgence degrade, and in the end brutalize as to the appetites and pro- pensities. This is not all. Waste brings want, and want obtunds the moral sense, so that in time it will not only tempt to take mean advantages in business, but next to borrow money, with a consciousness of having no specific means of returning the same ; a little later comes deliberate fraud, theft, and robbery outright. To aid the reader in the practice of such high and necessary virtues as carefulness, economy, and a manly self-denial, let a few lessons be taken from an older, more experienced, and wiser nation— the French. The first step for a family to take, especially in New-York, in summer, and in all families where there are no servants, and conse- quently no need of " keeping up" a kitchen-fire, is to purchase some cooking-lamp for oil or gas, Fish's patent, for example, by which a good meal can be prepared for half a dozen persons for a single cent, this alone will save the price of one or two tons of coal in a year. The older nations do not take any meat for the first meal in the day, we mean the better classes, and those who live mainly in-doors. Bentleifs Miscellany says of the richer classes of French, that tiiey make an early breakfast of coffee, taking no meat until about noon. They cook no more for one day than lasts that day ; and any observant housewife will soon learn how much will be eaten ; but if any thing is left over for to-day, less is purchased to-morrow, for waste is not allowed ; this saves the wickedness of trying to " eat up " the leavings of the cur- rent day. Close observation has shown that, at this time, a French family, in Paris, of three or four persons, with two servants, can live really well, with good management, including ordinary wine, kitchen fuel, and all supplementary expenses for food, for about nine English shillings a day. Outside of Paris, it certainly does not exceed six shillings a day for six persons, or one dollar and a half. This would he a healthier and happier land by far, if parents would make a systematic effort to impress on the minds of their children that waste is an unmitigated wickedness and that economy is one of the higher virtues, albeit a good many of our children and wives consider it " mean," and are absolutely ashamed that their unprincipled and cribbing servants should think they were trying to economize. Millions of money could be saved every year, if the larger cities of this country could adopt the plan of many Europeans, have no cooking done in the house, except for making a cup of tea or coffee, toasting bread, and boiling a potato, all of which a lamp can do, hav- ing other things prepared at the public cookeries. In other words, have dinner pre- pared outside, to be kept on the table " smoking hot," if desired, by means of little lamps. This plan works well abroad, could be made to work acceptably hero and would save a large per cenfeage of the cost of housekeeping. HEALTH TRACT No. 202. THE STOMACH'S APPEAL. Who but an idiot or some unprincipled servant or recklessly wasteful spendthrift would think of building as large fires in their houses in the April spring-time as in bleak December ? And yet ladies and gentlemen, statesmen, philosophers, and scholars of every grade; the judge, the sena- tor, the lawyer, and the clergyman, all commit the more unpardonable fol- ly, unpardonable because it is against light and in favor of the lower in- stincts and propensities, of not only eating as much as the appetite demands, but of "taking something" to stimulate that appetite to call for more than nature really needs, as the warm weather approaches. The two objects of eating as to men and women are to give vigor to the body and to keep it warm ; hence all food contains two principles in greater or less proportions, according to its quality — to wit, nutrition and warmth. We need nourish- ment all the year round, hence we must all the year round eat food which contains nourishment, that is, the flesh forming principal; but in warm weather the food which contains the most mere fuel, should be to a certain extent curtailed, otherwise we will create too much heat within us, and that is fever, whose victims are counted by millions every year, this excess of heat, this fever being generated by eating food which contains more warmth, more fuel, called carbon by chemists, than the season of the year requires. To a certain extent nature regulates the demand and supply by diminish- ing the appetite as the warm weather approaches ; but many misinterpret her endeavors, and because they find that as the spring comes on their ap- petites are not as vigorous as they were a few weeks earlier, begin to take alarm, think they are going to get sick, and conclude the}'' certainly will get sick, unless they can get up the appetite of kind winter; hence they begin to take Dutch gin, under the name of Schiedam schnapps, plantation bit- ters, or cheap whisky, with just enough of Colombo root or any other bit- ter to give it "a trace" of bitter and rob it of the name of "rot-gut" or dirty beer, or ale, or porter, all these things tending to cheat nature into a call for more food than she requires, to impose on the stomach more labor than it can perform, hence laying the ground for summer fevers and dyspep- sias, which bring death to thousands every year who might have lived to a good old age had they simply let themselves alone, and like any other dogs or donkeys, or wild beasts, had simply given the stomach rest, and waited for an appetite. The general lessons for the spring are, eat only when you are hungry, and to the extent of satisfying an unstimulated appetite ; eat less of carbonaceous food, such as meats, fats, oils, syrups, etc., and more of cool- ing articles, such as green salads, vegetables, berries, fruits, and whatever has a natural tartness or acidity, there being little or no carbon or heat in them ; but they contain as much nutriment as the system requires. HEALTH TRACT No. 203. HOUSEHOLD KNOWLEBGE. Windows are kept free from ice by painting the glass with alcohol with a brush or sponge. Odors from boiling ham, cabbage, etc., are prevented bj throwing red pepper-pods or a few pieces of charcoal into the pot. Percussion-caps are found to poison children, if swallowed. Pigeons are hatched in eighteen days ; chickens, twenty-one '; turkeys, twenty-six ; ducks and geese, thirty. A cement which is a good protection against weather, water, and fire, to a certain extent, is made by mixing a gallon of water with two gallons of brine, then stir in two and a half pounds of brown sugar and three pounds of common salt ; put it on with a brush like paint. Eggs, for cooking purposes. — One table-spoon of corn-starch is said to be equal to one egg. French Rolls. — Add two ounces of butter and a little salt to a pint of boiled milk ; while tepid, sift in one pound of flour, one beaten egg, one tablespoon of yeast; beat these altogether well; when risen, form the rolls with as little handling as possible ; bake on tins. Boiling Potatoes. — Put potatoes of equal size into water while boiling ; when done, pour off the water, scatter in some salt, cover the pot with a coarse cloth, and return it to the fire for five minutes, when they are ready for the table ; even watery potatoes are thus made mealy. Common cut-nails are easily driven into hard wood if rubbed with a little soft-soap ; the saliva is better than nothing for that purpose. Never condemn your neighbor unheard ; there are always two ways of telling a story. Potatoes. — The best way to cook a potato is to bake or roast it in an oven ; when done, crack the skins open and allow them to dry out for a few minutes before placing them on the table. Quarrels. — To avoid family quarrels, let the quarreling wretch have it all to himself; reply never a word. Corns, new cure ! — Let a piece of pure India-rubber, the twentieth of an inch thick, remain in constant contact with the corn, which should be kept closely and well pared ; it requires four or five weeks. Cider Vinegar. — Take the water in which dried apples have been soak- ed and wash, strain it well, add a pound of sugar. NOTICES. NOTICES, ETC., FOR APRIL. The American Tract Society, 28 Cornhill, Boston, and 13 Bible House, New-York, are with indefatigable industry issuing book after book as at- tractive in manner as in matter, so that all classes of readers may be supplied with spiritual and mental food. " Jerry and his Friends, or the Way to Heav- en," by Alice A. Bodge, is full of interest and instruction. "Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver," by Krune, contains eleven stories of practical use to ail readers, old and young. Also " Letters to a Theological Stu- dent," by Leverett Griggs. Sargent's Temperance Tales, and a very valua- ble book of " Daily Prayers." Agricultural Colleges are beginning to attract public attention. The great need of this country and its salvation from an oppressive national debt, is in intelligent farming; this will create gold in more incalculable quantities than the yield of the richest mines in California or Colorado. In this direction the Hon. Isaac Newton, with the assistance of his right-hand Secretary, James S. Grinnell, has given a sketch in the last bi-monthly re- port of the Agricultural Department for January and February, as to what studies these colleges should embrace, to wit, languages, mathematics, a geological museum, with a zoological department, maps, charts, philosophi- cal instruments ; a system of instruction for physical development, moral culture, drawing, land-surveying, book-keeping, normal school, model farm, military training, etc., etc. The report contains further a well-considered article on " The Future of American Cotton and Wool," tobacco cultivation, cattle-market, weights and measures, the weather, its effect on the farm, meteorological report, etc., etc. The Agricultural Department is not infe- rior in its importance on the future welfare of this country, to any other in the Government, and up to this time, it has been managed with an ability, wisdom, and judgment on the part of Messrs. Newton, Grinnell, with the aid of other gentlemen connected with this Bureau, which merits the thanks of this whole nation, and we trust our farmer readers, to whom the depart- ment sends its circulars for information and statistical statements on sub- jects connected with farming operations, will feel it to be a duty to them- selves and to the country in general to be prompt, accurate, and pains- taking, not only to give all the information they have within themselves, but to embody what they can collect from their neighbors, these very in- quiries tending to excite a spirit of inquiry, investigation, and experiment, which will add millions to the national wealth eventually. Vocal Gymnasium. — Prof. Hurlburt, of this city, gives instructions at the Cooper Institute, in private families and public schools, in the cultiva- tion of the voice, and the proper development of the muscles of the chest and of respiration in general. How to read naturally and well, without fatigue or consciousness of effort, is a social accomplishment of more gene- ral use and practical employment than almost any other study in our schools, and we hope that the able and conscientious and indefatigable Professor will receive the patronage which he so well merits.. To be able to read well is an accomplishment of which any one may be laudably proud. NOTICES. "The Nation's Success and Gratitude." — Our old friend, David A. Sayre, the Kentucky banker, only a small part of whose princely benevo- lences were recorded in the August number of last year, has forwarded to us a discourse on the above subject, delivered on the last National thanks- giving-day by that stern old Presbyterian and loyal Unionist, Robert J. Breckenridge, the vigor of whose intellect has caused him for a quarter of a century past to stand a head and shoulders above the men of his time, and who in this last eloquent utterance shows that he is still as great in mind as he is as fearless in heart ; and who will not join with him in his closing petition that a complete triumph and lasting peace may be speedily secured to us, by means which God will own and bless, and that he would incline and enable all men to walk in ways of wisdom, justice, and humanity ? Metropolitan Fair. — Surely it will cheer the hearts of our sick and wounded and imprisoned soldiers, as well as those who are now in the field, to learn that the wealth and the beauty and fashion of our great cities are making their very pleasures a means of enriching the treasury of the San- itary Commission, a handsome contribution to which was realized on the evening of Saturday, March twelfth, on the occasion of a private concert, being the sixth of the series given at the princely mansion of one of our up- town millionaires, Dr. Thomas Ward, who, as on previous occasions, promptly and cordially gave up the use of the splendid music-room attach- ed to his hundred-feet front, corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-seventh street, to the committee of ladies who managed the whole* affair. A more elegant company has perhaps never assembled on any similar occasion in this city. A long line of splendid equipages lined the avenue in the direc- tion of the Central Park, while a double row reached up Forty-seventh street, (the handsomest and best built in New-York,) extending apparent- ly to Sixth Avenue. The night and the weather were splendid, and every thing went off successfully, happily, and without a single occurrence to mar the enjoyment of the evening, which always is the case when Dr. "Ward has the arrangement of affairs ; not the least interesting feature of the occasion was the introduction of a part of the opera of the " Gipsy's Frolic," the words and music of which were composed by the Doctor him self, whose opinion, by the way, in all matters of taste, and music, and art is final in the circles of the upper-five. On the nineteenth, the seventh concert of the series takes place at the house of the Hon. August Belmont, in Fifth Avenue, which no doubt will do credit to the liberal banker. W. J. Widdleton announces through the Publishers' Circular a new edition of "Health and Disease," to be ready without fail. on the first of April. Orders from the trade solicited. SAVING MONEY!!! HALF-PRICE COOKING FUEL-GAS OR KEROSENE. ONE CENT'S WOETH WIIX COOK A MEAL TOIL SIX PERSONS, IF YOU USE FISH'S PATENT Ipif pelting Jif pritet "Patented June IT'tli, 1862. Re-issued Dec. £3d, 1863. Patented inebrnary S^th., 1863. LIGHT AND HEAT COI¥3BBB^ED. BOILING, FRYING, STEWING, STEEPING, WITH THE FLAME THAT LIGHTS THE ROOM. ALSO THE "UMIOW ATTAGHIEIT/' To be used on a common lamp to beat water, cook food, or support a shade. Price, Fifty Cents. No family can afford to be without one of these articles. Same apparatus, arranged for gas, to be attached to the regular gas burner of your room p MANUFACTURED AND FOR SALE EY WM. D. EU88ELL, Agent, 206 PEARL STREET, One Door North op Maiden Lane, New-York. Circulars sent without charge, post paid. Already has the invention found its place in the nursery, in the sick-room, in hospitals and hospital railway-ambulances, in barber-shops, in restaurants, in the student's room at colleges, in chemical laboratories ; and for family purposes, where summer fires have heretofore roasted the occupants, they now prepare their meals by means of the Lamp Attachment, at a less cost than they before incurred for kindling-wood, saying nothing about cost of regular fuel. Prices are from Two to Six Dollars, according to size. 44 The smallest holds a Quart of water, the largest a Gallon. The apparatus is literally all that it claims to be." — Ed. Hall's Jour. Health. HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. Our Legitimate Scope is almost boundless : for whatever begets pleasurable and harmless feelings, promotes Health ; and whatever induces disagreeable sensations, engenders Disease. WE AIM TO SHOW HOW DISEASE MAT BE AVOIDED, AND THAT IT IS BEST, WHEN SICKNESS COMES, TO TAKE NO MEDICINE WITHOUT CONSULTING A PHYSICIAN. Vol. XI.] MAY, 1864. [No. 5. PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR. Going down Broadway any day, scores of men and women may be observed as unconscious of the presence of their fellow- men, despite the pressing along of the ceaseless crowd, . the rat- tling of wheels, and the din of business, as if they were in the midst of Sahara or some boundless prairie of the West, or in an Indian canoe in mid ocean. There may be noticed at any hour, the compressed lip, the muttering speech, the sharp ex- clamation, the impatient gesture, and the smothered curse. The public pulse beats fast and high and hard ; the machinery of life is running at a rate so abnormal in its rapidity, that it must wear out long before its time, or be shivered to atoms by the unnatural tension. " Died suddenly," is the frequent announcement of the morn- ing paper. " Who died suddenly ?." The merchant whom we met on 'Change not thirty-six hours ago ; the broker whom we saw on the street yesterday noon with flushed face, and fingers clenching a package of papers, the loose ends of which were fluttering in the wind. He was on the half run, to get into his grave, and there he is. Go into a man's office, he does not ask you to take a seat ; that would imply that some long story was to be listened to ; he forgets to say good-morning, and with in- quiring look he asks you to begin what you have to say, and be off. The visitor is just as intent on business as the visited, and the first sentence, sometimes the first word and only word indicates the whole object of the interview. A man calls at 94 hall's jouknal of health. the post-office for a letter : " Good-morning, neighbor, fine day to-day ; all well at home ? I called to see if there was any let- ter for me to-day, as I was expecting one." Does he make all this ado? Why, the post-office clerk would faint away; he wouldn't get through his work till midnight. You appear at the window, announce your name, the pile is looked over, the letter is silently handed to you, or the monosyllable " none "is uttered ; you give room for the impatient man behind you, and all is over. The minister would be considered an old fogy who would hum and haw and beat around the bush twenty or even ten minutes, as in the olden time, before he announced the sub- ject-matter of his discourse. He is expected to present the main idea in the first sentence, and without more ado, present his divisions, offer his proofs, make the application, and away, all in forty minutes, and wiser they who do it in thirty ; beyond forty he becomes tedious, is unheard ; irritation springs up; and he is pronounced "repetitious." A man enters the breakfast-room with one arm in the sleeve of his coat, the other half-way ; gobbles down his coffee and toast and tenderloin in silence, grabs up the morning paper, and at a two-forty gait makes for the car or omnibus, and is oblivious to all the world until he reaches his destination. Said a thoughtful wife the other day: "My husband never thinks of his dinner ; if I put a sandwich in his pocket in the morning at seven, it is there still when he reaches home at six ; eleven hours, not a mouthful eaten; business, business, busi- ness !" " My husband didn't sleep two hours last night," said a charm- ing woman not long ago. "I waked up, and in the full glare of gas-light he was pacing the floor, and continued it until the morning." "Nor does mine sleep," said another wife, whose husband is one of the men of the time. " He tosses and tum- bles the whole night through, and merely dozes for an hour." " Three hours is all the sleep I can get in the twenty -four,'' said a man of great wealth, the other day. "I would be will- ing to begin where I began before, a poor boy, without a pen- ny in the world, if I could sleep as I did then." But there are moral aspects of the war more astounding, and still more to be lamented ; it is the perfect breakdown of all per- sonal morality. There is a recklessness of moral principle per- PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR. 95 vadingall classes, (individual exceptions every where,) which al- most makes the thoughtful feel that the millennium has been in- definitely postponed. Deception, extravagance, recklessness, and waste are everywhere in the ascendant, except in families long rich. The servant and the master ; the employers and the employed ; the boss and the journeyman ; the apprentice and his teacher ; all, all seem half demented ; seem to act as if gold grew on every twig, and want was never to be known again. But with all our admiration of womankind, it must be con- fessed that the wives and daughters of the common and aspiring classes are running riot in their fierce madness after fine dress, showy equipages and splendid mansions; few among these know the value of money, and fewer still care whence or how it comes, so they can get it with the trouble of asking, quarrel- ing or crying for it. Not one in a thousand of them appre- ciates the risks, and toils, and vexations and crushing responsi- bilities involved on the part of their husbands in providing for their households in times like the present. Formerly a man could do business with his next-door neighbor without fear or misgiving, but the moral sense is so obtunded now that fellow can not trust fellow, nor friend, friend. To trust is to be de- frauded. To favor, is to lose all. Men who formerly stood high among their fellows in New- York, Philadelphia, and Boston, have become government con- tractors and have been proved to be unprincipled scoundrels. Broadway clothing stores have furnished rotten coats to poor and suffering solders ; ship-brokers have made out of the gov- ernment scores of thousands in an hour. Money makes all laws, and unmakes them, as witness the whisky tax in Con- gress ; the tobacco tax, the efforts to remove the duty from pa- per and coal ; in a thousand other directions in Washington, in Albany, in Harrisburgh, and above all, in Trenton, corruption and trickery are the order of the day. The monetary affairs of the country are rapidly verging to a common ruin. Money is apparently plenty, but never has it been so scarce in the history of the government. Coin is the only money, and nine persons out of ten fail to receive or pay out a five-cent piece in a month's traffic. Never were silk and satin and velvet so high in price ; never were they seen so common on the street as at the present time. 96 HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. War presents some curious features to our view. It has drained our cities in large part of a redundant, idle, diseased and degraded class ; these either soon die or are killed off. But there are examples not a few where the activities of the camp, its discipline and its experience have made invalids robust ; have imparted a higher moral tone to some, and given character and energy to others, who before were by common consent con- sidered to be inane and worthless. When a man of a good common education and some steadi- ness of character, goes to war and fairly engages in battle, he is thereafter, until his dying day, more of a man than he ever was before. No one of even common observation can have failed to notice in the faces of returned veteran regiments as they have marched along our streets, a stereotyped cast of coun- tenance, common to all ; there is an imprint of sternness on every face ; of determination, and an elevation of spirit, de- spite of tattered garments and soiled clothing and the dust and sweat of a long march ; as much as to say, I have been fight- ing for my country, I have imperiled my life to maintain her liberties and her unity; these are first things; my mission is god-like, to wit, to maintain liberty and the right forever ! Amen. When this war is ended, much of the scuff and scum of so- ciety will have disappeared, and nine out of ten of those who return from victorious battle-fields will make better, sterner, more manly members of society than ever before. The most of the great soldiers of history were men of simple tastes, quiet manners and of unassuming deportment. This is the tendency of war, to lop off excrescences, to consolidate the character, to inure to self-denial, to impart energy, determination and self- reliance, and to mold the whole man aright. This war will leave more men in the country than were found in it the day when Sumter was fired at and fell. Official reports of European countries have shown more boy- children are born in war than in times of peace, and that al- though at the end of the wars of the First Napoleon, it was rare to find a Frenchman over five feet three, there was a recupe- ration in the next age, and now the average hight of the men does not vary much from what it was before the Directory. As soon as the war closes there will inevitably be a universal PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR. 97 financial crash; in five years thereafter the country will exhibit a degree of solid prosperity and national power which can defy the world besides ; an amount of cotton will be raised annually, which will astonish all civilized nations. Why ? War makes men; determined, self-reliant men; such men have a degree of self-respect which idlers never dreamed of J these characteristics will impel them to labor ; to intelligent labor, to labor well directed. Five years ago, many a planter had from Rve hundred to five thousand acres of land, of which a few hundred only were cultivated, the remainder was held in reserve for children who were growing up with the expectation of a fortune and with the full calculation to live in ease and luxury, to end in a life of idleness, intemperance, and debauch ery. Five years hence, there will be ten households instead of one, to every thousand acres ; there will be ten families in- stead of one to be supplied with school-books, and libraries ; with the ubiquitous newspaper; the weekly journal and the monthly magazine. Ten families will want a sewing-machine, a piano, a reaper and a clothes- wringer, where one does now. Ten neat cottages will spring up, where was seen but fire years since a solitary planter's house, never papered, seldom plas- tered, and always in a more or less unfinished condition. In- telligence will not plant the teeming soil with corn and pota- toes at a price of twenty dollars an acre when it can raise a hundred dollars' worth of cotton, and sometimes three hun- dred dollars' worth, with less labor. That country is strongest, is most prosperous, and can best defy all outside nations which is marked off into farms of forty, fifty, or an hundred acres instead of embracing ten or twenty of these in one partially tilled plantation. So that aside from the mere question of slavery there will be benefits arising from this war which will present an encouraging front compared with the opposite phases. The ravage of war as to human life is exaggerated in al- most all minds, and is never so great as it seems to be. Many of the soldiers who sicken and die in hospitals would have sickened and died at home ; while the proportion of all who die from wounds is astonishingly small, and some of these would have perished by accident had they remained at home. It can not be denied that war is always a curse ; and can, sel- 98 hall's jouenal of health. dom, if ever, fail to be a sin ; but as in the present state of hu- man morals it will come sooner or later, to the nationalities of the earth, it is well to look at both sides calmly and dispassion- ately, take an intelligent view of all its phases, and endeavor to make the best of it. SUNSHINE. Messes. Walker, Wise & Co., of Boston, have sent us a paper-covered twelvemo of sixty-three' pages, entitled Sun- shine, by Mrs. Dall, author of Woman's Bight to Labor. We always become suspicious of any man, woman, or book connected with " woman's, rights " in the most remote man- ner possible, even by a link so minute, that it requires a micro- scope to discover it, just as we become suspicious of the soft- ness of a man's cranium the instant we discover that he is fond of long hair, or has it parted in the middle. Those who advo- cate " woman's rights," spiritualism, steam doctoring, and cold- water sloshings, we regard as a little weak in the upper-story ; at least, we have never yet come in contact with one who was not an object of pity, who was not brimful and overflowing with all sorts of impracticable theories about every thing under the sun, or who was not forever pecking at the Bible or the ministers of our holy religion. And if pains were taken to in- quire about their domesticities, it would be found in a large number of cases, that there was either a strong leaning toward the doctrines of passional attraction, free-loveism, or the swap- ping of husbands and wives whenever they get tired of each other ; or as a celebrated vegetarian doctor and author, who died twenty years sooner than other people, and whose wife couldn't live with him, expressed it in his application for a di- vorce: " She was not the psychological complement I took her to be." Whether he meant by such a phrase that her foot was too flat, her ankle too thick, her waist a mile through, or her character like a lump of dough, was not stated ; the great pro- bability is, that he was a beast, and she a woman in the highest sense, possessing all of a woman's delicacy, elevation, and re- finement. The book is well written, and abounds in valuable practical truths which all would do well to heed. It needed no such SUNSHINE. 99 catchpenny phrase as " woman's rights " on its title-page ; and any respectable publisher outside of the "Hub" would have known this. But from transcendental Boston we may expect any thing from the sublime to the ridiculous, "both included." This journal has very frequently advocated the power of moral medicines as being more efficient in many cases than any physic of the apothecary ; so in this article we will let material, out-door sunshine alone, and say something of the sunshine of the heart and hearth ; of its power to insure a new life and activity when physical toil has used up the vital energies, and when insidious disease has sapped the powers of life, and left the body a mere wreck of what it was. In our book on Bron- chitis and Kindred Diseases, an account is given of a man who spent fifteen years in a dungeon so dark that it was impossible to discover the distinctive features of his fellow-prisoner, who was with him for five years of that time — during the remainder of his imprisonment he was alone ; and yet he lived many years after that, and walked a free man under the glorious sunshine of the sky. But a year or two, or a month or two, sometimes even a few weeks of no sunshine in the heart, have been all suf- ficient to lay the body in the grave to be at rest at last. There are some men, spoonies, who look as if they had never smiled, there is a pitiful sadness, with an unmistakable expression of feature, a kind of hopelessness, as if they were kept under all the time at home. They don't exactly die ; it's a great pity they didn't ; they seem to have got used to it, and settled down in a state of sorrowful submission; they hadn't sense enough to maintain their liberties, nor energy enough to run away when every thing was lost. There are other men, brave, indomitable ; who live above the present ; who having found themselves " in a fix," by having made a grand mistake in marriage, have made a virtue of neces- sity, and have proudly determined to " endure," to the end of the chapter. At the same time, there is a settled sadness on the features when at rest, showing plainly that there is no "sun- shine " at home. But the sight that pains us most, is that in Broadway, of young women and those of maturer years, in whose faces it is plainly seen there is no sunshine at home ; but the skeleton of a step-mother ; of a trifling husband ; or of one who has no 100 sympathies ; nothing in common with the woman of his choice ; she, refined, educated, with cultivated tastes, of sensitive in- stincts ; he, ignorant, debased', brutal ; a gourmand, and a rake. He was rich; she poor; hence the tale of sadness; a home with- out any sunshine. There is a young girl, not very well dressed ; she would be handsome if she were ; she walks as if it were done mechani- cally ; as if there was no object ahead ; as if she were going to- ward home, but did not care whether she ever got there or not ; there is no spring, no elasticity in her step, but as if an iron weight were attached to each heel. There is certainly no sun- shine under the roof which shelters her. Perhaps she has a drunken father ; a brother who is a disgrace to the family ; or her mother may be her skeleton, by having no feelings in com- mon with her ; thwarts her in all her undertakings, in all her plans; always disparaging, always finding fault, always giving directions ; never satisfied with the manner in which any thing is done, and whose whole life is a dirge. Poor girl ! a little sun- shine at home, how it would lighten up her countenance, bright- en her face, and make a greater change in her whole moral character, than any " sunshine" which Mrs. Dall describes, could make on the physical nature. But what a light and life and genial warmth must be in the home of that woman who writes so well of the out- door sun- shine ; there must be an atmosphere of moral loveliness there, the mere thought of which actually " makes our. mouth water," and gives us an earnest, an inappeasable longing to peep in upon them, just a moment of any hour of any day or evening; the daughters — how lady -like, how affectionate ; the sons — how joyous and how manly ; and the husband, happy dog, looking on with quiet satisfaction; first upon the girls, then on the boys, and anon instinctively resting his eyes with fond satis- faction on the composed and heaven-like features of the fond wife of his bosom, as the "author and giver of them all," next to Him who rules above. Many times in our daily walk along the splendid Fifth Ave- nue, when looking at the lordly mansions of Ward, the drug- gist; of Henriques, the Jew; of Webb, the ship-builder; of James Gordon Bennett, of the Herald ; of Stewart, the dry- goods man ; or of Stuart, the big-hearted refiner,, who seems to SUNSHINE. 101 be coining money every day, and working as "hard at it with his brother Aleck as if he u hadn't a minute to live," just for the sake of having it in his power to give it away to help "Pres- byters " to rise and shine. As we were saying, in passing these houses, we are often on the point of apostrophizing : " Well, old fellow, you've got more than your share of house-room." So the writer of " Sunshine," or rather her husband, if living, must have more than his share of domestic happiness ; or may be he has passed away to his home in the skies, waiting to re- ceive the one he "left behind him," to show her upward through the mansions of the Blessed, until they come right up to the great white throne to make their glad obeisance. "While, then, we make it a daily duty to get at least an hour or two of out- door sunshine ; and failing, think it an important loss to health and length of life, let us all aim to create an in-door sun- shine, the sunshine of the heart and hearth, by. a systematic de- termination to exercise toward every member. of the household the fullest measure of all that is forbearing, thoughtful, affec- tionate, generous and lovely. Let every thing that has the most distant resemblance to a contemptible whine, to a devilish fault-finding, to a brutal boorishness and to a narrow-minded and degrading selfishness, be considered as emanations from that pit of darkness, where fiends and furies dwell ; then shall light be in every family dwelling ; cheerfulness in every face ; and the twinkle of gladness in every eye; while every heart overflows with a joy so pure, that even angels might envy its sweetness and its bliss. And all this about a shilling pamphlet on "Sunshine," which every reader will thank the gifted au- thoress for writing. But let not this subject be dismissed with- out every parent, every child, determining to ask the question daily, 'with a religious interest, "How shall I act and speak and think this day, so as to bring the most sunshine to the heart and hearth of this household ?" And fiercest indignations be to the fretful wretch, fit only for a solitary prison, on bread and water, or for a strait-jacket, nine tenths of whose waking existence is spent in bringing clouds in upon an otherwise hap- py household by complaining and fault-findings, and bitterness and repinings which none but the low-born and the vicious de- light to indulge in ; to whom it is as natural to snap and growl as the ugliest cur over his meager bone. 102 hall's jouknal of health. There are men everywhere who are daily crushing out the hearts of the women Who left happy homes to nestle confid- ingly in their bosoms ; not always with deliberate design, but by a thoughtless inattention in the exhibition of those sympathies on which most women feed as flowers do on water. There are women, too, who have so much of wormwood and of gall in their composition that their first morning's utterance is a whine or a growl ; who never, by any chance, sit down to the family table without a complaint; " pecking " first at one ♦child, then at another ; or servant or neighbor, or acquaintance or friend ; who never enter a room without some exhibition of queru- lousness or dissatisfaction. We were witness of an extraordi- nary exemplification of this hateful feature in the character of a mother, about two years ago, in a family who had not been a great while in New- York. Some four or five, may be more children were in the parlor ; some playing, some reading, some building mimic houses on the floor ; we were contemplating the scene at the time, as one fit for a painter to transfer to canvas f there was a deep satisfaction, or a more uproarious gladness in every countenance, when the door opened and the mother en- tered; a thin, bilious, scraggy, hatched-faced woman, with an apparent spinal deformity, which almost doubled her up, as her head was not much higher than the door-lock. As instanta- neous as a flash of lightning, every voice was hushed ; all play was suspended, and there was the silence of the grave; the woman looked around the room, said not a word, and withdrew. As soon as the door closed, a little boy of five, straightened himself up as he sat on the floor, drew a long breath and ex- claimed in a tone of surprise: "I thought mamma had come to kick up a fuss." As if it was one of the strangest of occur- rences that she should come into a room where her children were, without saying or doing something calculated to bring a cloud over the household. It is related of a merchant's widow, somewhere in Brooklyn, that she was of such a fault-finding and querulous nature, that her only son had not slept in the house for two years! The two daughters, who had reached womanhood, exclaimed one day to a lady friend of ours whose face was always a sun : "0 Mrs. P. ! if mother was only like you, how happy we and brother would be." But the father, ECONOMY A DUTY. 103 where was he — in his grave ! the acknowledged victim of his wife's habitual ill-nature and fretfulness. And what shall we say of the husband and father, who comes home with a scowl; who brings a cloud with him which dark- ens the whole household the moment he enters the door, who frets and complains at every thing ; whom nothing can please, whom nobody can satisfy ? There are such men, and even worse. The cases above are rare ; one, it may be in a decade or in a hundred thousand ; but perhaps almost all have the germs of these undesirable traits, which ought to be watched against every hour of our existence, lest they might grow be- fore we are aware of it, to unmanageable proportions ; but this is only half our duty ; we should sedulously cultivate all op- posite qualities, that a pure and a true affection and a loveliness of disposition and temperament should so impregnate the whole character, that the household should be only the ante-chamber of heaven ! ECONOMY A DUTY. There never has been a time in our nation's history, when the obligation on all classes has been so urgent to economize in every possible direction, in food, in dress, in rents and in every minor article of personal expenditure. It is true that money was never more abundant, seemingly, than it is now. In reality it never has been as scarce ; the only money is silver and gold ; articles which three years ago were handled every day by the very poorest of our population, in the most ordi- nary transactions in business or market traffic ; how, there are tens of thousands who do not handle or see a gold-piece in a month. Even the copper penny, which was considered so much of a nuisance that the government, by the pressure of public opinion, was induced to call in that species of money by the kegful, is now a welcome sight to every market-man and shop-keeper in New- York. The rich should practice economy for the sake of setting a good example to those in more moderate circumstances. The wives and daughters of half our citizens are demented ; they no more know the value of money than an equal number of Egyptian mummies ; this may seem at first sight a most extravagant statement ; but it is 104: hall's journal of health. short of the truth. A mummy knows nothing ; a live woman of our time has arrived at a state of mind by false knowledge, which leads to more pernicious results, than if she knew noth- ing at all. A mischievous argument has been presented by some, that the rich should spend as much as possible, and thus, not only give employment to those who are willing to work, but by a lavish expenditure in the way of dress, make impor- tations from abroad more necessary, and thus the income of the government will be increased through the Custom-House, But it is forgotten that gold must be sent to pay for these goods, and by this incessant drainage the amount of our coin becomes less and less, and the price of every article of consumption be- comes greater and greater. But suppose there were no impor tations, foreign countries being obliged to send for millions of dollars' worth of wheat and corn and meal and flour, would have to send also, these millions in gold, making it more abun- dant every month, instead of its becoming more and more scarce. The more gold there is, the less every article of con- sumption costs ; the less would be the need of hurry and expo- sure, and over- work of body and mind, which things kill mul- titudes prematurely every year; while more time would be afforded for rest, for rational enjoyment, and for that mental and spiritual and social cultivation which so add to human ele- vation and human happiness. If the times become better after the war, present economies will injure no one; whereas, if they become worse, the people will be better prepared to meet them. The safe and experienced sailor anticipates the storms of the sea ; and they are wisest who look forward to clouds and darkness and tempests in the business future. Economies should begin in dress and food and house and servants. Old garments should be patched at a very early stage of their giving out, and in the most durable and painstaking manner. Families living to themselves, should not allow any kind of meat, fish or fowl to come on their tables but once a day ; corn-meal should be the principal article for bread, and hominy and potatoes, and white beans, the main stand-bys in the way of vegetables, because they are beyond all comparison, the cheapest and most nutritious articles of food, of their class. As to the item about servants, it is the greatest shame and ECONOMY A DUTY. 105 disgrace of our people, especially in New- York. We know a family of five persons which keeps four servants. Another of three, keeps three servants ; some families, strictly private, have seven, eight, or nine helps. If this over-supply of servants ended simply with the increased expenditure of the particular family, the evil would not be so great, in the few cases in which the hire and board of these retinues are not paid eventually by other and more honest and industrious people. But it is notorious, that generally, such persons fail and their creditors are the real sufferers. The really rich of New-York, those who have been wealthy for a generation or more, are the only per- sons, as a class, who do practice a wise economy. They do it as a pleasure, arising from an honorable conviction of the just- ice and right and prudence of their course, and for the assur- ance which it gives them of a continuance of a comfortable competence in the long years of the future. But this extravagant supply of servants has a pernicious effect on the servants themselves ; they become inevitably more and more idle, careless, inattentive, impertinent, and wasteful ; and when these qualities have arrived at an unendurable pitch, they are sent away, and then they impose themselves on less aspiring families, to annoy them by their worthlessness ; and in a few years they go down lower and lower in the scale of effi- ciency, are more and more unemployed, their scanty earnings become exhausted in the miserable hovels in which they board ; miserable enough, as all ladies have learned who attempt to hunt them up in answer to advertisements in the papers. Some of the places where cooks and chambermaids board while they are getting places, are not fit for the habitation of horned cattle; a good farmer would not keep his horse or his cow in such rickety, un ventilated, and blackened apartments, situated as they generally are, in the distant, filthiest, and most noisome streets and alleys in the whole metropolis. And yet, when these same persons are introduced into a respectable dwelling, they assume the airs of duchesses and queens. They can't use brown sugar in their coffee, because it gives them the headache. They won't touch any other. bread than that which is cut fresh from the loaf at the time they are wanting it ; while the slices left at the family table of to-day, if not thrown into the ash-barrel, or given to some begging cousin or acquaintance, are placed on 106 hall's jouknal of health. the family table for the next meal. None but the costliest tea will " agree " with their delicate stomachs, and this is made so strong, that in order to be able to drink it, they saturate it with loaf- sugar. Unless they are closely watched on washing days, their own clothing first passes through the laundry; is first hung out to dry, and that too in the sunniest places in the yard ; while in the starching process of skirts, etc., their own are made as stiff as pasteboard, and in every respect have the preference. Such impertinences as these, the less resolute of our wives have to endure, and in consequence, are kept in a state of irritation and fretfulness and anxiety which wastes the strength, ruffles the temper, sours the disposition, and makes housekeeping a penance instead of a happiness. Economy in house-rent is becoming more and more a neces- sity, and it is greatly to be regretted that it is not more com- mon for two families to live together and divide this expense and that of servant-hire. In many families there is really no use for an " up-stairs girl " or chambermaid, or waitress, if the " door-bell " had not to be attended to ; and it is not much more trouble to cook for two families than for one, if they are well- ordered ones. In this way, better wages can be afforded and better servants can be had ; thus not only will the board of two servants be saved, but the comfort of having faithful and com- petent ones, will be worth more than money itself. It is often said and generally believed, that two families can not live together under the same roof. This is a great mistake ; when two women can not live in the same house in comfort and peace and social enjoyment, it is because neither of them have any sense of a practical kind, and have very little religion or good principle of any sort; it is because they have no true religious principles ; have been raised in vulgarity, or have had for mothers, persons who were unworthy of the sacred and blessed designation. Is a woman no better than a cat or a dog, that she can't dwell under the same roof with another in peace and harmony, with the common end of having a better table, better servants, a more lively household, at less expense and labor and anxiety and care, than if each family lived in a separate dwelling? "We can not harbor such an opinion of our wives and daughters for a single moment. "We have visited a house several times this last winter, one of the choicest and most truly ECONOMY A DUTY. 107 elegant in this city, in which ljved three distinct families, with two sets of children, from a year old to seven, of boys and girls ; each family was abundantly able to keep their own es- tablishment, each having houses of their own ; the washing was put out ; one housemaid and one cook, both good, did all the work for these three families throughout the whole winter; there was not the slightest jar or unpleasantness, even among the servants ; the children, we were told, were like brothers and sisters of the same family ; and not a single unkind word was ever known to have passed between them ; while a more abun- dant table, better prepared, and a neater and better kept house is seldom seen in this great metropolis. We personally know two families, both rich, who have lived in the same house for three years, and are as fast friends to-day as when first they cast their fortunes together ; not so much for saving as for social enjoyment. We know of another household, made up of three or four different families, all independent; and go there any day, live there any week, and }^ou would not know but they were all of a common stock. Let any considerable number of families have the moral firmness, the high Christian principle, the wisdom and the patriotism, to unite and make combinations of this sort popular and honorable, and in three months there would be the inevitable result of fifty per cent diminution in house-rents ; servant-hire would be largely less ; first-class serv- ants would be in greater demand ; while the trifling and dishon- est and unprincipled would be glad to get work for little more than their victuals and clothes, simply because half the num- ber of helps could be dispensed with, and the highest wages could be afforded to those who were really competent, and were willing to give their whole time to their employers. If two families combine and give a really competent cook twelve dol- lars a month, the saving of food and comfort and health se- cured by that arrangement, as compared with two separate households, with six-dollar cooks, could not be easily estimated. What is the great hindrance of a social reform like this ; one which would not only save millions of dollars annually to the hard-working men who have to earn these dollars, but would be a means of greatly adding to social enjoyment and domestic comfort and general elevation and enlargement of the spheres of thought ? The only obstacle is the pride and ignorance and 108 hall's journal of health. ' selfishness of the wives of the country. Not one husband or one brother in ten among the classes most needing it, would ob- ject to such an arrangement ; the opposition would be almost wholly from mothers and marriageable daughters. A society organized with a view to bringing about a custom of this sort, would, in proper hands, do more good socially, religiously, and in a patriotic point of view, than nine out of ten of those of the later times. Another plan, in some respects better, in others not so good, is that of having houses built, as in the older countries of Eu- rope, having each story constructed so as to afford full accom- modations for a whole family ; these are called flats or floors ; the highest are the healthiest and cheapest. But it would take years to make arrangements for this manner of living, as houses would have to be built especially for that purpose ; the other plan could be carried into effect at once. Another item of unnecessary extravagance of the times, is the imagined necessity of doing business in one part of the city and living in another. A clerk with six hundred a year must live up-town. A man, whose business is worth two thousand dollars per annum, must have his " store" down-town, and rent a house two or three miles away. Many of these ought to do business on the first floor and live up-stairs ; the oldest and most honored merchants in our memories " did business " in this way, and have left names and fortunes behind them, which their children and grandchildren are still living to be proud of and to enjoy. The Paris Kothschild is said to live in the rear of the building in which he does his business. Let our readers be assured that the purest and truest and highest patriotism of our times, is not the blatant cry of Union- ism, liberty to all, free soil, and all that, but it is individual in- tegrity and personal economy in their highest and strictest forms, carried out in every minutia of domestic expenditure. There is another method of exhibiting a high patriotism, as a means of saving the national credit, and preventing a national and individual financial collapse ; it is easily stated in a few words, to swear or affirm, in plain monosyllables : " From this good hour, I will not eat or drink or wear what does not grow in the land of my birth, the land I most love." But we have too much apparent prosperity ; fashion and folly and mad extravagance have too great a control over our peonle, to allow even the glimmer of a hope that such virtue can exist. Who is the maid or matron in New- York who will have the heroism of a Joan of Arc, and will step out of the ranks as the leader, in a cause so grand and glorious and good ? HEALTH TRACT No.. 204 WHO ARE HAPPIEST? " Mechanics' families who are a little forehanded." Such was the answer of a monthly nurse of intelligence and observa- tion, who bad in the prosecution of her calling been thrown among families of all classes, from the very rich to the very poor ; from the most famed to the most obscure. Lord Byron seems from his standpoint to have arrived at very nearly the same conclusion. He wrote: " Mechanics and working-men who can maintain their families, are in my opinion the happiest body of men. Poverty is to be preferred to the heartless, unmeaning dissipation of the higher orders." Another author thought that the most t^ be envied was " a healthy young man, in full, possession of his strength and facul- ties, going forth in the morning to work for his wife and child- ren, and bringing them home his wages at night." Aside from the question of religion there are three indispen- sable requisites to a pleasurable, satisfactory state of the mind ; if either be absent, there can not be any continuous mental, heart, enjoyment. In no case can a day ever pass without some interruption to quiet pleasures, even to those who are most fa- vorably situated, because no man or woman ever waked up in the morning who did not experience before retiring at night some disappointment, some unexpected occurrence of an un- pleasurable character to cloud the sunshine of the happiest day. Who can recollect a single day in any score or two, or three, in which some unanticipated, disagreeable thing did not occur? Echo answers : " Never one !" He who would be uniformly happy; who would pass the greater part of his time in a state of mental pleasurableness, Must be healthy. Must be well-to-do. Must be moderately busy. However healthy a man may be, anxiety for to-morrow's bread will soon undermine the strongest constitution ; hence the French returns officially announce that the well-to-do average eleven years longer life than those who live by their daily labor. If a man is healthy and well-to-do, and is not busy in his call- ing, he will seldom fail to become dyspeptic, intemperate, or restless, and die prematurely. Hence, to have a life of sun- shine, a man must live healthfully ; must have a reasonably profitable calling, and must be busy and buoyant in the prose- cution of it. HEALTH TRACT, No. 205. COOKING ME^TS. Every wife and mother owes it to herself, her husband, and her children, as well as to society at large, to prevent waste in every department of the household, whether provisions are cheap or dear, whether the husband is rich or poor ; for waste is a crime against humanity, an insult to the bounteous Hand which "giveth us all things, riches to enjoy." On the other hand, a true economy is one of the wisest, the best, and ennobling of domestic virtues. A hundred careful experiments were made in England in reference to roasting and boiling meats, in order to ascertain the respective losses : Roasted chickens, lost 15 per ct. Turkeys, lost. 20 per ct. Beef ribs and sirloins, 19 " Mutton legs and shoulders, 24 " Geese, 19 " Ducks, 27 " Boiled mutton legs, . . 10 " " beef,... 15 " " shoulder mutton, 28 " Boiling beef saves more than four per cent over roasting. If a leg of mutton is boiled it loses ten per cent ; if roasted, twenty-five per cent ! The fatter meat is, the greater the loss ; it should be moderately fat, to make it tender ; but there is an unprofitable fatness. Eleven pounds of roast beef rib loses two pounds, and the bones one pound, so that of the eleven pounds bought, only seven pounds come to the table. Hence if roast rib-pieces cost in New-York, in April, 1864, twenty cents a pound at the butcher's stall, it is more than thirty-one cents a pound on the dinner-table. It is philosophically true that one pound of clear roast beef is more con- centrated than one pound of boiled beef, has less matter in it, and hence may contain more nourishment ; but the more concentrated food is the more unwholesome it is, not only because it requires a greater digestive power to convert it into pure blood, but the sense of sufficiency at meals is induced to a considerable extent by the bulk of what is taken, and if we eat con- centrated food until there is bulk enough to remove the feeling of hunger, there is so much nutriment in it that nature can't extract it all in a perfect manner ; hence there is not only too much nutriment for the wants of the system, but all of it is imperfectly prepared, and we really get less strength and less pure blood out of it, than if much less had been eaten, or it had been taken in a more bulky, or, if you please, in a more water}' condition. This is the reason why dyspeptics and others eat a great deal, but they do not get strong. But if there is too much bulk, there is not enough nutriment, although a great deal is taken into the stomach. Porter and beer, for example, fill up the stomach, and seem to make persons fleshy, but there is but little nutriment and great bulk ; but great beer-drinkers are never strong, are puffy. HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. Our Legitimate Scope is almost boundless : for whatever begets pleasurable and harmless feelings, promotes Health ; and whatever induces disagreeable sensations, engenders Disease. AIM TO SHOW HOW DISEASE MAT BE AVOIDED, AND THAT IT IS BEST, WHEN SICKNESS COMES, TO TAKE NO MEDICINE WITHOUT CONSULTING A PHYSICIAN. Vol. XI.] JUNE, 1864. [No. 6. SAFETY OP FAMILIES. One of the very best means for preserving the health, happi- ness, and morals of sons and daughters, for raising them np to occupy high, responsible, and honorable positions in society, and for securing to them an old age of quiet repose, with a happy freedom from wasting and wearing diseases of mind and body, is to make home, the family fireside, the companion- ship of parents and one another, the sweetest, happiest, and most delightful place of all others. Taking into consideration the intensely inquiring character of the youthful mind, and the tendency in all to regard as true what is put in print, there is, perhaps, no other one method of bringing up a loving and lov- able family, of securing a happy household, than that of sup- plying the children with suitable reading from the time they are first able to read at all. There may be some difference of opinion as to what kind of reading is most suitable, but the great mass of the intelligent and the good will have no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that in the main it should be such as will combine truthfulness with interest. Fill and feed the mind with facts in language which shall engage^ the attention ; facts, and truths, and histories which lead out the affections, the best feelings of the human heart, which will wake up the sympathies to a healthful and practical exercise. There is no scene in domestic life so purely beautiful, except that of 112 hall's journal of health. family worship, than that of father, mother, children, all gath- ered around the table, before a cheerful, blazing fire, of a win- ter's evening, reading aloud by turns, with intervals of remark as to the sentiments conveyed, their application to the times or to one another, their literal correctness, the propriety of the modes of expression, and the many other points which may be suggested to the mind of reader or listener, as page after page is passed over. Yery many articles might be selected from different writers as an example of the miscellaneous reading which might, with advantage, come before a family once a month. The subjects are various enough and practical enough, and withal truthful enough to engage the attention, impart in- struction, and lead out the mind to thoughtful inquiry and to practical action in any family circle which might meet together. All the articles are truthful. Fact and not fiction is the best nourishment, the most appropriate food for young minds ; to feed them on imaginary narrations is as inevitably pernicious to the mind as the habitual use of stimulants is to the body. An early grave, or a life of poverty, dishonor, and bodily suf- fering, is the fate of those who " drink ; " just as certainly will those who feed daily on fiction ■■ spoil " the mind, weaken it, unfit it for the duties of life, and for the high and holy exer- cise of the sympathies and the best feelings of our. nature. Novel-reading is the parent of selfishness, of hard-heartedness, and of a wayward, aimless, fruitless life. The last persons in the world to devote themselves to the beneficence of life, to the prac- tical charities which so elevate us, are novel-writers and novel- readers. The blessings of the good be upon him who, reading this article, shall resolve that there shall be at least one family magazine in the world which shall come every month to eager households, freighted with all that is beautiful in sentiment, truthful in narration, and in matter instructive, pure, and ele- vating, to be read aloud in the family ; of the advantages of which a recent writer well says : " Books and periodicals should be angels in every household. They are urns to bring us the golden fruits of thought and ex- perience from other minds and other lands. As the fruits of the trees of the earth's soil are most enjoyed around the family board, so should those that mature upon mental and moral boughs be gathered around by the entire household. ISTo home NEPENTHE. 113 exercise could be more appropriate and pleasing than for one member to read aloud for tHe benefit of all. An author's ideas are energized bj the confidence and love of the tender family affections, and every heart is open to the truth, like the un- folded rose, to receive the gathering dews. The ties of love between parents and children, and brothers and sisters, are thus cemented yet more and more, and varied charms and pleasures are constantly open through this medium to make a home a very paradise. If parents would introduce this exercise in their families, they would soon see the levity and giddiness that make up the conversation of too many circles giving way to refinement and chaste dignity. Eead to your children, and encourage them to read to you, instead of reading your papers and books in silence, and in silence laying them away." Thus making home inviting, cheerful, and happy, the sons will be kept from the contaminating influence of the street, the corner- grocery, the engine-house, and the tavern, while the daughters will grow up loving, domestic,, virtuous, and pure, and both sons and daughters will live happily, healthfully, usefully, and long. NEPENTHE. "It is equal to any thing Mrs. Stowe has written," said a lady of culture and eminent critical talents, of this new volume of the writer of Olie. For the truthfulness, beauty, and purity of its sentiments, few works of fiction have been produced at home or abroad. It will be eagerly read by the physician, the lawyer, and the divine; for the talented writer who has work- ed out this beautiful narrative seems to be at home in all these- vocations ; is equally expert in setting a broken bone, in un- raveling a knotty point in law, and making clear as the light of day the principles and practice which will secure pulpit suc- cess. We commend the book to the learned professions. HEALTH TRACT, No. 206. FOOD AND HEALTH. Bread-crust baked in an oven until it is very brown, but not black, and then pounded to the fineness of ground coffee, is a safer, cheaper, and quite as agreeable and healthful a substitute for coffee as any other mixture now in use. Men who have half a dozen irons in the fire are not the ones to go crazy. It is the man of voluntary or compelled leisure who mopes, and pines, and lounges about, who thinks himself into the mad-house or a premature grave. Motion is all Nature's law. Action is the mental and physical salvation of man. White beans are the cheapest and most nutritious food which can be eaten. Beans and pork furnish nearly all the elements necessary to human subsistence. A quart of beans at eight cents and a pound of pork at twelve cents will feed a small family for a day. Four quarts of beans and two pounds of corned beef, boiled to rags, in fifty quarts of water, will furnish a good meal for forty men, or one and a quarter cents a meal. Small Pox. — It is said that as soon as any eruption appears on the skin it is small pox, if, on pressure with the end of the finger, there is the feeling as if a small fine shot had been placed under the cuticle of the skin. Face protection from cold. — An ordinary fine wire-gauze mask, such as is sometimes used at masquerades, will keep the face comfortable, even if a fierce wind is blowing, while the thermometer is below zero ; a thin vail or a silk handkerchief is a good substitute. Coal-Gas. — Two young girls were recently found dead in their bed, hav- ing retired in perfect health, in consequence of filling a pot with the live coals of a wood-fire, and placing it in the middle of their chamber, with closed doors and windows, the night being very cold. On New- Year's eye of eighteen hundred and sixty -four, Mr. I. F. Hall, aged fifty years, a gen- tleman of great moral worth, an exemplary citizen and loving father, retired to his chamber in perfect health, but in the morning was found to have been dead several hours ; the gas in the room not having been turned fully off, or having been left burning a little, was puffed out by the wind. Within a year a clergyman from the West was found nearly dead in his chamber in New-York. Being unacquainted with the nature of coal-gas, he had blown out the light instead of turning it off. Every chamber ought to have a ven- tilator out of reach, or, which would be more certain, an open fireplace, which could not easily be closed. Breathing a vitiated atmosphere during sleeping hours, which is nearly one third of a man's entire existence, is sapping the constitution of multitudes. No one ought to be allowed to sleep in a close room. It will destrov the health sooner or later, and inevitably. HEALTH TRACT, No. 207. INHERITANCES. Ox the last Sabbath of the last year, that good old minister McElroy, rose in his place and said : " I have been preaching to you forty years this day. Of all the elders who then held up my hands, not one survives ; of all the male members, not one remains ; of all the women, only six live. But although the fathers and mothers have passed away, the more numerous sons and daughters have taken their places, and their children's children are convinc- ing evidences that He is a covenant-keeping God whom we are serving this day, in that the grand-children, having had a good example set before them of holy living, of Sabbath observance, of habitual attendance on the services of the sanctuary, and a profound reverence, with an unquestioning and blessed faith in the word of God, have become religious by inheritance, as it were." Sons have often inherited the wealth of their fathers, even to the third and fourth generation. The same principle holds good as to our physical nature, that a life of temperance and industry and mod- erate ambitions secures to children, even for several generations, a robustness of constitution, a vitality, a physical power, which may well be the envy of a multitude of the sick and diseased and effemifc ate in every grade of society. Children who see daily in their p& rents the practice of all that is gentle and lovable and courteous and kind, will seldom fail, without the necessity of direct teach- ings on these subjects, to acquire the same traits of chaiacter . and the example lives and has its influence and power for good long after the parents have passed away. If parents want their children to grow up and inherit their own robust health, strength, and length of life, it must come, not so much by birth and blood, not so much by precept and command and reason, but by the daily exhibition of a calm, quiet, busy, temperate life on the part of their parents, carried out daily, habitually, and persistently by living examples. Conduct is the great, efficient teacher, not pre- cept, not theory, not idle profession. HEALTH TEACT NO. 208. RESTLESS NIGHTS. Some persons " toss and tumble " half the night and get up in the morning weary, unrefreshed, and dispirited, wholly unfit, either in body or mind, for the duties of the day ; they are not only incapacitated for business, but are often rendered so un- gracious in their manners, so irritable and fretful, as to spread a gloom and a cloud over the whole household. To be able to go to bed and be in a sound, delicious sleep, an unconscious deliciousness, in five minutes, but enjoyed in its remembrance, is a great happiness, an incalculable blessing, and one for which the most sincere and affectionate thanks should habitually go up to that beneficent Providence which vouchsafes the same through the instrumentalities of a wise and self-denying atten- tion to the laws of our being. Eestless nights as to persons in apparent good health, arise chiefly from, first, an overloaded stomach ; second, from world- ly care ; third, from want of muscular activities proportioned to the needs of the system. Few will have restless nights who take dinner at midday, and nothing after that except a piece of cold bread and butter and a cup or two of some hot drink ; any thing beyond that, as cake, pie, chipped beef, doughnuts, pre- serves, and the like, only tempt nature to eat when there is really no call for it, thus engendering dyspepsia and all its train of evils. Worldly care. For those who can not sleep from the unsat- isfactory condition of their affairs ; who feel as if they were going behindhand ; or that they are about to encounter great losses, whether from their own remissness, the perfidy of friends, or unavoidable circumstances, we have a deep and sincere sym- pathy. To such we say, Live hopefully for better days' ahead, and meanwhile strive diligently, persistently, and with a brave heart to that end. But the more common cause of restless nights is, that exer- cise has not been taken to make the body tired enough to de- mand sleep. Few will fail to sleep soundly if the whole of daylight, or as much thereof as will produce moderate fatigue, is spent in steady work in the open air, or on horseback, or on foot. Many spoil all their sleep by attempting to force more on nature than she requires. Few persons will fail to sleep soundly, while they do sleep, if they avoid sleeping in the day- time, will go to bed at a regular hour, and heroically resolve to get up the moment they wake, 'whether it is at two, four, or six o'clock in the morning. In less than a week, each one will find how much sleep his system requires; thereafter give it that, and no more. THE REST. 11' THE REST. I am dreaming of the blessings Just beyond the bounds of time, Of the pearly-gated city, O'er whose wall no evils climb ; Where the Father folds his children Safely to his loving breast ; u "Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest." * Now the toiling Christian pilgrim On a roughened pathway goes, Here dejected, there disheartened, Ever harassed by his foes. Pilgrim, raise thine eye above thee, There are joys for the oppressed, " Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest." Hast thou sickness, hast thou sorrow, Pains commingled with thy tears ; Canst thou trace the path of weeping Down the passage of the years ? " I am sick," none say in heaven, None by sorrow are possessed, " Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest." Oh ! the joys of holy dying ! From a holy life they come ; Constant toiling for the Master Tet will bring the servant home ; When he calls the tired pilgrim To the mansions of the blest, " Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest." — Am. Mess. THE LITTLE BOY THAT DIED. The late Dr. Chalmers is said to have been the author of the following beautiful tines, written on the occasion of the death of a young son whom he greatly loved: I am all alone in my chamber now, And the midnight hour is near, And the fagot's crack, and the clock's dull tick, Are the only sounds I hear ; And over my soul in its solitude Sweet feelings of sadness glide ; For my heart and my eyes. are full when I think Of the little boy that died. 118 I went one night to my father's house — Went home to the dear ones all, And softly I opened the garden-gate, And softly the door of the hall. My mother came out to meet her son — She kissed me, and then she sighed ; And her head fell on my neck, and she wept For the little boy that died. I shall miss him when the flowers come In the garden where he played ; I shall miss him more by the fireside, "When the flowers are all decayed ; I shall see his toys and his empty chair, And the horse he used to ride, And they will speak with a silent speech, Of the little boy that died. "We shall go home to our Father's house — To our Father's house in the skies, Where the hope of souls shall have no blight, Our love no broken ties ; We shall roam on the banks of the river of peace, And bathe in its blissful tide ; And one of the joys of life shall be, The little boy that died. The Expression of Dress. — Women are more like flowers than we think. In their dress and adornment they ex- press their natures, as the flowers do in their petals and colors. Some women, are like the modest daisies and violets — they never look or feel better than when dressed in a morning wrap- per. Others are not themselves unless they can flame out in gorgeous dyes, like the tulip or the blush-rose. Who has not seen women just like white lilies? We know several double marigolds and poppies. There are women fit only for velvets, like the dahlias ; others are graceful and airy, like azaleas. Now and then, you see hollyhocks and sunflowers. When women are free to dress as they like, uncontrolled by others, and not limited by their circumstances, they do not fail to express their true characters, and dress becomes a form of expression very genuine and useful. — Meredith. NOTICES. 119 NOTICES 11 Population of the. United States in 1860, compiled from the original returns of the Eighth Census, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, by Joseph C. Gr. Kennedy, Superintendent of the Census," issued at "Washington, from the Government printing-office, 1864. This is a book of 694 pages, eleven inches long and ten broad. On opening it, whole pages of columns of figures strike the eye, as dry as a bone, at the first glance ; but on a more minute examination, they are so ad- mirably arranged, so systematic, concise, and full, we at once perceive that the whole volume is rich with information ; it affords food for thought and reflection and comparison of the richest and most instructive character. A thinking man might feast on it for a month, and still turn over its leaves with an absorbing interest. It is one thing to string together the num- ber of men, women, children, horses, dogs, and cats of a coun- try; to say how many have died, how many married, how many born, and where they all come from. It is quite another thing to have a mind capable of placing these statements before the reader in such a manner as to make them of the highest in- terest, and to be a vehicle of instruction at once practical, use- ful, and of permanent value. For this purpose Congress acted wisely and well in intrusting this important and great work to Mr. Kennedy, who is universally acknowledged to be the most competent man in the nation by all odds for performing the work. In some future number we purpose giving several pages of curiosities of the census ; marriage ; which live longest, bachelors and maids, or married people ? who oftenest remarry, and do so the soonest, widows or widowers ? etc. "Constitution of Nature," by William Andrew, ' Milwaukee, 1864, paper cover, 8vo, 100 pages. Proposes theories to unfold nature, matter, and vacuum ; relative motion and rest ; matter the cause of density ; vacuum the cause of expansion or poros- ity ; why bodies fall ; capillary attraction ; combustion ; the universe ; motion ; heat ; nature of the planets ; weather, life, vital force, etc. These are suggestive themes and have occupied the thoughts of philosophers of all ages, and are treated of by the author in a calm, dignified spirit and with convincing power. 120 hall's journal of health. The American Tract Society, Boston, and No. 13 Bible House, New-York, have issued Vol. Ten of the Temperance Tales, by Lucius M. Sargent, and it is not inferior in interest to any of its predecessors. Among the subjects are The Life Preserver, The Prophets, Margaret's Bridal, Temperance Meeting in Tatter- town. Dove Hamilton, or Sunshine and Shadow, printed from the London Religious Tract Society, is a sweet little book of 292 pages, and full of practical household truths ; no one can read it, old or young, rich or poor, without deriving rich instruction from it. Among the subjects are : Bread cast upon the Waters, A Mother's Blessing, Going Home, Dove's First Grief, The Surprise, The Stepmother, The New Home, A Labor of Love, Use of Old China, Bread found after many Days, How all came Right at Last. The American Tract Society, 150 Nassau street, New- York, have issued an interesting little volume, and instructive to the old as well as the young, entitled " The Chosen Friends," or the twelve disciples, being a short biography of each of the twelve disciples of the New Testament. Also " Out of the House of Bondage," and " Friendly Counsels," by Rev. J. B. Waterbury, D.D. Another volume of 235 pages, " Helen Maurice ; or, the Daughter at Home," is well worthy of being placed in the hands of every daughter in the land, and is written in a manner calculated to leave a lasting impression as to the duties and responsibilities of life. "We hope it may be read and pondered over by many thousands. The Housekeeper's Guide, and every body's hand-book, containing over five hundred new and valuable recipes and references to household affairs, cooking, with a medical depart- ment, mechanic's department, and farmer's department, sixty- four pages ; a pamphlet which will be prized by every good housekeeper. Published by Smith and Swinney, chemists, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1864. Price per copy, one dollar. It ought to be sent post-paid to Guinea for fifteen cents. The Northern Monthly, a magazine of literature, civil and military affairs. Portland, Maine. Edward P. Weston, Editor. $2 a year, single numbers 20 cts. ; size and shape of the Atlantic Monthly; 70 pages. Among the contributors to the April No. 2 are Caroline E. D. Howe, Miss S. P. Warren, John HALL'S JOURNAL OF HEALTH. Our Legitimate Scope is almost boundless : for whatever begets pleasurable and harmless feelings, promotes Health ; and whatever induces disagreeable sensations, engenders Disease. WE AIM TO SHOW HOW DISEASE MAT BE AVOIDED, AND THAT IT IS BEST, WHEN SICKNESS C0ME3, TO TAKE NO MEDICINE WITHOUT CONSULTING A PHYSICIAN. Vol. XI.] JULY, 1864. [No. 7. BRONCHITIS, AND KINDRED DISEASES. BY W W. HALL, A M., M. D., NEW YORK. There is no necessary reason why men should not generally live to the full age of three score years and ten, in health and comfort • that they do not do so, is because They consume too much food, and too little pure air ; TlIEY take too much medicine, and too little exercise : and when, by inattention to these things, they become diseased, tney die chiefly, not because such disease is necessarily fatal, but because the symptoms which nature designs to admonish of its presence, are disregarded, until too late for remedy. And in no class of ailments are delays so uniformly attended with fatal results, as in affections of the Throat and Lungs. However terrible may have been the ravages of the Asiatic Cholera in this country, I know of no locality, where, in the course of a single year, it destroyed ten per cent, of the population. Yet, taking England and the United States together, twenty per cent, of the mortality is every year from diseases of the lungs alone ; amid such a fearful fatality, no one dares say he shall certainly escape, while every one, without exception, will most assuredly suffer, either in his own per- son, or in that of some one near and dear to him, by this same universal scourge. ISTo man, then, can take up these pages, who is not interested to the extent of life and death, in the important inquiry, What can be done to mitigate this great evil ? It is not the object of this publication to answer that question ; but to act it out ; and the first great essential step thereto, is to impress upon the common mind, in language adapted to common readers, a proper understanding of the first symptoms of these ruthless diseases 126 Every render of common intelligence and of the reost ordinary observation, must know that countless numbers of people in every direction have been saved from certain death by having understood the premoni- tory symptoms of Cholera, and acting up to their knowl- edge. The physician does not live, who, in the course of ordinary practice, cannot point to a little army of the prematurely dead who have paid the forfeit of their lives by ignorance or neglect of the early symptoms of Consumptive disease. Perhaps the reader's own heart is this instant smitten at the sad recollection of similar cases in his own sphere of observation. This book is not intended to recommend a medicinal preventive, or a patented cure for the diseases named on the title-page : it will afford no aid or comfort to those who hope, by its perusal, to save a doctor's fee, by a trifling tampering with their constitutions and their lives. Nor is it wished to make you believe, that if you come to me I will cure you. If you have symptoms of disease, I wish you to understand their nature first; and then to take advice from some regularly educated physician, who has done nothing to forfeit justly his honorable standing among his brethren, by the recom- mendation of secret medicines, patented contrivances or travelling lecturers for the cure of certain diseases. I may speak of persons in these pages, who had cer- tain symptoms, and coming to me, were permanently cured. You may have similar symptoms, and yet I may be able to do you no good. I have sometimes failed to cure persons who had no symptoms at all. In other cases, where but a single symptom of disease existed, and it, apparently, a very trivial one, the malady has steadily progressed to a fatal termination, in spite of every effort to the contrary. The object of these statements is to have it understood, that I make no en- gagement to cure any thing or any body. The first great purpose is to enable you to understand properly any symptoms which you may have that point towards disease of the lungs ; and when you have done so, to persuade you not to waste your time and money and health in blind efforts to remove them, by taking stuff, of which you know little, into a body of which you know less; but to go to a man oi" "^pectability and standing and experience — one in whem you have con- fidence, one who depends upon the practice of his pro- fession for a living; describe >our symptoms, according to your ability, place your health and life in his hands, and be assured that thus you and millions of others will stand the highest chance of attaining a prosper- ous, cheerful, and green old age. The rule should be universal, and among all classes, not only never to take an atom of medicine for anything, but not to take any- thing as a mkdicine — not even a teaspoon of common syrup or French brandy, or a cup of red pepper tea, unless by the previous advice of a physician ; because a spoonful of the purest, simples* syrup, taken several times a day, will eventually -destroy the tone of the healthiest stomach : and yet any person almost would suppose that a little syrup "could do no harm, if it did no good." A tablespoon of good brandy, now and then, is simple enough, and yet it has made a wreck and ruin of the health and happiness and hope of mul- titudes. If these simple, that is, well-known things, in their purity, are used to such results, it requires but little intelligence to understand that more speedy in- juries must follow their daily employment, morning, noon, and night, when they are sold in the shape of "syrups," and "bitters,1" and "tonics," with other in- gredients, however " simple'" they, too, may be. The common-sense reader will consider these sen- timents reasonable and right, and think it a very laud- able desire to diffuse information among the peopic as to the symptoms of dangerous, insidious, and wide- spreading diseases ; but he will not be prepared for the information, that the publication of such a pamphlet as this ivill be considered "unprofessional" by some. But latitude must be allowed for difference of opinion ; else, all progress is at an end. Whoever lends a helping hand to the diffusion of useful knowledge, is, in pro- portion, the benefactor of his kind. Whether it be useful for man to know the nature and first symptoms of a disease which is destined to destroy one out of every six in the country, is a question which each one must decide for himself. I believe that such an effort is useful, and hereby act accordingly. Experienced physicians constantly feel, in reference to persons who evidently have Consumption, that it is too late, because the application had been too long delayed. The great reason why so many delay, is because they "did not think it was anything more than a slight cold" In other words, they were entirely ignorant of the differ- ence between the cough of a common cold and the cou»h of Consumption, and the general symptoms at- tendant on the two. It is not practicable for all to study medicine, nor is it to be expected that for every cough one has, he shall go to the expense of taking medical advice ; it therefore seems to me the dictate of humanity to make the necessary information more ac- cessible, and I know of no better way to accomplish this object than by the general distribution of a tract like this: and when I pretend to no new principle of cure, no specific, and no ability of success, beyond what an entire devotion to one disease may give any ordi- nary capacity, no further apology is necessary. THROAT-AIL, or Laryngitis, pronounced Lare-in-QEK-tis, is an affec tion of the top of the windpipe, where the voice- making organs are, answering to the parts familiarly called "Adam's Apple." When these organs are dis- eased, the voice is impaired, or " there is something wrong about the swallow." BRONCHITIS, pronounced Bron-KEE-tis, is an affection of the branches of the windpipe, and in its first stages is called a com- mon cold. CONSUMPTION is an affection, not of the top or" root of the windpipe, for that is Throat- Ail ; not of the body of the wind- pipe, for that is Croup ; not of the branches of the windpipe, for that is Bronchitis ; but it is an affection of the .lungs themselves, which are millions of little air ceils or bladders, of various sizes, from that of a pea downwards, and are at the extremities of the branches of thft windpipe, as the buds or 'leaves of a tree are at the extremity of its branches. WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF THROAT-AIL1? The most universal symptom is an impairment of the voice, which is more or less hoarse or weak. If there is no actual want of clearness of the sounds, there is an in- stinctive clearing of the throat, by swallowing, hawking, or hemming ; or a summoning up of strength to enunciate words. When this is continued for some time, there is a sensation of tiredness about the throat, a dull heavy aching, or general feeling of discomfort or uneasiness, coming on in the afternoon or evening. In the early part of the day, there is nothing of the kind percep- tible, as the voice-muscles have had time for rest and the recovery of their powers during the night. In the beginning of this disease, no inconvenience of this kind is felt, except some unusual effort has been made, such as speaking or singing in public; but as il pro- gresses, these symptoms manifest themselves every evening; then earlier and earlier in the day, until the voice is clear only for a short time soon in the morn- ing ; next, there is a constant hoarseness or hnskiness from week to month, when the case is most generally incurable, and the patient dies of the common symp- toms of Consumptive disease. In some cases, the patient expresses himself as hav- ing a sensation as if a piece of wool or blanket were in the throat, or an aching or sore feeling, running up the sides of the neck towards the ears. Some have a burning or raw sensation at the little hollow at the bottom of the neck ; others, about Adam's Apple ; while a third class speak of such a feeling or a pricking at a spot along the sides of the neck. Among others, the first symptoms are a dryness in the throat after speaking' or singing, or while in a crowded room, or when waking up in the morning. Some feel as if there were some unusual thickness or a lumpy sensation in the throat, at the upper part, removed at once by swallowing it away; but soon it comes back again, giving precisely the feelings which some persons have after swallowing a pill. Sometimes, this frequent swallowing is most trouble- some after meals. Throat-Ail is not like many other diseases, often getting well of itself by being let alone. I do not believe that one case in ten ever does so, bat on the contrary, gradually grows .worse, until the voice is permanently husky or subdued ; and soon the swal- lowing of solids or fluids becomes painful, food or drink returns through the nose, causing a feeling of stran- gulation or great pain. When Throat-Ail symptom* 127 have been allowed to progress to this stage, death is almost inevitable in a very lew weeks. Now and then a c ase may be saved, but restoration here is almost in the nature of a miracle. WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF BRONCHITIS ? Bronchitis is a ba"d cold, and the experience of every one teaches what its symptoms are. The medical name for a cold is Acute Bronchitis ; called acute, be- cause it comes on at once, and lasts but a short time — a week or two generally. The ailment that is com- monly denominated Bronchitis, is what physicians term Chronic Bronchitis ; called chronic, because it is a long time in coming on, and lasts for months and years instead of days and weeks. It is not like Throat-Ail, or Consumption, which have a great many symptoms, almost any one of which maybe ab- sent, and still the case b^ one of Throat-Ail, or Consumption ; but Bronchitis has three symp- toms, every one of which are present every day, and together, and all the time, in all ages, sexes, con- stitutions, and temperaments. These three universal and essential symptoms are — 1st. A feeling of fullness, or binding, or Cord-like sen- sation about the breast. 2d. A most harassing cough, liable to come on at any hour of the day or night. 3d. A large expectoration of a tough, stringy, tena- cious, sticky, pearly or greyish-like substance, from a tablespoon to a pint or more a day. As the disease pro- gresses, this becomes darkish, greenish, or yellowish in appearance ; sometimes all three colors may be seen together, until at last it is tiniformly yellow, and comes up without much effort, in mouthfuls, that fall hea- vily, without saliva or mucus. When this is the case, death comes in a very few weeks or — days. WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS *OF CONSUMP- TION ? A gradual wasting of breath, flesh, and strength are the three symptoms, progressing steadily through days and weeks and months, which are never absent in any case of true, active, confirmed Consumptive disease that I have ever seen. A man may have a daily cough for fifty years, and not have Consumption. A woman may spit blood for a quarter of a cen- tury, and not have Consumption. A young lady may breathe forty times a minute, and have a pulse of a hundred and forty beats a minute, day after day, for weeks and months together, and not have Con- sumption ; and men and women and young ladies may have pains in the breast, and sides, and shoulders, and flushes in the cheeks; and night sweats, and swollen ankles, and yet have not an atom of Con- sumptive decay in the lungs. But where there is a slow, steady, painless decline of flesh and strength and breath, extending through weeks and months of time, Consumption exists in all persons, ages, and climes, although at the same time sleep, bowels, appetite, spirits, may be represented as good. Such, at least, are the results of my own observation. The great, general, common symptoms of Consump- tion of the Lungs are night and morning cough, pains about the breast, easily tired in walking, except on level ground, shortness of breath on slight exercise, and general weakness. These are the symptoms of which Consumptive persons complain, and as they ap- proach the grave, these symptoms gradually increase. HOW DOES A PERSON. GET THROAT- AIL 1 A woman walked in the Park, in early spring, until a little heated and tired; then sat down on a cold stone. Next day, she had hoarseness and a raw burn- ing feeling in the throat, and died within the year. A man had suffered a great deal from sick headache ; he was advised to have cold water poured on the top of his head: he did so; he had headache no more. The throat became affected; had frequent swallowing, clearing of throat, falling of palate, voice soon failed in singing, large red splotches on the back part of the throat, and white lumps at either side ; but the falling of the palate and interminable swallowing were the great symptoms, making and keepins him nervous, irritable, debilitated, and wretched. He was advised to take off the uvula, but would not do it. Had the nitrate of silver applied constantly for three months. Tried homoeopathy. After suffering thus two years, he came to me, and on a subsequent visit, said, "It is <rcn«*erful, that for two years '[ have been troubled with this throat, and nothing would relieve it, and now it is removed in two days." That was four months ago. I saw him irl the street yesterday. He said hi3 throat gave him no more trouble ; that he had no more chilliness, and had never taken a cold since he came under my care, although formerly "it was the easiest thing in the world to take cold." A merchant (1002) slept in a steamboat state-room in December, with a glass broken out; woke up next morning with a hoarseness and sore throat; for several months did nothing, then applied to a physician. Counter-irritants were employed without any perma- nent effect. At the end of four years, he came to me with*' a sort of uneasy feeling about the throat, more at times than others ; not painful ; sometimes a little hoarseness, with frequent inclination to swallow, or clear the throat. At the little hollow at the bottom of the neck, just above the top of the breast-bone, there was a feeling of pressure, stricture, or enlargement — ■ no pain, but an unpleasant sensation, sometimes worse than at others. It is absent for days at a time, and then lasts for several hours a day." This esse is itnder treatment. A Clergyman (1012) has a hoarse, cracked, weak voice, easily tired in speaking; a ra'w sensation in the throat; and in swallowing has u a fish-bony feeling" He had become over-heated in a public address, and immediately after its close started to ride across a prairie in a damp, cold wind, in February. Had to abandon preaching altogether, and become a school teacher." This gentleman wrote to me for advice, and having followed it closely for eighteen days, reported himself as almost entirely well. I greatly desire it to be remembered here, that in this, as in other cases of Throat-Ail, however perfectly a person may be cured, the disease will return as often as exposure, to the causes of it in the first place is per- mitted to occur. No cure, however perfect, will allow a man to commit with impunity such a thoughtless and inexcusable act as above named, that of riding across a prairie in February, in a damp, cold wind, within a few minutes after having delivered an excited address in a warm room. None of us are made out of India rubber or iron, but of flesh and blood and a reasonable soul, subject to wise and benevolent con- ditions and restrictions ; and it is not to the discredit of physic or physicians, that being once cured, the disease should return as often as the indiscretion that origin ated it in the first instance is re-committed. Three weeks ago, one of our merchants came to me with a troublesome tickling in the throat. At first it was only a tickling ; but for some weeks the tickling compels a frequent clsaring of the throat; and with- out a cough, each clearing or hemming brings up half a teaspoon-ful of yellow matter, with some sal- iva. On looking into his throat, the whole back part of it was red, with still redder splotches here and there — epiglottis almost scarlet. On inquiry, I found he had for years been a chewer of tobacco ; then began to smoke ; would day after day smoke after each meal, but especially after tea would consume half a dozen cigars. In time, the other naturally con- sequent steps would have been taken— Consump- tion and the grave. Among other things, I advised him to abandon tobacco absolutely and at once. 2a two weeks he came again. Throat decidedly better ; in every respect better, except that he, in his own opinion, " had taken a little cold," and had a constant slight cough— not by any means a trifling symptom. Let the reader learn a valuable lesson from this case. This gentleman had the causes of cough before; he found that smoking modified the tickling, and taking; this as an indication of cure, he smoked more vigor- ously, and thus suppressed the cough, while the cause of it was still burrowing in the system and widening its ravages. It will require months of steady effort to arrest the progress of the disease, and he may consider himself fortunate — more so than in any mercantile speculation he ever made — if he gets well at all. If he does get well, and returns to the use of tobacco, the disease will as certainly return as that the same cause originated it, fcr the following reason, as was stated in the First Part :— Throat-Ail is inflammation ; that is, too much heat in the parts. Tobacco smoke being warm, or even hot, is drawn directly back against the parts already too much heated, and very naturally in- creasing the heat, aggravates the disease. Again, any kind of smoke — that of common wood — is irritating, much more that of such a powerful poison as tobaeeo 128 —soothing, indeed, in its first transient effects, like Many other poisons, but leaving behind it consequences more remote, but more destructive and enduring. A gentleman, just married, with a salary for his services as secretary to a Southern house, applied *.» me to be cured of a sore throat. He was per- manently hoarse ; swallowing food was often unen- durably painful, besides causing violent paroxysms of cough. He said he knew no cause for his com- plaint, except that he had smoked very freely. On in- quiry, [ found that for the last two years he had used, on an average, about "a dozen cigars every day ; per- haps more." He died in six weeks. In several instances, persons have applied to me who had been advised to take brandy freely for a throat affection.. Such advice is warranted by no one prin- ciple in medicine, reason, or common sense. Were I to give it, I should feel myself justly liable to the charge of being an ignorant man or a drunkard. The throat is inflamed ; inflammation is excitement ; brandy and tobacco both excite, inflame the whole body ; that is why they are used at all. The throat partakes of its portion of the excitement, when the throat, body, and the man, all the more speedily go to ruin together. I have in my mind, while writing these lines, the me- lancholy history of two young men — one from Ken- tucky, the other from Missouri — who were advised " to drink brandy freely, three times a day, for throat com- plaint." One of these became a drunkard, and lost his property, and within another year he will leave an in- teresting family in penury, disgrace, and want. The other was one of the most high-minded, honorable young men I have lately known. He was the only son of a widow, and she was rich. He came to see me three or four times, and then stated that he had con- cluded to try the effects of a little brandy at each meal. A few weeks afterwards he informed me, that as he was constantly improving, he thought that the brandy would certainly effect a cure. Within seven months after his application to me, he had become a regular toper; that is, he had increased the original quantity allowed, of a tablespoon at each meal, to such an amount, that he was all the time under the influence Of liquor. His business declined ; he spent all his money ; and secretly left for California, many thousand dollars in debt, and soon after died. The person who advised him is also now a confirmed drunkard ; but in his wreck and ruin, still a great man. A gentleman from a distant State wrote to me some months ago for advice as to a throat affection. He is a lawyer of note already, and of still higher promise, not yet having reached the prime of life. By earnest efforts as a temperance advocate, in addition to being a popular pleader at the bar, his voice became impaired with cough, spitting of blood, matter expectoration, diarrhoea, debility, and general wasting. He was in- duced to drink brandy with iron, but soon left off the iron and took the brandy pure. The habit grew upon him ; he sometimes stimulated to excess, according to his own acknowledgment; his friends thought there was no interval, and gave him up as a lost man to themselves, his family, and his country ; but in time the virulence of the disease rose above the stimulus of the brandy, and in occasional desperation he resorted to opium. He subsequently visited the water cure, gained in flesh and strength, and was hopeful of a speedy restoration; but he took "an occasional cigar" — the dryness in the throat, hoarseness, pain or pres- sure, and soreness still remained ! He left the water cure, and in a few months wrote to me, having, in ad- ;, dition to the above throat symptoms, a recent hcemorr- hage, constipation, pains in the breast, nervousness, debility, variable appetite, and daily cough. Within two months, he has become an almost entirely new man, requiring no further advice. Further illustrations of the manner in which persons get Throat- Ail, may be more conveniently given in the letters of some who have applied to me, with the ad- ditional advantage of having the symptoms described in language not professional, consequently more gener- ally understood. A PRESBYTERIAN CLERGYMAN. (105ft) " I have had for three years past atroublesome affection of the thorax, which manifests itself by fre- quent and prolonged hemming or clearing the throat, and swelling: both more frequent in damp weather, or after s-iight cold. General health very feeble, sleeplessness, waste of flesh, low spirits. Visited a water cure, remain- ed two months, but my hemming and swallowing wort not a whit improved. Touching with the nitrate of si lv« slightly makes the larynx sore. I have been alwayi able to preach. It has never affected my voice until very recently. Two weeks ago I preached two long sermons, in a loud an(J excited voice, in one day During the last discourse my voice became hoarse, and my hemming has become very bad ; and there has been a slight break in my voice ever since. Hem, hem, hem, is the order of the day ; clearing the throat is inces- sant, swallowing often, and a slight soreness of the larynx, particularly after a slight cold, or after several days' use of nitrate of silver, with a scarce percep- tible break in the voice. These are my principal symp- toms." This case is under treatment. A LAWYER, (1016) " aged thirty-seven. Have been liable, for several years past, in the fall, winter, and spring, to severe attacks of fever, accompanied with great debil- ity, loss of flesh, appearing to myself and friends to be in the last stages of Consumption ; in fact, the dread of it has been an incubus on me, paralyzing my ener- gies and weighing down my spirits. In the summers, too, I have been subject to attacks of bilious fever and bilious colic. A year ago, I attended court soon after one of these attacks, and exerted myself a great dea!. My throat became very sore, and I had hemorrhage — two teaspoons of blood and matter. My health con- tinued feeble. I went last summer to a water cure, and regained my flesh and strength, but the weakness in my throat and occasional hoarseness continued all the time. Afterwards, by cold and exposure, I became worse, continued to have chills and fever and night sweats, accompanied by violent cough and soreness of the throat. I got worse ; was reduced to a perfect skeleton, and had another haemorrhage. Mucus would collect in the top o£ the throat, and was expectorated freely. I am still liable to colds. The seat of the dis- ease seems to be at the little hollow in front at the bot- tom of the neck, just above the top of the breast- bone. At my last bleeding, the pain seemed to be in the re- gion of Adam's-apple. The principal present symp- toms are soreness in throat, dryness, pain on pressing it, and hoarseness ; pulse from eighty to ninety in a minute ; irregular appetite. These symptoms, to- gether with my fear of Consumption, serve to keep me unhappy. I find myself constantly liable to attacks of cold, sneezing, running at the nose even in the summer time. My mother and sister have died of Consump- tion, as also two of my mother's sisters. Feet always cold ; daily cough." OPINION OF THE CASE. There is no Consumptive disease • it is impossible. No personal examination is needed to tell that. The foundation of all your ailments is a torpid liver and a weak stomach. If you are not cured, it will be your own fault. The treatment of this case was conducted by corres- pondence, as he lived six hundred miles away, and therefore I had not the opportunity of a personal exami- nation. Within a month he writes :— " I am gradually improving ; feet warm ; all pain has disappeared from the breast; appetite strong, regular, and good: pulse seventy-two ; breathing eighteen ; all cough has dis- appeared." At the end of two and a half months, no further advice was needed, as he wrote—" I have not written to you for a month, being absent on the circuit. I have not enjoyed better health for years than I have for the month. Weight increasing ; no uneasiness or pain about my breast ; pulse seventy -five ; less in the morning. The only trouble I have is costiveness, from being so confined in court, and being away from home deprived of my regular diet. We were two weeks holding court, last of November, in a miserable room, the court-house having been recently burned; kept over-heated all the time. I made four or five speeches, and suffered no inconvenience whatever. I have no cough." A CLERGYMAN (1024) called over two months ago, having had at first an ailment at the top of the throat, apparently above or near the palate. It soon descended to the region of Adam's-apple, and within a month it seemed to have located itself lower down the neck, giving a feeling as 129 ir there were an ulcer there, with a sense of fullness about the throat, hoarse after public speaking, lasting a dav or two, with attacks every few weeks of distressing sick headache. As the disease seemed to be rapidly descending towards the lungs, a rigid, energetic treat- ment was proposed, and at the end of ten weeks he writes_"I take pleasure in introducing my friend, to you. He has suffered many things, from many advisers, with small benefit. I have desired him to consult with you, hoping that he may have the same occasion to be grateful for the providence which leads him to you, which I feel that I myself have for that which guided me to your counsels. I suffer but little, very little from my throat, and confidently anticipate entire relief at no distant day, for all which I feel myself under great obligation both to your skill and to your kindness," &c SICK HEADACHE is a distressing malady, as those who are subject to it know full well, by sad experience. In this case, this troublesome affection had to be permanently removed beibre the throat ailment could be properly treated ; when that was done, the throat itself was compara- tively of easy management. A MERCHANT (947) wrote to me from the South, complaining chiefly of Bad cough, sometimes giving a croupy sound ; Throat has a raw, choking, dry, rasping feeling; Soon as he goes to sleep, there is a noise or motion, as if he were going to cough ; Startled in sleep, by mouth filling with phlegm ; Expectoration tough, white, and sticky; darkish par- ticles sometimes ; Flashes or flushes p^ss over him sometimes ; Sick stomach sometimes, acid often, wind on stomach oppresses him greatly ; / A lumpy feeling in the throat ; 'On entering his house, sometimes falls asleep in his chair, almost instantly ; In walking home, at sundown, half a mile from his store, is completely exhausted ; Slightest thing brings on a cough ; never eats without coughing ; If he swallows honey, it stings the throat ; Cot a cold a month ago, which left the palate and throat very much inflamed ; Throat and tongue both sore ; A hooping, suffocative cough ; can hear the phlegm rattle iust before the cough begins; A dry. rough feeling from the little hollow at the bot- tom of the neck up to the top of the throat. One night after going to bed, began to cough, choke, suffocate ; could not get breath, jumped out of bed, ran accross the room, struggled, and at length got breath, but was perfectly exhausted ; could not speak for half an hour, without great difficulty. In addition to his own description of the case, his wife writes— "Ten o'clock at Night.— I am no physi- cian, nor physician's wife, but am his wife and nurse, and an anxious observer of his symptoms, and can see his throat inflamed behind the uvitla. He says there is a lump somewhere, but he cannot tell where. Some- times he thinks it is in the little hollow at the bottom of the neck, sometimes just above, and sometimes in or about the swallow. A recent cold has aggravated his symptoms. His cough to-day has been very fre- quent and loose. He has emaciated rapidly within a month, and is now a good deal despondent. As for myself, I feel as one who sees some fair prospect sud- denly fading away. I had fondly hoped — oh! how ardentlv !— that he might be restored. If a knowledge of the fact would give any additional interest to the case, I will only say, he is one of the loveliest charac- ters on earth. None in this community has a larger ?hare of the respect and confidence of their acquain- tance." The opinion sent, for I have not seen this case, was as follows: — ''The whole breathing apparatus, from the top of the windpipe to the extremity of its branches, H diseased ; the lungs themselves are not at all affected by decay. Your whole constitution is diseased; and yet there is good ground for hope of life and reason- able health." In three months this patient write?— " I am glad to btform jo- that I think I am still improving in health and strength. My bowels are sometimes disordered by eating melons and fruits ; but I felt so much belter that I thought I might indulge. Pulse sixty-five to seventy; an almost ravenous appetite." A month later he writes—" My health and strength are still im- proving ; cough not very troublesome ; increasing in flesh," &c. I believe this gentleman now enjoys good health. A LADY. (948) teacher of vocal music, writes— "There is a pecu- liar sensation in my throat for the last two months. Whenever I attempt to swallow, it feels as if some- thing were in the way ; a swelling under the jaws, a soreness on the sides of the throat, extending to the ears, and occasioning throbbing painfully. I have a dull aching at the top of my collar-bone, and an un- pleasant sensation of weakness and heaviness in my chest ; a bad taste in my mouth frequently. Have been regular, but have been afflicted for a few years past with sickness at the stomach and vomiting, at- tended occasionally with great pain for a few hours. During these attacks, the complexion changes to a livid hue. I have been very much troubled with dyspepsia. On recovering from the attacks above mentioned, I have experienced a feeling of weakness almost insupportable. A in very costive ; and my spirits are greatly depressed. Within a day or two I have taken a violent cold, which has affected me with sneezing, running from the eyes and nose, together with a* slight hoarseness. I was ad- vised to apply caustic to the throat, and Croton oil to my neck, chest, and throat. I have since discon- tinued these, not having received any permanent bene- fit from them. On two occasions, from over-exertion at concerts and examinations, I was unable to speak a loud word, from hoarseness, for several days. I am extremely anxious to learn your opinion. In about two months my public concerts take place, and it is abso- lutely necessary that something should be done for me." OPINION. Yours is general constitutional disease. There is no special cause of alarm. A weakened stomach, -a torpid liver, a want of sufficient air and exercise, are the foun- dations of all 3'our ailments, and by the proper regula- tion of these, you may expect to have good health and a stronger voice. You must, have energy and patient perseverance in carrying out the prescriptions sent to you. In one month this lady writes, and the letter is given to encourage others who may come under my care, to engage with determination and energy in* carrying out the directions which may be given them. The reader may also see what great good a little medicine may do when combined with the judicious employment of ra- tional means, which do not involve the taking of med- icine or the use of painful and scarifying agencies and patent contrivances : — " I began your prescriptions at once. Having followed them for some time, I was obliged to intermit them for a few days, in consequence of having to conduct a concert, besides having to travel by stage and railroad seventy or eighty miles. During this time, I was up every night until twelve o'clock, and was much ex- posed to the night air. On returning home, I re-com- menced your directions, have made it a point to attend to them strictly, and have very seldom failed of doing so. In consequence of two omissions in diet, I suffered from headache, which disappeared when I ooserved your directions. My appetite is good; my food agrees with me. I sometimes feel dull and sleepy after dinner. I drop to sleep immediately. Seldom wake in the night. Sleep about seven hours, and generally feel bright and strong in the morning, when I take a brisk walk of two miles and a half; the same after six, p.m. My walks at first fatigued me considerably; generally, however, I have felt better and better from their commencement to their end, and have perspired very freely. The ex- ercise I take seems rather to increase than diminish my strength. I have not been prevented from* taking exercise from any dampness in the atmosphere. I have sometimes been exposed to the night air in going to church and other places, but without any perceptible injury. The means you advised produce a general glow, and invariably remove headache, which I some- times have to a slight degree after dinner. I think my throat is better. There is no unpleasant feeling about it at present, except the difficulty in swallowing, and even that is better. Pulse sixty-seven." 130 I had for some time ceased to regard this energetic young lady as a patient, when she announces a new ailment, a difficulty at periodic times:— "I walked two miles eyery day, and every thing was going on well, until one evening after walking very fast, I sat awhile with a friend, in a room without fire, in November. The weather was chilly and damp ; was unwell, sup- pressed ; had a chill and incessant cough for several hours, ending in something like inflammation of the lungs." These things were remedied, and she is now engaged in the active discharge of her duties. This last inci- dent is introduced here to Warn every reader, especially women, against all such exposures at all times, most especially during particular seasons. Such exposures, as sitting in rooms without fire, in the fall and spring, after active walking, have thrown stout strong men into a fatal consumption ; and it is not at all to be wondered at that delicate women should lay the foun- dation of incurable disease in the same manner. I will feel well repaid for writing these lines, if but here and there a reader may be found to guard against such ex- posures. Our parlors and drawing-rooms are kept closed to the air and light for a great portion of the twenty-four hours, and unless the weather is quite cool there is no fire in them. Thus they necessarily ac- quire a cold, clammy dampness, very perceptible on first entering. A fire is not thought necessary, as visitors usually remain but a few minutes ; but when the b'lood is waimedijy walking in the pure air and the clear sunshine, it is chilled in a very short space of time, if the person is at rest, in the cold and gloom of a modern parlor, especially as a contemplated call of a minute is often unconsciously extended to half an hour, under the excitement of friendly greetings and neighborly gossip. There can be no doubt that thou- sands every year catch their deeth of cold, to tise a homely but expressive phrase, in the manner above named. Young women, especially, cannot act thus with impunity. Men perish by multitudes every year by exposures of a similar character; walking or work- ing until they become warm, then sitting in a hall or entryora cold counting-room; or standing still at the wharf or at a street corner ; or running to reach a ferry- boat until they begin to perspire, and then sitting still in the wind while the boat is crossing. It is by inat- tention to what may be considered such trifling little things that thousands of valuable lives are sacrificed every year. A YOUNG GENTLEMAN, (950) from Washington City, complained of Uneasiness at throat, caused by repeated colds ; late hours, hot rooms ; ' Cough most of mornings— dry, tickling, hollow ; Expectoration a little yellow ; Bloody, streaked expectoration, six months ago ; Breathing oppressed, if sit or stoop long ; Take cold easy, in every way; Throat has various feelings, tickling, heavy achingr raw, dry, from palate to depression ; Swallowing a little difficult at times ; Voice not much affected; Headache, costive bowels, piles occasionally; Pain about shoulder-blades and at their points ; Soreness under both ribs sometimes ; Pains in the breast— more of a soreness from the top of the breast-bone to the pit of the stomach ; Have been ailing fifteen months ; Father, mother, sister, uncle, aunt died of Consump- tion. OPINION. You cannot have Consumption now : you are de- cidedly threatened with it. With proper attention, persevering and prompt you may ward it off effectually, and live to the ordinary term of human life to those of your occupation. It is my opinion, that without this care, you will fall into settled disease within a year. In two months, this gentleman called to see me for the first time. His lungs were working freely and fully, over the natural standard ; pulse seventy-two ; appetite good ; bowels regular. I did not think he re- quired any particular medical advice; and it is my present belief, that with proper attention to diet, exer- cise, and regular habits of life, his health will become permanently good. 952. . Took a severe cold last winter, which left a severe cough. Every morning the breast feels sore, until snrs about some. Pain in the left side, running through tc the left shoulder blade, and between the shoulders; pain in the breast-bone, and in the centre of the left breast. Chief complaint is pain in the chest, left side, and a constant raising of frothy, thick, tough, and yel- low matter, with frequent hawking, hemming, and clearing of the throat. Age 22. OPINION. Your ai.rnents are all removeable by diligent atten tion to the directions I may give you. I very much hope you will spare no pains in carrying them out most thoroughly. You certainly have not Consumptive dis- ease. He called upon me some months afterwards, when 1 saw him for the first time. He had nothing to complain of; pulse sixty; his lungs working f-reeiy and fully, being considerably above the natural standard ; and as far as I know, he continues well to this day. 973. " Am officer in a bank. Was at a fire during Christ- mas, seven months ago.. Used my voice a great deal; began to be hoarse ; very much so by morning. This lasted a week, and went off; but in three weeks there appeared to be something about the palate which wanted to come away. Throat seemed inflamed, and ever since then have had a clogging feeling in the throat, that does not affect my voice, unless I read aloud, when I soon become hoarse. Two days ago, spit up a spoonful of dark blood ; never before or since. I have a binding sensation across the top of the breast, and three months since had a pain up aiid down the breast-bone. Have used iodide of potash : have had the throat pencilled, and then sponged with nitrate of silver, without benefit — pulse, one hundred and ten." OPINION. Yours is a throat ailment, at the entrance of the windpipe — not as low down as the voice organs. There is very considerable active inflammation /there. Your lungs are a little weakened, nothing more ; the pains in the breast are not serious at all, and I see no ob- stacle to your entire recovery. I received letter after letter from this young gentle man, stating that no perceptible benefit seemed to fol- low what I advised. He was encouraged to persevere, and finally his symptoms began to change, and then disappeared; and in two months from his first consul- tation he wrote me to say that he had steadily im- proved ; pulse, permanently at sixty-five ; expressing his obligations, &c. This case shows strikingly the ad vantage of perseverance. / A CLERGYMAN (844) wrote to me for advice in reference to a throat complaint. I prescribed, and had entirely forgotten the circumstance, when the following letter was received : — " I began to follow your directions on the 4th day of May, not quite three months ago, and have adhered tc them strictly ever since. I am evidently a great deal better. I have lost no flesh; although it is summer, my weight has not varied three pounds, since I wrote to you; it is now one hundred and forty-nine lounds. My tonsils are diminished, and give me no uneasiness, except in damp weather. From my throat, which is now generally perfectly comfortable, I am continually bringing up a pearly substance. Sometimes it is per- fectly clear, and like the pure white of an egg. But this is a mighty change. At first, I could not talk five minutes in the family circle. My throat was constantly tickling and burning; so that a mustard plaster, v/hich took all the skin off my neck in front, was a comfort; but now I can talk as much as I'wish, read a page or so aloud, and am almost tempted to sing a little." HOW DO PERSONS GET BRONCHITIS ? i In the same manner as a common cold, for Bronchitis is a common cold protracted, settling not on the Pings, but on the branches of the windpipe, clogging them u< with a secretion thicker than is natural ; this adheres 131 to the Inside of the tube-like branches, and to a certain extent closes them : hence, but a small portion of .air gets iato the lungs. Nature soon begins to i'eel the de- liciency, and instinctively makes extra effbrtsto obtain the necessary quantity, in causing the patient to draw in air forcibly instead of doing it naturally and without an effort. This forcible inspiration of external air drives before it the accumulating phlegm, and wedges it more compactly in a constantly-diminishing tube, until the passage is entirely plugged up. The pa- tient makes greater efforts to draw in the air, but these plugs of mucus arrest it, and there is a feeling as If the air did not get down to its proper place, or as if it were stopped short, causing a painful stricture, or cord-like sensation, or as some express it, a stoppage of breath. If relief is not given in such cases, either by medicine judiciously administered, or by a convulsive uature of effort at a cough, which is a sudden and for- cible expulsion of such air as happened to be on the other side of the plug, the patient would die; and they often do feel as if they could not possibly live an hour. This is more particularly a description of an attack of Acute Bronchitis. Chronic Bronchitis is but a milder form of the same thing, very closely allied in the sensations produced, if not indeed in the very nature of the thing, to what may be considered a kind of PERPETUAL ASTHMA, which may in most cases he removed and warded off for an indefinite time by the use -of very little medicine, if the patient could be induced to have a reasonable degree of self-denial and careful perseverance. HOW DO PERSONS GET CONSUMPTION 1 As they do most other diseases, by inattention, neglect, imposition on nature. Mar>y persons have this dis- ease hereditarily, but the same means which perma- nently arrest the progress of accidental Consumption will as often and as uniformly ward off, indefinitely, the effects and symptoms of the hereditary form, the essential nature of accidental and hereditary Consump- tion being the same. The treatment is also the same, except that in the accidental form it must be more prompt, more energetic ; in the hereditary form it must be more mild, more persevering. I consider the latter, the less speedily and critically dangerous of the two. MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS. A number of pages will be devoted to the illustra- tion of a variety of topics connected with the general subject ; all, however, will be of a practical character — at least, such is the intention. Consumption is the oxidation of the exuda- tion corpuscle. This corpuscle — this little body, this tubercle, this seed of Consumption — is an albuminous exudation, as minutely described on page 5, First Part, and being deficient in fatty matter, its elementary molecules cannot constitute nuclei, capable of cell de- velopment; therefore, these nuclei remain abortive, are foreign bodies in the lungs, and like all other foreign bodies there, cause irritation, tickling. This tickling is a cause of cough, as itching is a cause of scratching, both being instinctive efforts of nature Jo remove the cause of tfce difficulty. The oxidation— that is, the burning, the softening of this corpuscle or tubercle — gives yellow matter as a product, just as the burning— that is, the oxidation of wood— gives ashes as a product. Thu3 the yellow matter expectorated in Consumption is a sign infallible, that a destructive, con- suming process is going on in the lungs, just as the sight of ashes is an infallible sign that wood or some other solid substance has been burned— that is, de- stroyed. But why is it that this albuminous exudation, this tubercle, this exudation corpusxle, should lack this fatty matter, this oil, this carbon, which, did it have would make it a healthy product, instead of being s foreign body and a seed of death ? Consumption is an error of nutrition. The patient has soliloquized a thousand times, "I sleep pretty well oovvels regular, and I relish my food, but somehow or other it does not seem to do me the good it used to. I do not get strong." The reason of this is, that the food is imperfectly digested, and when that is the case, aridity is the result, which is the distinguishing feature of Consumptive disease. This excess of acid in the alimentary canal dissolves the albumen of the food, aad carrier it off intu the box d ia its dissolved rtate, making the whole mass of blood in perfect, irrpure, thick, sluggish, damming up in the lungs — that is, con- gesting them— instead of flowing out to the surface, and keeping the skin of a soft feel and a healthful warmth. Thus it is that the skin of all Consumptives has either a dry, hot feel, or a cold, clammy, damp- ness ; at one time having cold chills creeping over them, causing them to shiver in the Ettn or hover over the fire; at another time, by the reaction, burning hot, the cheek a glowing red, the mouth parched with thirst. Another effect of the excess of acidity dis- solving the albumen and carrying it into the blood is, that the blood is deficient in the fat, or oil, or carbon, which would have been made by the union of this albumen with alkaline secretions; the blood then wanting the fat or fuel which is necessary to keep the body warm, that which was already in the body, in the shape of what. we cah flesh, is used instead, and the man wastes away, just as when steamboat men, when out of wood, split up the doors, partitions, and other parts of the boat, ts keep her going, she moves by consuming herself. So the Consumptive lives on, is kept warm by the burning up, the oxidation of his own flesh every day and every hour ; this same wasting away being the invariable, the inseparable attendant of every case of true Consumption. He lives upon himself until there is no more fuel to burn, no more fat or flesh, and he dies—" nothing but skin and bone." What, then, must be done to cure a man of Consumptive disease 1 He must be made more (what is called) "fleshy ;" that is, he must have more fuel, fat, to keep him warm. The acidity of the alimentary canal must be re- moved, in order that the food may be perfectly digested, so as to make pure blood, such as will flow healthfully and actively through every part of the system, and be- come congested, siuggish, stagnant nowhere. To remove this acidity, the stomach must be made strong, and healthfully active ; but no more than health- fully active, so as to convert the food into a substance fit for the manufacture of pure blood. To make the stomach thus capable of forming a good blood material from the aliment introduced into it, as a perfect mill converts the grain into good flour or meal, there is behind the mill a power to turn it, there is behind the stomach powers to be exerted. These are the glandular system, the liver being the main one of all. This must be kept in healthful, operating order ; if it acts too much or too little, the food is badly manu- factured, and the blood which is made out of the food, and of the food alone, is imperfect and impure. After all this is done, there is one more operation, which is the last finishing touch by which pure life- giving blood is made ; OP" a sufficient amount of pure air must come in contact with it before blood is con- stituted. This contact takes place in the lungs : not such a contact as the actual commingling of wine and water, for the air and what is soon to become blood are not mixed together ; they are kept separate in different vessels. The air is in the lungs; that, is, in the little bladders or cells, and this fluid, which is to be con- verted into blood, is in the little veins or tubes, which are spread around over the sides of the air-cells, as a vine is spread over a wall ; but these little vessels have sides so very thin, that the life-giving material of the air passes through into the blood, just as the.warmth of the sun passes through glass ; but while this life- giving quality of the air passes into the blood, making it perfect, the impure and deathly ingredients of the blood pass out of, it, into the air, which has just been deprived of its life. Thus it is, that while the air we draw in at a single breath is cool and pure and full of life, that which is expired is so hurtful, so poisonous, at least so destitute of life, that were it breathed in, in- stantly, uncombined with other air, by a perfectly healthy person, he would instantaneously die. So that pure air in breathing is most essentially indispensable; first, to impart perfection, life to the blood ; and also to withdraw from it its death. No wonder, then, that a plentiful supply of pure air is so. essential to the maintenance of health, so doubly essential to the re- moval of disease and restoration to a natural condition. No wonder, then, that when a man's lungs are decay- ing, and thus depriving him of the requisite amount of air, he -so certainly fades away, unless the decay is first arrested, and-ihe lung power or capacity restored. The great principles, then, involved in the cure of Consumptive disease, or, professionally speaking, the great incucatioc*, are-- 132 To cause the consumption and healthful digestion of the largest amount possible of substantial, nutritious, plain food. To cause the patient to consume more pure air. To bring about the first condition requires the exer- cise of extensive medical knowledge, combined with a wide experience and close and constant observa- tion. To regulate healthfully the digestive apparatus — that is, to keep .the whole glandular system of the human body in healthfully-working order — requires re- medies and treatment as varied in their combinations almost as the varied features of the human face. Scarcely any two persons in a hundred are to be treated in the same way, unless you can find them of the same size, age, sex, constitution, temperament, country, cli- mate, occupation, habits of life, and manner of inducing the disease. Here are ten characteristics which are ca- pable,as every arithmetician knows, of a thousand differ- ent combinations ; so that any person proposing any one thing as a remedy — a cure for Consumption, applicable to all cases and stages, must be ignorant or mfamous beyond expression. The two things above named will be always curative in proportion to their timely accomplishment. The ways of bringing these about must be varied according to constitution, temperament, and condition. The mode of doing the thing is not the essential, but the thing done. Beyond all question, the thing can be done : Consumption can be cured, and is cured in various ways. The scientific practitioner varies his means according to the existing state of the case. The name of the disease is nothing to him ; he attacks the symptoms as they are at the time of prescribing; and if he be an experienced practitioner, he will know what ought to be done, and how it should be attempted, just as a classical scholar knows the meaning of a classical phrase or word the first time he ever sees it as per- fectly as if he had seen it a thousand times before. And without setting myself up as an instructor to my medical brethren, I may here intimate my conviction, that the cure of Consumption would be a matter of every day occurrence, if they would simply study the nature of the disease, read not a word of how it had been treated by others, but observe closely every case, and treat its symptoms by general principles, as old as the hills, and follow up the treatment perseveringly, prescribe for the symptoms, and let the name and dis- ease go. But then they must first understand perfectly the whole pathology of the disease — its whole nature. That, however, requires years of laborious study and patient observation. The above things being true, as perhaps none will deny, it is worse than idle to be catching up every year some new medicine for the cure of Consumption.