and bottom, of course applies only to the rooms that are unoccupied in an occupied room in hot weather one sash only-the lower, as a rule, is the best-ought to be opened. If the upper be lowered when the room is occupied, the cold air is apt to strike on the top of the head, and to give cold. 41. Let her give orders that every chimney in the house be unstopped; and let her see for herself that her orders have been obeyed; for servants, if they have the chance, will stop up chimneys, as they are fully aware that dust and dirt will come down chimneys, and that it will give them a little extra work to do. But the mistress has to see to the health of herself and of her household, which is of far more consequence than either a little dirt or extra work for her servants. She may rest assured that it is utterly impossible for herself and for her family to have perfect health if the chimneys are allowed to be stopped. I assert this fearlessly, for I have paid great attention to the subject. The apartment, if the chimney be stopped, must necessarily become contaminated with carbonic acid gas, the refuse of respiration, which is, as I have before stated, deadly poison. 42. Chimneys, in many country houses, are permanently and hermetically stopped: if we have the ill fortune to sleep in such rooms, we feel half-suffocated. Sleep did I say? No! tumble and toss are the right words to express the real meaning; for in such chambers very little sleep do we get,-unless, indeed, we open the windows to let in the air, which, in such an extremity, is the only thing, if we wish to get a wink of 'sleep, we can do! Stopped-up bed-room chimneys is one and an important reason why some persons do not derive the benefit they otherwise would do from change of air to the country. 43. I unhesitatingly declare that ninety-nine bed-rooms out of every hundred are badly ventilated; that in the morning, after they have been slept in, they are full both of impure and of poisoned air, I say, advisedly, impure and of poisoned air, for the air becomes foul and deadly if not perpetually changed-if not constantly mixed, both by day and by night, with fresh, pure, external air. Many persons by breathing the same air over and over again, are literally "poisoned by their own breaths!" This is not an exaggerated statement alas, it is too true! Let every young wife remember that she requires just as much pure air in the night as in the day; and if she does not have it, her sleep will neither refresh her nor strengthen her, but that she will rise in the morning more weary than on the previous night when she retired to rest. 44. The way then to make a house healthy, and to keep off disease, is by thorough ventilation-by allowing a current of air, both by day and by night, to constantly enter and to sweep through the house, and every room of the house. This may be done either by open skylight or by open landing windows, which should always be left open, and by allowing every chamber window to be wide open during the day, and every chamber door to be a little open both by night and by day, having a door-chain on each door during the night to prevent intrusion. 45. Let her, if she can, live in the country; for "God made the country, and man made the town." Cowper. In a town, coal fires-manufactories, many of them unhealthy -confined space-the exhalations from the lungs and from the skin of the inhabitants, numbers of them diseased, all tend to load the air with impurities. Moreover, if in the town she desire a walk, it is often itself a walk, and a long one too, before she can get into the country-before she can obtain glimpses of green fields and breathe the fresh air; hence walks in the town do but comparatively little good. In the country her lungs are not cheated; they get what they want a good article, pure air-and the eye and heart are both gladdened with the beauties of nature. I consider the following remark of Dr. Grosvenor, in his excellent Essay on Health, very pertinent. He observes:-"Hence it is that one seldom sees in cities, courts, and rich houses, where people eat and drink, and indulge in the pleasure of appetite, that perfect health and athletic soundness and vigor which is commonly seen in the country, in the poor houses and cottages, where nature is their cook and necessity is their caterer, where they have no other doctor but the sun and fresh air, and no other physic but exercise and temperance. 46. Cold air is frequently looked upon as an enemy, instead of being contemplated as, what it really is to a healthy person, a friend. The effect of cold upon the stomach is well exemplified in a walk, in frosty weather, producing an appetite. "Cold air," says Dr. Cullen, "applied with exercise, is a most powerful tonic with respect to the stomach; and this explains why, for that purpose, no exercise within doors, or in close carriages, is so useful as that in the open air." 47. Hot and close rooms, soft cushions, and luxurious couches, must be eschewed. I have somewhere read, that if a fine, healthy whelp of the bull-dog species were fed upon chicken, rice, and delicacies, and made to lie upon soft cushions, and if, for some months, he were shut up in a close room, when he grew up he would become unhealthy, weak, and spiritless. So it is with a young married woman; the more she indulges, the more unhealthy, weak, and inanimate she becomes-unfit to perform the duties of a wife and the offices of a mother, if, indeed, she be a mother at all! 48. Rich and luxurious ladies are less likely to be blessed with a family than poor and hard-worked women. But if the hard-worked be poor in this world's goods, they are usually rich in children, and "children are a poor man's riches." Here is, to a vengeance, compensation! Compensation usually deals very justly both to man and womankind. For instance, riches and childlessness, poverty and children, laziness and disease, hard work and health, a hard-earned crust and contentment a gilded chamber and discontent These are ofttimes wedded as man and wife, Riches seldom bring health, content, many children, and happiness; they more frequently cause disease, discontent, childlessness, and misery.* Riches and indolence are often as closely united as the Siamese twins; disease and death frequently follow in their train. "Give me neither poverty nor riches" was a glorious saying of the wisest of men. Rich and luxurious living, then, is very antagonistic to fecundity. This might be one reason why poor curates' wives and poor Irish women generally have such large families. It has been proved by experience that a diet, principally consisting of milk, butter-milk, and vegetables, is more conducive to fecundity than a diet almost exclusively of meat. In illustration of my argument, the poor Irish, who have usually such enormous families, live almost exclusively on butter-milk and potatoes; they scarcely eat meat from year's end to year's end. Riches, if it prevent a lady from having children, is an evil and a curse, rather than a good and a blessing; for, after all, the greatest treasures in this world are "household treasures healthy children! If a wife be ever so rich and she be childless, she is, as a rule, discontented and miserable. Many- -a "The indulgences and vices of prosperity are far more fatal than the privations entailed by any English form of distress. -The Times, Feb. 3, 1868 married lady would gladly give up half her worldly possessions to be a mother; and well she might-they are far more valuable. I have heard a wife exclaim with Rachel. "Give me children, or else I die." Truly, the love of children is, planted deeply in woman's heart. "The love of children is woman's instinct." 49. There is in this country at the present time a vast amount of womb diseases; much of which, by judicious management, might altogether be prevented; but really as long as rich wives live a life of excitement, of luxury, of idleness, and of stimulants, there is but little chance of a diminution of the same. 50. Uterine ailment-womb ailment-is a fruitful source of a lady's illness; indeed, I will go so far as to affirm that uterine complaints are almost always, more or less, mixed up with a woman's illness; hence, the womb has, by a medical man, to be considered in all the diseases and disorders appertaining both to girlhood and to womanhood. 51. If a young wife be likely to have a family, let her, continue to live heartily and well; but if she have been married a year or two without any prospect of an increase, let her commence to live abstemiously on fresh milk, butter-milk, bread, potatoes, and farinaceous diet, with very little meat, and no stimulants whatever; let her live, indeed, very much either as a poor curate's wife or as a poor Irish woman is compelled to live. 52. It is not the poor woman that is cursed with barrenness-she has often more mouths than she can well fill; but the one that frequently labours under that ban is the pampered, the luxurious, the indolent, the fashionable wife; and most assuredly, until she change her system of living to one more consonant with common-sense, she will continue to do So. It is grievous to contemplate that oftentimes a lady, with every other temporal good, is deficient of two earthly blessings-health and children; and still more lamentable, when we know that they frequently arise from her own seeking, that they are withheld from her in consequence of her being a votary of fashion. Many of the ladies of the present day, too, if they do bear children, are, from delicacy of constitution, quite unable to suckle them. Should such things be? But why, it might be asked, speak so strongly and make so much fuss about it? Because the disease is become desperate, and delays are dangerous-because children among the higher ranks are become few and far between; and who so proper as a medical man to raise his voice to proclaim the facts, the causes, and the treatment? I respectfully inquire of my fair reader, Is fashion a wife's mission? If it be not, what is her mission? I myself have an idea-a very ancient and almost obsolete one-that the mission of a wife is a glorious mission, far removed from fashion, from frivolity, and from folly. A fashionable wife, after a fashionable season, is frequently hysterical and excitable, and therefore exhausted; she is more dead than alive, and is obliged to fly to the country and dose herself with quinine to recruit her wasted energies. Is such a wife as this likely to become a joyful mother of children? I trow not. Her time is taken up between pleasure and excitement to make herself ill, and nursing to make herself well, in order that she may, at the earliest possible moment, again return to her fashionable pursuits, which have with her become, like drinking in excess, a necessity. Indeed, a fashionable life is a species of intoxication. Moreover, wine-drinking in excess and a fashionable life are usually joined together. Sad infatuation, destructive alike to human life and human happiness-a road that often leads to misery, disappointment and death! These are strong expressions, but they are not stronger than the subject imperatively demands a subject which is becoming of vital importance to the well-being of society, and, in the higher ranks, even to its very existence, and which must, ere long, engross the attention of all who love their country. Fashion is a sapper and miner, and is ever hard at work sapping and undermining the constitutions of its votaries. Something must be done, and that quickly, to defeat its machinations, otherwise evils will, past remedy, be consummated. 53. While the poor, then, have usually an abundance of children, the rich have, as a rule, but few children. How very seldom we hear of a rich lady having three at a birth; while it is no very uncommon occurrence for a poor woman having that number, and even as many as five at a birth? A case of this latter kind has just occurred :--" A woman living on the property of Sir Watkins W. Wynn has presented her husband, a labourer, with five children at a birth. A few days ago they were all alive. The Queen has sent her 77. Twice she has had three at a birth, all of whom have lived. A Welsh correspondent tells us the poor woman has twentytwo children."-Shrewsbury Paper. 54. I consider thorough ablution of the body every morning one of the most important means of health to a |