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Strange the places Fate chooses from which to fly her arrows! It was the country whose people had conceived and carried out this gigantic fraud (the foundation of Egypt's financial ruin) which pushed the late Viceroy from his stool and drove him, an exile, out of his country.

But the canal was completed at last. The pageant which inaugurated the opening of the great route to the use of the world is known to us all. How strangers flocked to see the triumph, as it was considered, of engineering skill; how the Empress came from France to grace the ceremony with her presence; how she was attended by princes and their trains; how, on the occasion of her going to Cairo, a road was made to the pyramids to enable her to ride out to them without fatigue; how a kiosk was erected near their base in which she was to repose after her journey, from the windows of which she might view those splendid monuments without being subjected to the sun's powerful rays; how fêtes were given; how presents were distributed, openhanded and on all sides, and all at the Viceroy's how like, indeed, it was to a fairy expense pantomime in Eastern land, is known as well to those who kept themselves informed upon the current topics of the day as to those who participated in the splendid pageants.

In one sense, at least, the Khedive had cause for self-congratulation. Both as regards ancient and modern times, his country possessed the grandest monuments which have ever been erected by the hand of man, or spared by the hand of Time; and in respect of the first he had largely contributed, and his name will be associated with it for ever.

Practically, however, what was the result of the work to him? Nothing, except that he had made of Egypt a factor in the constantly recurring Eastern problem, about which no one understands anything except that it is a source of never-failing anxiety to European cabinets, which neither of them, nor all of them combined have ever been, or will ever be, able to solve; and the knowledge that the commerce which had been a profit to his people now passed them by, and the pleasure of looking at the flags of foreign nations waving in the breeze from the masts of

their heavily freighted ships as they pass through his territory, borne up, as one might say, upon his river of molten gold; together with the more or less pleasant reflection that he had seen twenty thousand of his subjects perish miserably, to say nothing of his having spent some 500,000,000 francs of their money.

Certainly it can not be said that all of this money went into the hands of the canal company. A great deal of it was interest which the Egyptian Government had to pay in order to enable it to comply with its agreements, and with the Napoleonic award. But, in so far as Egypt is concerned, it matters not where it went: it is sufficient to know that Egypt had to pay it. A last reflection :

M. de Lesseps started out with the proposition that he could join the two seas at an expense of 200,000,000 francs.

The canal cost the subscribers to its stock that amount. In addition it received from the Khedive:

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Assume that every franc of the money was spent on the canal, and M. de Lesseps was out in his calculations some 257,000,000 francs.

Remember that many miles of this canal were already dug for him. In former times there were lakes in the vicinity of Ismailia; the water in those lakes had disappeared; he found basins of considerable depth, and all he had to do was to let the water from the sea into them. Now, if under all these favorable circumstances, digging as he was nearly the whole time in sand, it cost him 457,000,000 francs to join the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, where on earth is the money to come from to enable him to cut through the Isthmus of Panama?

P. H. M.

HEALTH AT HOME.

PART FIRST.

THE old saying, "There is no place like home," has a singularly happy meaning, when it is applied to health and the benefits which spring from health that is good and beautiful. We who are engaged in forwarding sanitary work may labor our lives out, and still do little service, until we can get each home, however small it may be, included in the plan of our work. The river of national health must rise from the homes of the nation. Then it will be a great river on which every blessing will be borne.

When I, as a physician, enter a house where there is a contagious disease, my first care is to look at the surroundings. What are the customs of the people there? Are they wholesome? Are they unwholesome? If the answer be, "Wholesome and common sense," then I know that the better half of success in the way of treatment and prevention is secured. If the answer be, "Unwholesome, slovenly, disorderly, careless," then I know that all that may be advised for the best will be more than half useless, because there is no habit on which any dependence can be truthfully placed, and because habit in the wrong direction is so difficult to move that not even the strongest ties of affection are a match for it even in times of emergency.

If we could, then, get wives, mothers, and daughters to learn the habitual practice of all that tends to health, we should soon have an easy victory, and should ourselves cease to be known as the pioneers of sanitary work, the work itself being a recognized system and a recognized necessity to be practiced by everybody.

To me it always seems that no point in the warfare against disease is anything like so important as that of getting the women of the household to work heart and soul with us sanitarians. I am never tired of repeating this fact, and I never shall be until the fact is accomplished. We always look to women for the cleanliness and tidiness of home. We say a home is miserable if a good wife and mother be not at the head of it to direct the internal arrangements. We speak of slovenly women, so much importance do we attach to orderly women, twenty times to one more frequently than we do of slovenly men. A slovenly woman is a woman of mark for discredit, and there can be no doubt that the natural excellences of women in respect to order and cleanliness have, without any distinct system or mode of scientific education, saved us often from severe and fatal outbreaks of disease. In the

cholera epidemics which I have twice witnessed, and in which I have taken visiting charge of affected districts, I have found the women by far the most useful and practical coadjutors. The men sat by the fire if they were at home; the women truly bestirred themselves. They saw that the water intended for drinking purposes was boiled before it was used for drinking purposes; they attended to details relating to ventilation and general cleansing; they washed the clothing and bedding of the affected persons; they attended in the sick-rooms; they prepared the food. In a sentence, they were acting forces for the suppression of the epidemics, and their devotion, and I say it faithfully, their readier and superior appreciation of details, were the great saving factors in relation both to preventive and curative art.

That which we sanitarians want, therefore, to see, is the scientific education of women to prepare them to meet emergencies at once, and not only so, but to prevent, by forethought and intelligent prevision, the necessity for emergencies. We wish them to understand the principles which suggest the details, instead of having to learn the details in moments of much excitement and anxiety and dread, when details, however important they may be, seem new, obscure, involved, and all but impossible, when habits which have been acquired have to be given up or much modified, and when new habits have to be, as it were, improvised and enforced with regularity at a moment's notice. For it is as true as it is simple that good health is after all, and bad health is after all, a matter of habit to an extent which few persons in the slightest degree acknowledge or comprehend.

To the domestic cleanliness which most women by habit learn to acquire, it should be easy to tack on many of the other forms of cleanliness which the physician wishes to enforce, but which the general public does not altogether or readily recognize. It is in relation to this further cleanliness, this more than commonplace cleanliness—but which should be commonplace for all intents and purposes-that I wish to draw attention, and the attention of the women of the nation particularly, in these papers on Health at Home. I promise to put forward not one suggestion that can not be carried out. I will, in these essays,

"Imagination's airy wing suppress,"

and give nothing more than plain rules for plain sons it is very hard to divine, to place sick people people of every grade of life.

SUNLIGHT AT HOME.

Whether your home be large or small, give it light. There is no house so likely to be unhealthy as a dark and gloomy house. In a dark and gloomy house you can never see the dirt that pollutes it. Dirt accumulates on dirt, and the mind soon learns to apologize for this condition because the gloom conceals it. "It is no credit to be clean in this hole of a place" is soon the sort of idea that the housewife gets into her mind; the "place is always dingy, do what you may," is another similar and common idea; and so in a dark house unwholesome things get stowed away and forgotten, and the air becomes impure, and when the air becomes impure the digestive organs become imperfect in action, and soon there is some shade of bad health engendered in those persons who live in that dark house. Flowers will not healthily bloom in a dark house, and flowers are, as a rule, good indices. We put the flowers in our windows that they may see the light. Are not our children worth many flowers? They are the choicest of flowers. Then again light is necessary in order that the animal spirits may be kept refreshed and invigorated. No one is truly happy who in waking hours is in a gloomy house or room. The gloom of the prison has ever been considered as a part of the punishment of the prison, and it is The mind is saddened in a home that is not flushed with light, and when the mind is saddened the whole physical powers soon suffer; the heart beats languidly, the blood flows slowly, the breathing is imperfect, the oxidation of the blood is reduced, and the conditions are laid for the development of many wearisome and unnecessary constitutional failures and sufferings.

So.

Once again, light, sunlight I mean, is of itself useful to health in a direct manner. Sunlight favors nutrition; sunlight favors nervous function; sunlight sustains, chemically or physically, the healthy state of the blood. Children and older persons living in darkened places become blanched or pale; they have none of the ruddy, healthy bloom of those who live in light. We send a child that has lived in a dark court in London for a few days only into the sunlight, and how marked is the change! We hardly know the face again.

Let us keep, then, this word in our minds, light, light, light; sunlight which feeds us with its influence and leaves no poisonous vapors in its train.

Before I leave this subject, I want to say a word about light in relation to the sick. A few hundred years ago it became a fashion, for rea

in dark and closely curtained bedrooms. The practice to some extent is continued to this day. When a person goes to bed with sickness it is often the first thing to pull down the blinds of the windows, to set up dark blinds, or if there be Venetian blinds to close them. On body and spirit alike this practice is simply pernicious. It may be well, if light is painful to the eyes of the sufferer, to shield the eyes from the light, or even shut the light off them altogether; but for the sake of this to shut it out of all the room, to cut off wholesale its precious influence, to make the sick-room a dark cell in which all kinds of impurities may be concealed day after day, is an offense to Nature which she ever rebukes in the sternest manner.

This remark presses with special force in cases where epidemic and contagious diseases are the affections from which the sufferers are suffering, for these affections, as they live on uncleanliness, require for their suppression the broadest light of day. Moreover, I once found by experiment that certain organic poisons, analogous to the poisons which propagate these diseases, are rendered innocuous by exposure to light. Thus, in every point of view, light stands forward as the agent of health. In sickness and in health, in infancy, youth, middle age, old age, in all seasons, for the benefit of the mind and for the welfare of the body, sunlight is a bearer and sustainer of health.

To secure the entrance of sunlight, every house should have a plentiful supply of large windows, and not an opportunity of any kind should be lost to let in light to every room. It is very easy to exclude light when it is too bright : it is very hard to let it in when by bad building it is systematically excluded. Lately, by an architectural perversity which is simply astounding, it has become a fashion to build houses like those which were built for our ancestors about two centuries ago, and which are called Queen Anne houses or mansions. Small windows, small panes, overhanging window-brows, sharp, longroofs enclosing attics with small windows-these are the residences to which I refer; dull, red, dark, and gloomy. I am told that their excellence lies in their artistic beauty, to which many advantages that we sanitarian artists wish for must necessarily be sacrificed. I would be the last to oppose either the cultivation of art in design or of art in application, and I do not for one moment believe that such opposition is necessary. But these beetle-browed mansions are not so beautiful as health, and never can be. I am bound to protest against them on many sanitary grounds, and on none so much as on their interference with the work of the sun. They pro

duce shade, and those who live in them live in of sleep than we do in the summer. shadow.

In many residences where there is plenty of window-space there is much neglect in keeping the windows clean. Windows should be cleaned once a week at least, and a great desideratum is to bring into general use a simple mechanical contrivance by which the window-sashes can be easily removed and turned into the room, so as to enable the cleaning to take place without the perilous process of standing outside on the window-sill. Among the poor who can not afford to have a professed window-cleaner the windows often become quite obscured, because the women of the household can not get at them, as they say, on both sides, and the men are not at home in the day to give them assistance. Baker's new ventilating window promises to answer best for the object here stated. The sashes of this window hang on centers instead of sliding up and down. When they are closed the sashes fit neatly and exclude draughts and wet effectually; and when they are opened they can be set at any required angle to admit air. The greatest advantage of all is that each window-sash can be turned over, so that it may be cleaned with equal facility on its inside and outside surfaces without exposing the cleaner to the risk of standing outside at any stage of the cleaning process.

The introduction of daylight reflectors has been, in late years, a very great and useful advance. The dark basements of town-houses can be so often completely lighted by these reflectors that I wonder they are not universally demanded in places where their action is effective. The light they afford is steady, often actually bright, and always pure.

SLEEP AT HOME.

I have been speaking about sunlight, and am led by this to refer to another and allied topic, I mean night and hours of sleep. If it be good to make all possible use of sunlight, it is equally good to make as little use as possible of artificial light. Artificial lights, so far, have been sources of waste, not only of the material out of which they are made, but of the air on which they burn. In the air of the closed room the present commonly used lamps, candles, and gaslights, rob the air of a part of its vital constituent, and supply in return products which are really injurious to life. Gaslight is in this respect most hurtful, but the others are bad when they are long kept burning in one confined space. The fewer hours after dark that are spent in artificial light the better; and this suggests, of itself, that within reasonable limits the sooner we go to rest after dark the better. We require in the cold season of winter, when the nights are long, much more

On the

longest day in the year, seven hours of sleep is sufficient for most men and women who are in the prime of life. On the shortest day, nine hours of sleep is not overmuch, and, for those who are weakly, ten or even twelve hours may be taken with real advantage. In winter, children should always have ten to twelve hours of sleep. It is not idleness to indulge to that extent, but an actual saving, a storing up of invigorated existence for the future. Such rest can only be obtained by going to bed very early, say at half-past eight o'clock or nine.

It is wrong as ever it can be that our legislators should often be sitting up, as we know they do, times after times, in the dead of night, trying against life to legislate for life. It is most foolish that public writers, who hold so many responsibilities in their hands, should be called upon to exercise their craft at a time when all their nature is calling out to them, "Rest, rest, rest!" It is said I am foolish for declaring these things. Is it so? I am standing by Nature, speaking under her direction, and, without a thought of dogmatism, I am driven to ask, May it not be the world that is foolish ?—the world, I mean, of fashion and habit, which could, if it would, change the present systems as easily as it criticises the view that it ought to make the change. Anyway, this I know, and it is the truth I would here express, that in every man, woman, and child there is, at or about the early time I have named, a persistent periodical desire for sleep, which steals on determinately, which, taken at the flood, leads to a good sound night's rest, and which, resisted, never duly returns, but is replaced by a surreptitious sleep, broken by wearing dreams, restless limbs, and but partial restoration of vital power. I have said before, make the sun your fellow workman. I repeat the saying now. I do not say, go to bed at all seasons with the sun and rise with it, because in this climate that would not be, at all seasons, possible; but I say, as a general principle, as closely as you can, make the sun your fellow workman; follow him, as soon as you are able, to rest, and do not let him stare at you in bed many hours after he has commenced his daily course. Teach your children, moreover, this same lesson, and the practice of it, whereupon there will be, in a generation or two, even in this land of fogs and dullness, a race of children of the sun, who will stand, in matter of health, a head and shoulders above the children of the present generation.

BEDROOMS and beds.

FROM the subject of sleep I am led by as easy and natural a transition to the subject of bedrooms and beds as I was before led from the

subject of light to the subject of sleep. But perhaps some one will say, Why, in speaking of a home and fireside topics, should you begin with bedrooms? There is the drawing-room, surely, first to be thought of; that room in which the company gathers when company comes together; that room in which the lady of the house takes the most pride, shows the most taste, feels most at home. There is also the dining-room, or sitting-room, or breakfast-room, or study. Again, there is the kitchen-of all rooms, surely, the most important in every sanitary point of view?

We will enter all these rooms in good time; but let us go into the bedroom first, and get that in order, because, after all, it is really the most important room in the house by far and far again. I know it is not commonly thought to be so. I am quite aware from my daily observations, for over thirty years, that this is one of the least popular notions about bedrooms. I often think, as I wend my way up ever so many different kinds of stairs daily, that a doctor's usual journey would be something like that on a treadwheel were it not for the fact that there is always some new ending to his ascents, and that on his mission of freedom and usefulness he is carrying the blessings of the services his brethren are giving to him, for dispensation, into the sanctuaries of sorrow. But one fact would lighten my heart very much more-I mean the fact, if it were as fully as it were easily realizable, that I should always find the bedrooms in sickness or in health befitting their office and the purpose to which they are assigned.

As a rule I regret to record that from want of appreciation of what is most healthy, in opposition to a keen appreciation of what is most fashionable, the bedroom is too often the part of the house that is least considered. It may be in any part of the house. There is no room too much out of the way or too little cared for that may not be a bedroom. "This is only a bedroom," is the commonest observation of the woman who is deputed to show you over an empty house that stands to be let. "We can turn the dressingroom into a bedroom whenever we like," is not unfrequently a housewife's, and even a good housewife's, expression. "Give me a shake-down somewhere," is the request of the unexpected traveler or visitor who wants to stay with you all night. "Anywhere will do, so long as it is a bed." "This is only an attic; but it is large enough for one servant, you know, and two have slept in it many a time before now." These are the kind of ordinary terms that are applied to bedrooms as apologies for something that is confessedly but observedly wrong about them. The language itself implies error; but it is far from

expressing the whole of the error that really exists.

When we enter the bedroom we too often find it, though it may be a good-sized room, altogether unsuited as a sleeping-apartment. It may be situated either at the back or the front of the house; it may or may not have a fireplace, and, if it should have a fireplace, the register may or may not be open. The windows may be large or small, according to mere caprice of the builder, or of accident, or of necessity; and, whether the window will open or shut from the top or the bottom sash, or from both, is a matter of smallest consequence. As a rule the bedroom-windows that have a double sash open only from the bottom, and it is the most usual occurrence to find the sash-lines out of gear altogether, or the frames in a bad state, so that the sash has to be supported with care, or “humored," whenever it has to be opened or closed. Then to the window, that the room may look snug and comfortable, must be muslin blinds (half blinds), rollerblinds, and very often heavy curtains. When the window is opened the roller-blind blows out like the sail of a boat, or blows in, at the risk of knocking down the looking-glass. Sometimes Venetian blinds, which are never in order for two months together, take the place of roller-blinds, and it becomes quite an art to manage the laths, though these blinds are on the whole the best. Then the walls of bedrooms are in most instances covered with paper, and of all rooms in the house they are least frequently papered. "The lower rooms must be papered, they look so very dirty; the bedrooms are dingy, but they may stand over another year; nobody sees them." To carry out further the idea of snugness, the bedrooms are carpeted, it may be over their whole surface right up to the walls of the rooms, and the carpet is nailed down, so that it may be swept without being dragged out of its place.

Again, the bedroom is too often made a kind of half lumber-room-a place in which things that have to be concealed are carefully stowed away. "Under the bed" is a convenient hidingplace. It is the fact that once in a public institution for the sick which I inspected there existed an arrangement by which each new patient who came in to be cured had his every-day clothes, after they were taken off his body, put into a rickety old box and pushed under his bed, to remain there until he was able to put them on again when he "left the house" or until he died, if his disease ended fatally, and his relatives claimed them. I found eighteen of these boxes of clothes secreted systematically under eighteen beds in one insalubrious sick-room or ward of this establishment. In private houses this same plan of stowing away old clothes, old boots

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