I notice once again that the occurrence of damp or wet in the ceilings and walls of a bedroom is much more readily tolerated than it is elsewhere. If a pipe bursts and the drawingroom or dining-room ceiling is covered with a dark patch, ever so small, that must be at once attended to, it looks so very bad. But a patch of similar character, though it look like a map of the United Kingdom, with the Straits of Dover and the coast of France as an opposing outline, may remain on the ceiling of the bedroom until it dries, and then, being dry, may still remain, because if the water should come in again the condition will be as bad as ever.

I will say no more about bedrooms to their disparagement. The errors I have pointed out when they are present are unpardonable in regard to the healths of those who permit them, and, inasmuch as the health of these is of far greater moment than their equanimity of sentiment, I must run the risk of disturbing the temper that I may assist the health. I feel the less compunction on this head because what I am about to propose in the way of remedy means nothing but economy of reconstruction along the whole line. I will tender in a few rules what are the essentials of a healthy bedroom. If they can not all be carried out in every case, many of them can be without any serious difficulty.

The reason why I give these rules in respect to bedrooms the first place in domestic sanitation is obvious enough, if but a few moments' consideration be given to the importance of the bedroom as the center of the household. In this room, if a due proportion of sleep be taken, the third part of all the life is passed, thirty years out of a life that reaches to an age of ninety. In what other room in the house is so much of the life passed without change? In the sitting-rooms we move about, we have the doors frequently open, and in numerous ways we change the air, and change our own relations to it. In the bedroom we are shut up closely, we are unconscious of what is going on silently around us. If the air becomes close we do not notice it, and it may become positively poisonous without our knowledge. Moreover, during sleep we are most susceptible to influences which act detrimentally upon us. We are breathing slowly, and we are not casting off, or eliminating, freely the products of animal combustion.

RULES FOR BEDROOMS.

I.

THE bedroom should, by preference, have its window either on the southern side of the house, the southeastern, or the southwestern. Of the

western view is the most fortunate in our country. The winds from the southwest are the most frequent, and so the room can be most frequently ventilated by them, from the open window, during the day. These winds, moreover, are soft winds, and compare favorably with the eastern winds, from which it is always good to be protected as much as possible. The bedroom having a southwestern aspect gets the longest share of light during the day. The early morning light soon feeds it with a subdued and agreeable light, and in the evening it gets the later rays, almost the last rays of the life-giving sun.

II.

The bedroom should in all cases be shut off from the house during the time it is occupied, so that the emanations from the rooms may not enter into it. It should be ventilated, I mean, independently. In our present houses the bedrooms are actually the traps, or bell-jars, into which, in too many cases, the air of the lower rooms, charged with the gaseous or vaporous products made during the day, are laid up. In these instances the occupants retire to sleep in an atmosphere of their own emanations, to say nothing of what comes from the kitchen, from gas, and from other sources of impurity. It is most easy to ventilate the bedroom independently. Nothing more is wanted than to remove one or two bricks in the outer wall beneath the flooring, and to carry up a wooden tube four inches square for a room of very moderate size-say eighteen feet long, fourteen wide, and twelve high-into the room from that opening. This tube should ascend into the room six to eight feet. It may be covered at the top with a layer of gauze or muslin if the current of air is too strong. The tube should be six feet from the bed. The bed may be protected from a draught by a light curtain or screen placed between it and the tube.

In some houses it is not difficult to bring a four-inch wooden tube through the whole length of a partition from the top to the bottom floor of a house, and to let a supply of air enter that tube at the upper part, and distribute air to every room that lies in its course.

On rising in the morning the bedroom-windows should be opened at the top and bottom equally, and, except when the weather is very wet, they should remain open until the sun begins to go down. It is a bad practice to leave the windows open late in the day, and this especially in the winter. The air becomes charged with damp, and a damp air is really as dangerous as, if not more dangerous than, a close air. sleep in damp air is quite as bad as to sleep in damp sheets, and is a most common cause of

To

chance has no fire in it, or if a fire be lighted provision is not made to keep it alight for more than an hour or two. The result is, that in the early part of the morning, from three to four o'clock, when the temperature of the air in all parts is lowest, the glow from the fire or stove which should warm the room has ceased, and the room is cold to an extreme degree. In countryhouses the water will often be found frozen in the hand-basins or ewers under these conditions. Meanwhile the sleeper lies unconscious of the great change which is taking place in the air around him. Slowly and surely there is a decline of temperature to the extent, it may be, of thirty or forty degrees on the Fahrenheit scale; and though he may be fairly covered with bedclothes he is receiving into his lungs this cold air, by which the circulation through the lungs is materially modified.

The condition of the body itself is at this very time unfavorable for meeting any emergency. In the period between midnight and six in the morning, the animal vital processes are at their lowest ebb. It is in these times that those who are enfeebled from any cause most frequently die. We physicians often consider these hours as critical, and forewarn anxious friends in respect to them. From time immemorial those who have been accustomed to wait and attend on the sick have noted these hours most anxiously, so that they have been called by one of our old writers "the hours of fate." In this space of time the influence of the life-giving sun has been longest withdrawn from man, and the hearts that are even the strongest beat then with subdued tone. Sleep is heaviest and death is nearest to us all in the hours of fate."

The feeble, therefore, are most exposed to danger during this period of time, and they are most exposed to one particular danger, that of congestion of the lungs, for it is the bronchial surface of the lungs that is most exposed to the action of the chilled air; and, in the aged, that exposure is hazardous.

One of the ablest writers on the hygiene of old age, M. Reveillé-Parise, attaches so much importance to the function of the lungs in the aged that he comes to the conclusions, first, that old age commences in the lungs; and, secondly, that, as a rule, death commences in the lungs in the aged. He reasons in this manner: "If we reflect that it is from the blood that life derives the principles which maintain and repair it, that the more vigorous, plastic, and rich in nutritive principles the blood is, so much the more organic life increases and manifests itself, and that the organ of sanguinification is the organ of respiration, we shall be compelled to admit the opinion that the age of general decline commences with

the decay of the lungs, and that the one is the result of the other."

Flourens, from whose work on "Human Longevity" I copy this extract, demurs to the conclusion drawn by Reveillé-Parise. He will admit it in part only. "Old age," he asserts, "does not commence in any organ. It is not a local but a general phenomenon. All our organs grow old, and it is not always at the same organ that we feel the first effects of age; it is sometimes one, sometimes another, according to the individual constitution."

I agree for my part with both these authors, because I think there is nothing in experience which is different or is in opposition to either of their views. Flourens is correct in saying that all the organs grow old together. Reveillé-Parise is correct in suggesting that the lungs more usually go first, because they are at one and the same time most exposed and most vital.

It is not in the least degree irrelevant to my present discourse to dwell on this argument. It shows better than any other argument could show how easily the depressing influence of cold tells on the vital organs, and specially on the lungs of the sleeper, whose vital capacity is already impaired by age. The minute vessels of the lung, in the pulmonary circuit of blood over the lung, are paralyzed by the cold so easily that congestion of blood in them is an almost natural result if they be long exposed to cold. And this, in truth, is the most common event in the aged, leading to that bronchial irritation and obstruction which is called congestive bronchitis, from which so many are recorded as having died when winter shows its face.

The practical question that comes out of this discussion is, How shall the danger of congestion of the lungs be avoided in the sleeping-apartments of the enfeebled?

Our forefathers replied to this question in a very plain and striking manner. They shut themselves up in a warm tent. The old four-posters and the old tent bedsteads are the still extant witnesses of the ways and means for keeping out the cold in the old times. In country-houses one sometimes finds still the massive four-post bedstead with its heavy damask curtains and snug inclosure. Advocate of fresh air as I am, I confess still to a lingering liking to this snug inclosure when I see it on a cold midwinter night. I met with it not very long ago, and I crept into it with a sort of quiet glee as if feeling unusually safe and comfortable in so cozy a retreat.

I won't let mere likings tempt me to say that the plan is a good one. It is really not commendable, or only so when nothing better is at hand. If in a large room with cold walls and floors on a cold night I were obliged to sleep in

a fireless room and had choice of two beds, one a curtained four-poster and the other a camp bedstead, I would no doubt, under the special circumstances, choose the four-poster, but not as a general principle by any means.

In our modern bedrooms, furnished according to modern taste and fashion, the best plan to adopt is that of admitting air freely to the sleeper, at the same time taking care that throughout the whole of the night the air shall be kept, within a few degrees, at the same temperature. I repeat, at the same temperature, for uniformity of warmth during all the hours of sleep is as essential as warmth. To have an overheated atmosphere at one time of the night and a low temperature at another is just the kind of change that is attended with most hazard. Indeed, I doubt whether an equable cold atmosphere is not on the whole safer than one in which there is frequent and marked fluctuation.

The safest method is to have the air of the room, a short time before it is occupied, brought up to a uniform temperature of from 60° to 65° Fahr. It should never fall five degrees below 60° and never rise above 65° under ordinary circumstances. In cases where the occupant of the room is extremely enfeebled it may be necessary to raise the temperature to a higher point, but I am thinking at this moment of sleepers who are in fair health, and for whom no such special provision is required.

A mistake is sometimes made in observing the temperature. The reading of the thermometer is taken in one part of the room only, perhaps in the warmest part, that is to say, over the fireplace or from the mantel-shelf. This is not a fair observation, for a room at that part may be very warm while it is very cold in other parts. The temperature should, properly, be taken at the bed's head, about two feet above the pillow, and that is the best position in which to keep the thermometer, with which every bedroom ought to be furnished. An ordinary thermometer suffices as a general index, but a registering instrument is most advantageous when particular care is demanded in observation.

I now come to consider what is the best mode of warming the bedroom, and of maintaining the equal warmth on which so much has been insisted.

The simplest of all plans with which I am acquainted is that which brings air from the outside through a small chamber or pipe that can be heated by a fire or by gas, and which allows the air, after it has been warmed, to diffuse steadily into the room.

A stove called the Calorigen, invented by Mr. Webb George, is, in my opinion, best adapted for use in the bedroom. It burns either with

coal-gas or coal; or, more correctly speaking, a Calorigen stove can be obtained either for gas or for coal. The stove has this great advantage, that it warms and ventilates at one and the same time. The stove contains within its outer cylinder or case a spiral iron tube, which by its lower end communicates with the outer air, and by its upper end opens into the room. The heat generated in the stove communicates heat to the spiral tube, and the air in the spiral is heated and ascends into the room. The ascension of warm air causes a draught from below, and so a current of warm air is at all times diffusing through the room so long as the fire of gas or coal is burning. At the same time the products of combustion from the stove are conveyed away by another pipe into a flue or chimney.

When one of these stoves is in good action the air of an apartment may be kept pure and warm for any length of time, and the temperature can be maintained at the same uniform degree all the while. There is also about the method the immense advantage that it secures freedom from cold draughts from doors and from windows. The copious influx of warm air from the stove is, indeed, so effective that when the stove is heated to its full, and the room is of moderate size, there is a draught or current of air out of the room by the doors when they are opened a little way, unless there be a provision for a fixed ventilating outlet. Properly there ought always to be a ventilating outlet, even when the room is steadily charged with fresh and warm air, for a current is always desirable.

My friend Mr. Henry C. Stephens, in an excellent paper which he has written on ventilation, maintains, with much force, that no mode of ventilation is actually perfect unless by precise mechanical means air be actually drawn into an apartment in duly measured quantities. He suggests a system of supply of air by a mechanism moved and regulated by weight and balance, so that the air through a house may be systematically supplied with all the accuracy of good and effective clockwork; or, if this be not applicable, he favors the admirable water-wheel ventilation which has lately been brought out by Messrs. Verity, of Regent Street, London. There is much to be said in favor of Mr. Stephens's argument, and if I were constructing a house from the first I should introduce Verity's ventilating system into every room; but we have to deal with houses everywhere that were originally erected without the slightest regard to sanitary rules, and we must therefore adapt what is best and cheapest to improve if not to perfect. In the bedroom, the stove I refer to is of these adaptations the best I know of. It is really automatic in action when it is once started, and it can be

put up anywhere where there is a chimney for the exit-pipe for consumed air. Lastly, it is quite safe in the bedroom: the fire being inclosed, no sparks can fly from it, and the fuel makes no dust within the room.

In my laboratory I have had one of the Calorigen stoves in work for several years, and I have found it so manageable and good I can recommend it on the best of all recommendations, its practical value. In the Annerley Industrial Schools, which I visited at the time of the Sanitary Congress, held last October, at Croydon, I found that the stoves were in common use, and that they were as much approved of by the school authorities as they are by my own experience of them.

There is one precaution which I would suggest to those who are going to introduce a Calorigen into their bedroom. When the stove is fixed it is usual for the man who fixes it to push the air-feeding pipe through the floor of the room, so as to get the supply of air from under the floor. No arrangement can be better if due care be taken, but it is essential to make sure of three things in carrying out this plan: 1. It is essential to see that there is a free opening from the outer wall by a perforated brick or grating under the floor, so that the air-chamber beneath gets a due supply of fresh air from without; 2. It is well to see that there is no gas-pipe running beneath the floor, from the joints of which gas could escape and be drawn by the stove into the air of the room above; 3, It is important to have the space below the floor made quite free of old rubbish, and to have it made thoroughly dry. All these steps are really essential, for, if there be no admission of air beneath the floor from without, the stove will exhaust, and the space will be recharged with air from the room through openings and chinks in the flooring; if there be any escape of gas beneath the floor, the stove will diffuse the gas into the room; if there be decomposing matter or dust beneath the floor, the stove will also diffuse them, and if there be damp it will diffuse the damp.

I name these possible errors because I have seen them all made, and actually, in one instance, I saw removed from beneath the floor of a bedroom and dressing-room twenty barrow-loads of dust and débris which had been lying there for nearly a century. The workmen in building houses care little about leaving dust and rubbish on ceilings that are covered by floors. In this case the rubbish consisted of shavings, sawdust, and sundry other things, such as old slippers and shoes, which had been lying there ever since the house was built.

If it be impossible, or if it be too expensive, to lift up the floor-boards and clean the whole of

the space beneath, the next best thing to do is to take up a floor-board and under it to carry a box one foot deep between the joists of the floor from the point where the air-pipe of the stove pierces the floor-board to the outlet in the wall in which the air-brick or grating is inserted. The floor-board will form as it were the lid of this box, and the air, drawn by the stove, will be through the box direct from the outside. The box should be made of pine wood, and neatly planed on its inner surface. That surface should be polished with beeswax and turpentine so soon as the box is laid in, and from time to time the floor-board should be removed and the polishing should be repeated. The air passing over the surface of wax and turpentine is made singularly healthy and pure. It is as if it had been subjected to ozone before entering the chamber, and, if it enter the chamber at a temperature of 60° to 65° Fahr., the fresh odor is distinguishable in the room after it has been for a short time unoccupied. These plans are all very simple to carry out when they are simply explained, and, as a bedroom that is well and easily warmed and well and easily ventilated is of priceless value, I make no apology for spending so much time on this one topic.

IV.

THE FLOOR-COVERINGS OF THE BEDROOM.

The bedroom can hardly have too good a floor, and after all no floor is so good as one of wood. If the wood is smooth and well planed it may be treated all over with wax and turpentine without being either stained or painted; or it may be stained all over and varnished; or, if it be rough and will not take stain well, as is not uncommon in cases where the floors are very old, the boards may be covered with a good layer of zinc-white paint, colored according to the taste of the owner, and afterward well varnished. My own predilection is for Stephens's wood-stain, when the boards will admit of the application, and taking it all in all a light oak stain is, I think, the best. The stain may be applied by any person who is at all deft at such artistic work. The floor is, in the first place, well cleansed by dry scrubbing with clean sawdust, and any great roughnesses and irregularities are planed or otherwise smoothed down. Then the whole surface is covered with a layer of thin size, which is allowed to dry. The stain is next prepared by mixing sufficient of it with water to get the required depth of tint, and sufficient is made to cover all the surface without recourse to a new solution. The stain is lightly and evenly laid on with a piece of sponge, and that also is left to dry. Finally, a good layer of varnish is laid on with a brush over the stained surface, and, when that is dry, the next best floor to a floor of real