diseases in densely-packed assemblies, where the atmosphere is unnaturally heated and fouled.

The "stifling feeling" and "headache" which are so commonly produced by sitting in a theatre or public meeting are the immediate and more pronounced effects of breathing bad air; but, long before these inconveniencies are consciously experienced, and even when they are entirely absent, harm is being done. The robust may not feel the effects, but they too are injured, while the weakly are enfeebled, and the seeds of disease are sown, and will probably spring up later on, and cause trouble of some kind. If we were really in earnest—and intelligent in our earnestness-about health-preservation, we should avoid heated and crowded assemblies as we would shun a pesthouse. The breath of life is pure air; and foul air is the breath of death. One should be sought, the other avoided.

Nature's preventive measure against disease, whether in the individual or in the multitude, is a bath of pure air, enveloping the surface of the body, purging away the vapours that rise from living and dead organisms, and from the earth, and filling the lungs with the elements which are essential to the performance of all vital processes. When will the community begin to recognise this natural mode of "sanitation," and to imitate it? Instead of staying indoors when threatened with illness, if we were wise, we should go out, not into

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the murky and polluted air of a great city, but into the fresh air of the country.

It will of course happen in a large proportion of instances that morbid and mistaken habits have made the organism so susceptible to the effect of even slight changes of temperature that danger would now attend exposure without proper precautions. This however is a drawback which does not affect the value of Nature's remedy, though it may limit the use we can make of it. The aim should be to spare the next generation this risk by habituating children from birth to reasonable exposure.

In nine out of ten cases of indisposition occurring in early life, and a very large proportion of the maladies of adult life, an instant change of air into a pure atmosphere would convert the morbid state into one of comparative if not complete immunity from disease. I strongly counsel my readers to set a higher value on air than it is the wont to attach to this element, and to remember that a pure atmosphere is not only to be cherished for its own sake and the health it gives, but to be employed as the most potent and ever-ready weapon wherewith to ward off any attack of illness.

The breath of life is almost the only part of our common means of subsistence which every free man, whether rich or poor, can claim for his birthright. He must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; but he breathes when he will, and in

a state of health there should be no pain or labour in breathing. The obstacles we encounter to a free use of the breathing-organs are entirely of our own making.

In what is called society, dress is one of the most formidable difficulties to be overcome. Women encase their bodies in stays so that the chest cannot expand as nature intended it should, and the act of breathing is proportionately embarrassed. This is one of the most stupid and mischievous practices which the tyrant Fashion has forced on her devotees. Many of the follies to which vanity impels the unwise are injurious; but this is the worst of all. Tight or stiff stays are the apparatus of disease and make ill-health.

Every process of life depends for its performance on the integrity of the breathing function, and it is impossible that this should be fulfilled while the thorax is imprisoned and its every movement hampered. The chest must heave with perfect freedom; it must expand in all directions and be able to change its shape instantly and completely.

So essential is this mobility in the case of woman, that nature has made the bony skeleton which encloses her breathing-organs more elastic, and rendered it capable of longer movements in every direction than that of man. Fashion steps in, and, contradicting the fiat of the Maker, imposes her canons of beauty-a miserable figment.

of her own silly conception-as an improvement on the design and work of the Creator.

A great deal has been said and written on this subject; but, so far as I am aware, one consideration has been overlooked. Even if the apparatus in which the chest is enclosed be not tight and stiff to such an extent as to impede ordinary respiration, it must inevitably prevent those instantaneous changes of form, and in the rate of motion, which are essential to compensate the movements of the heart.

The physiological problem of life is to supply the blood with oxygen. To this end the whole blood in the body courses through the vessels under the pump-like action of the heart, being exposed in detail to the air in the lungs. The heart contracts, say, roughly, four times to every inspiration or breath. This exhausts the oxygen in the air taken in by the lungs, and it is necessary to breathe again.

The breathing must be proportionate in frequency to the heart's action. If the heart beats fast from any cause, the breathing requires to be accelerated; when the heart's action becomes slow, the breathing must be slowed also. Conversely, if the breathing is quickened, the heart will beat fast; while, if the inspiration of air is carried on tardily, the movements of the heart diminish; it first beats slowly, then jerkily and hurriedly, and in the end would fail. When the

atmosphere taken in by the lungs is deficient in oxygen or is overcharged with carbonic acid the heart will at first beat quickly in the attempt to extract oxygen from the air, it will then grow weak, and at last, under the irritant effect of carbonised blood circulating through the nervecentres, it will throb rapidly, while the lungs heave and gasp tumultuously in a final endeavour to obtain the oxygen on which life depends.

It is indispensable that the apparatus of breathing should be free to vary its rate of movement and to adapt the speed and depth of its inspirations instantly, as need arises, to the altered conditions of the heart. Women suffer from palpitation of the heart and undefined but distressing sensations in connection with that organ-even setting up actual disease—because they will wear stays. It is useless to discuss the subject further with them -no bad fashion was ever yet set aside except by the desire for change or in consequence of ridicule -but the fact remains that the wearing of stays and corsets, however skilfully they are made, and however loose and comfortable they may seem, a fruitful source of feminine misery and weakness. It is not alone against "tight-lacing" physicians must raise their protest, in the interests of health. Stiff clothing, of all descriptions, is a mistake, but that which encases the chest and hampers the action of the breath-organs assails the vital energy at its very centre, intercepting the breath of life.

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