Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/116

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FASTING, HYDROPATHY, EXERCISE.

the next renter should not move in till the whole building has been subjected to an air-bath, and till wide-open windows and a through-draught of several days has removed every trace of a "musty" smell.

About the comparative advantages of dry and moist ("marine") climates opinions are divided, with a preponderance of argument in favor of the former, but so much is certain that for the cure of lung-complaints a low temperature, with or without an excess of atmospheric moisture, is preferable to the perennial heat of the tropics. "I shall not attempt to explain," says Benjamin Franklin, "why damp clothes occasion colds, rather than wet ones, because I doubt the fact; I believe that neither the one nor the other contributes to this effect, and that the causes of catarrhs are totally independent of wet, and even of cold." ("Miscellaneous Works," p. 216.)

Nor can drugs compensate the lack of Nature's specific. In the language of our instincts every feeling of discomfort suggests its own remedy. If the proximity of a glowing stove begins to roast your shins, the alarmed nerves cry out—not for patent ointments, not for anti-caustic liniments and "pain-killers," but for a lower tem-