Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/130

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CHAPTER X.

VENTILATION.

A traveling revivalist displays charts of the Eastern continents to illustrate the vast area of territories still in need of missionary labors. The extent of the field for sanitary reform might be realized by any observer strolling the streets of a large city in the twilight of a summer morning. In the tropics—even on the cool tablelands of Northern Mexico, he would see thousands of sleepers encamped upon the texadas, or flat roofs of their dwelling-houses; but in the United States, in Great Britain, France, Germany and Austria he would see 999 of a 1000 windows tightly closed, even in a temperature making indoor confinement positive torture.

"Night air? What are you afraid of?" asked Miss Florence Nightingale in her reports from the Crimean hospitals; "do you suppose God's free air is made deadly by the temporary absence of light? You surely cannot expect to breathe day-air after sunset; your only choice is between the life-giving, health-restoring night-air