Page:Scouting for girls, adapted from Girl guiding.djvu/199

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HEALTH RULES FOR THE HOME
185

especially in the early morning, and make it your habit to go through these exercises and you will make for yourself a wonderful difference in your health.

But alongside this giving health to your body, you must see to it that your surroundings, your home, the air, your food, and your clothing are also health-giving, otherwise all the exercise in the world will not help you.

Health Rules for the Home

Scouts should do everything in their power to make and keep their homes healthy as well as happy.

Most of you cannot choose your own dwelling, but whether you live in a house, a cottage, a flat, in rooms, or even in one room of a house, you can do a very great deal to keep it healthy and pure.

Fresh air is your great friend; it will help you to fight disease better than anything else. Open all your windows as often as you can, so that the air may get into every nook and corner. Never keep an unused room shut up. Disease germs, poisonous gases, mildew, insects, dust, and dirt have it all their own way in stale, used-up air. Air does not flow in and flow out of the same opening at the same time any more than water does, so you want two openings in a room—an open window to let the good air in, and a fireplace and chimney to let the stale air out, or whether there is no fireplace, a window open both at top and bottom. The night air in large towns is purer than the day air, and both in town and country you should sleep with your window open if you want to be healthy. Draughts are not good, as they carry away the heat from