and frost does not prevent a lady, going to a
ball, from believing that the less she has on, the
more she is dressed. Common-sense people,
however, will understand that flannel waistcoats
and stout woollen clothes—as well as rich
velvets and costly furs—afford the only efficacious
means of protection from external cold;
that is, from the chances of getting chills not
followed by a speedy reaction, which, for numerous
constitutions, are certain causes of disease.

The main hygienic object of habitations is to
protect their inmates from inclement weather.
As a general rule, the most unhealthy dwellings
are those which either afford incomplete shelter
from the cold, or which actually expose their
tenants to its rigours. In many large
continental towns especially, the dwellings of the
poor are either garrets pierced by every cutting
wind, or ground floors, cellars even, whose
walls, like wine-coolers, perpetually impregnated
with moisture, have the same refrigerating effect
on the human system. These causes concur in
one literally final, because fatal, result—a
continual insufficiency of the aliments of vital heat.
To shiver all winter in an attic; to be iced all
summer in a damp ground floor or cellar; to
suffer the same inconvenience in new-built
houses, whose plastered partitions are still
saturated with water—such are the principal evils
found in the dwellings of the poor, if we confine
our attention to matters likely to bring on
disease.

This point deserves more careful consideration
than is usually bestowed upon it. When
the causes of unhealthiness in dwellings are
inquired into, it is customary, at the very
outset, to criticise rubbish-heaps, putrifying
animal remains, and excretive matter of every kind.
Assuredly, they are serious annoyances which
ought by all means to be got rid of. But their
unwholesomeness must not be exaggerated.
However offensive they may be to our sense of
smell, it is only under special conditions that
they become the source of real danger. By
placing them at the head of the list of insalubrious
influences, sanitary commissions pursue
the shadow of the evil, while they allow the
substance to escape.

The smallness of rooms and their defective
lighting are also frequent topics of blame. No
doubt, it is favourable to health, as well as
pleasant, to be able to enjoy the vivifying
sunshine and to occupy a roomy apartment; but
close inspection will teach us that the narrow
dwellings of the poor do not want for currents
of air, and that their faulty side is rather the
total absence or the deplorable disposition of
their means of warming. Over-crowding is an
error of a different nature; but it only becomes
really redoubtable to health during times of
epidemic. In such causes, authority cannot be
too energetic in dispersing every focus of infection.
But, in the ordinary course of circumstances,
the grand cause of dwellings being
unhealthy is, that they afford insufficient shelter
from the cold, or that they expose their inmates
to sudden chills.

The maintenance of vital heat being thus
indispensable to health, let us now consider
another of its supporters, food. A complete and
perfect aliment would be that which should
repair the incessant losses of the organism, and,
under certain conditions, provide for its increase.
Let us take for our example woman's milk,
which is a complete aliment for the infant. Now,
a thousand parts of woman's milk contain eight
hundred and ninety parts of water, and one
hundred and ten of solid matters; and out of
those hundred and ten parts, ninety-five are
materials (butter and lactine) specially
destined to furnish heat—aliments of respiration
and calorification, as they are called. The
principal cause of their introduction into our
system, is to be consumed by the air inspired
by the lungs.

But what a large proportion of aliments
which serve no other purpose than to warm us,
is thus supplied by Providence! By so
employing them, we are enabled to maintain
during the most rigorous winters an internal
temperature of say one hundred degrees of
Fahrenheit, in opposition to the external cold;
which cold, we do well to bear in mind, is, in
our climate, our greatest, our most constant
enemy.

Excessive toil, out of proportion with a man's
strength and his means of repairing loss, is
frequently one of the harshest necessities, one
of the most striking adjuncts of poverty. The
effects of disproportionate toil on the human
economy, are these. When a man sets to work
at any energetic labour, his lungs expand more
completely, his breathing is hurried, his body
becomes heated, his skin is covered with
perspiration; he produces a greater quantity of
heat, radiating to the colder bodies around him,
which evaporates the moisture that issues
from his pores, and which also—be it well
remarked—is in part transformed into strength
or force. It is clear, the effect of excessive
labour is to use up too rapidly the most
disposable fuel or warming materials which are
always held in reserve in our economy.

Two familiar instances will serve to exemplify
the fact. When sporting dogs have overtasked
their strength during a long day's shooting,
what is the first thing they make for on returning
home? A cheerful, sparkling, blazing fire,
which will save them from all risk of taking
cold. In like manner, the poor children,
exhausted in the Belgian coal mines by labour out
of proportion to their strength, when they reach
their parents' home stretch themselves in front
of a roasting fire before satisfying their appetite.

The effects of poverty confirm the views
expressed by M. Bouchardat respecting its real
nature. And, to render those effects more
striking, he takes extreme cases—inanition, low
diet, and starvation—which are acute forms of
poverty.

The constant and most important
phenomenon attendant upon inanition, is the
diminution of the stock of materials which serve to
warm the animal frame. On an average, a