no furniture in your bedroom but the bed, a
wash-hand stand, and two chairs. Very
healthy all these arrangements, no doubt, M.
Ruspail, but exceedingly ugly.

Stop the chinks between badly-joined
boards with a paste of flour, pounded pepper,
pounded aloes, plaster, and clay. By these
means you will avoid draughts, need no vermin
annihilator, and be enabled to set rats,
mice, bugs, and fleas, at defiance. I have
seen a somewhat similar process adopted in
the North of England; it is there called
pugging. Rats and mice abhor aloes: rat's-
bane they don't much care for, especially if
they can get a sufficient quantity of water to
drink afterwards. Put black pepper in grains,
and small lumps of camphor, into the wool of
your mattresses. Garnish the beds of infants
of tender years with picked leaves of the
wood fern. (How far a border of the ferns
of Great Britain, nature printed of course,
would be advantageoiis in garnishing a baby's
crib I am rather at a loss to know.) As an
infant of tender years, I remember, myself,
having had my bed garnished sometimes with
the crumbs of French rolls, occasionally with
the bristles of a hair-brush, cut up small, and
on one occasion with a poker and a pair of
tongs; but, beyond producing a sensible irritation
or urtication of the epidermis I am not
prepared to state what sanitary benefits I
derived therefrom. M. Raspail can at least
quote tradition in support of his leafy system
of garnishing—for did not the robin redbreasts
cover the little children in the wood
with leaves, and were not those infants of
tender years?

Wash your bedsteads frequently with
camphorated brandy. Keep chloride of lime
constantly at hand. Have a fire in your
bedroom from time to time, and burn some vinegar
on a red-hot iron plate. Have your bed
well aired every day. Change your body
linen night and morning. Take a bath as
often as ever you can. Never scour a floor;
wax and dry-rub it. Let your clothes be
made wide and easy. Gentlemen, leave off
chimney-pot hats and all-round, collars. The
first press on the brow and chill the brain:
the second impede the respiration. Ladies,
don't wear stays. Nurses and mothers, never
swaddle your babies. Tightness of dress is
torture to an infant. When the weather is
warm let your children roll and kick about
naked in the open air: it will make them
healthy and strong.

Now hear M. Raspail upon culinary
hygiènics. Good cheer, he says, is one of the
chief preservatives of health. Keep regular
hours for your meals. Eat and drink in
moderation; vary your dishes. Never force
yourself to eat if you have no appetite. Rest
yourself half an hour after each meal: then
take some bodily exercise. Never use any
other water for your drink or for culinary
purposes, than spring water and well-filtered
river water. There are many diseases that
arise entirely from the use of unwholesome
water. Many epidemics might be traced to
the abominable compound of dirt and putridity
which the water-companies are permitted
to palm on us. Never drink water out of a
ditch or pool, if you can possibly help it. You
may swallow unwittingly small leeches even.
If you happen to live in a country where
goître prevails endemically (which is caused
by the use of water that has filtered through
mercurial veins), put granulated tin into your
cisterns and drinking vessels. The best
bread for a hard-working man is made of a
mixture of rye, barley, and wheat: fine
wheaten bread is more adapted for men of
sedentary occupations. A good savoury
potage (the French pot-au-feu, for which
see Soyer), is one of the most nutritive and
wholesome dishes, particularly for a weak
stomach.

Hear Raspail on pickles, sauces, and condiments.
If you can afford it, have always on
your table by way of side-dishes, hams,
sausages, anchovies, capers, green or black
olives, marinades (pickled fish), tomato jelly,
radishes, spiced mustard: in short, the best
condiments you can afford; so that there
may be a choice for various appetites. Do
not listen to the tirades of the partisans of
physiological doctrines, who, from an idle fear
of increasing the gastric affections under
which they labour, dread and eschew the very
things that would cure them. Season your
stews and ragouts with bay-leaves, thyme,
tarragon, garlic, pepper, pimento, or cloves,
according to circumstances. Drink water
when you can procure it good, but take also
a little wine for your stomach's sake. The
addition of a reasonable quantity of alcoholic
liquor tends to accelerate a sluggish digestion,
by supplying the excess of gluten with an
amount of alcohol that the natural process
couldn't produce under the circumstances.
Hence the necessity for good wine, beer, and
other alcoholic beverages for northern
constitutions. Flavour your cream or milk dishes
with vanille, orange-flowers, or cinnamon. Roast
your joints, always before an open fire: never
have them baked. Legs and shoulders of
mutton should be stuffed with garlic. A good
salad is the most agreeable condiment, and
the best promoter of a digestion fatigued by a
long dinner. Wild and bitter endive make
an excellent and wholesome salad. Put in
plenty of oil, and (if your senses can bear it),
rub the bowl with garlic.

M. Raspail, as I have before hinted, eschews
tee-totalism; but he inculcates and strongly
recommends temperance—as what sane man
does not? He advises those who are
blessed with the goods of this world to
prefer the light French wines (the so-called
vins-ordinaires) to the fine sorts, and either
to the heavy Spanish and Portuguese wines—
many of which (particularly the abominations
compounded of bad brandy, geropigo, and the
refuse of grape-skins, and sold dirt cheap