able reaction. This is manifested by a pleasant warmness and an absence of cold hands or feet. The addition of half an ounce of sea salt to a gallon of water will make it more stimulating and insure a prompter reaction. This bath should be taken in a room of the temperature of not less than 65°.

SLEEP AND SLEEPING APARTMENTS.

Location of sleeping rooms.

If possible, the sleeping apartment should be on the second floor and have a south exposure, and, next to the living room, should be the sunniest, best aired, and driest in the home. The beneficial act of sunlight should need no

insisting upon; nevertheless it is frequently

overlooked. A room with a morning exposure is preferable to one having an afternoon sun. A room on the north side, receiving no sun, is not desirable for a sleeping apartment, no matter how hygienic it may otherwise be. There should be windows, as they not only serve for the admission of sunlight, but in the average dwelling are the only means of ventilation. Besides the regular ventilation of the room at night, windows should be thrown widely open in the morning for several hours, thus insuring a perfect ventilation of the room with pure air. This should be kept up in winter as well as in summer. The subjects of pure air and ventilation are treated in another article, and consequently will not be touched upon here.

Furniture of sleeping rooms.

The furniture of the room should be simple, with as few draperies and hangings as possible. Oiled hardwood floors are the best, and carpets are best replaced with large rugs, which can easily be taken out and aired and disinfected if necessary. Painted walls and ceilings are preferable to paper, as they can be readily washed and do not form the nidi for germs to lodge in. Many instances are on record where poor and failing health had baffled the skill of the medical attendant, but where the source was finally traced to the wall paper, containing arsesic, producing chronic arsenical poisoning. A room should have no stationary wash bowls, and should not communicate directly with toilet or bath room. Metal bedsteads are prefer able to wooden ones, as they can be more read ily cleansed after a contagious disease, and do not afford so ready a lodging place for certain insects. An average bedroom, say 10x12 feet, should not be occupied by more than two persons. Individual beds cannot be too highly

recommended. The chances of their transmitting contagious diseases is not so great, and certain secret vices are not so apt to be acquired as where several occupy the same bed. The most simple and best bed consists of a hair mattress and metal springs, with cotton sheets and woolen blankets, the latter being dispensed with during the heated term. Feather beds are only mentioned to be condemned. The temperature of the room should range from 60° to 65°, and be as uniform as possible. A lamp or gas jet should not be permitted to burn during the night, as the amount of CO, given off from a single lamp or The light is also injurious to the eyes and does jet is greater than that exhaled by an adult.

not conduce to sound sleep.

Need of regular and complete sleep.

The practice of reading one's self to sleep is pernicious and one which parents should not permit. Sleep is Nature's restorative, and is the period during which the system replaces the waste material of the active portion of the day. Without regular and complete sleep the body will soon suffer, and this is especially true during the period of childhood up to full maturity. From the fourth to the eighth year a child should be ready for bed by 8 P. M., and should sleep for not less than ten hours; from the eighth to the fourteenth year the bedtime hour should not exceed 9 o'clock P. M. A later hour of retirement than 9 P. M. should not be encouraged until after the fifteenth year. Children, like adults, vary in the amount of sleep needed, each being a law unto themselves, and a child sleeping in a hygienic room should wake up bright and fresh if he has had sufficient sleep. Children that are extremely ac tive during the day, either mentally or physically, will demand a greater number of hours' sleep than those of a more sluggish disposition. If a child is wakeful and restless, the cause should be ascertained and the child examined by a physician, if necessary.

The plan of dosing children with paregoric, laudanum, bromides, etc., is pernicious in the extreme. Many times a hearty meal too close to the bedtime hour, or undigested food, is the cause of the trouble. For children up to the twelfth or fifteenth year the evening meal should be the lightest of the day, and should not contain meat, pastry, or stimulating drinks. The old-time supper for children, of bread and milk, is excellent.

JOURNALS, both in medicine and pedagogy, have long been agitating the vexed question of hygiene and sanitation in the schoolroom, and this fact argues that the ideal has not yet been attained. Nor can it be affirmed that so complete a state of sanitary perfection will ever be reached when articles on the subject will be ill-timed. The best methods need revising to suit the changing conditions of advancing civilization. Perfect development.

To Plato's question, "Is not that the best education which gives to the mind and to the body all the force, all the beauty, and all the perfection of which they are capable?" there is no uncertain answer. All who have to do with our public schools are earnestly striving to accomplish this end. Every conscientious

teacher knows that the object of the training of children at school is the symmetrical development of all the faculties, physical as well as mental. In no other way can the real object of our public school system-the attainment of ideal citizenship-be accomplished. The teacher's recognition of the situation.

The good teacher fully recognizes that this must be mainly effected through a proper regulation of the occupations and opportunities that are afforded, where so large a portion of the time is spent in the schoolroom. He bends his every energy to do the required work in the best possible manner, so that his pupils may earn promotion, as well as the plaudits of their superiors. He stores his mind and his note books

full of all the methods and principles of the art and science of education. He finds it difficult to keep abreast of the times in educational advancement, yet he must also keep thoroughly posted in sanitary advancement. With these momentous tasks before him,-responsibilities greater than he can bear, the conclusion must fast take form in his mind that, as teacher and sanitary officer, his trusts and duties are too much for one individual. I desire to organize and champion a crusade for him. The growth of sanitary science.

The improvements and discoveries of sanitary science have come to cover so vast a field that the teacher, however faithful and compe

tent, cannot be expected to be conversant with even their outlines. He is more than occupied with his arduous and exacting duties in other departments than those relating to health. Every person of good common sense and judgment will, after studying into the requirements of the teacher, arrive at the same conclusion, namely, that the teacher has enough to do in training the pupils of his school so as to symmetrically develop their mental faculties, and, therefore, the symmetrical development of the physical faculties of the pupils of our schools, their hygienic oversight, demands and will furtarian to be found within the city. nish ample work for the most industrious sani

To prove more conclusively that the sanitary work of the school demands more knowledge and time than the teacher has to bestow upon

it, let me cite the following facts: Cause of non-attendance.

If we investigate the cause of so large a majority of pupils dropping out of the public schools before they have completed the grammar grade, we will find it is due chiefly to their inability to keep up in their studies. What is this disability? Why should so many children become discouraged? Their work is not particularly difficult; their hours are comparatively short, and in the primary grades they are not expected to study at home. It is because of ill-health.

The need for medical counsel.

Thousands of children are invalids before

going to school. Inherited weak constitutions, impoverished bodies from lack of wholesome food, bad hygienic home surroundings, all unite to handicap such children in school work. The stooping forms, eyes bent close to the desk before them, the shuffling walk, the notched teeth, thin faces, and other physical defects are to be seen every day in every primary and intermediate school. Is there any wonder that such pupils cannot compete in the struggle for an education?

But it is not among the physically weak and deformed that all the unfortunates are found. Among the apparently healthiest and brightest we find trouble. For a term or two it may not appear; later they drop behind and then they in

turn become discouraged. It is not due to their impoverished bodies. They have always been well and have never complained before going to school. As they fall behind their classmates they are called mischievous, stupid, and other epithets of like character are bestowed upon them. Many of these children come home every afternoon complaining of headache and of being tired; they get listless and hang about the house; they have no ambition; they are being constantly corrected for not paying attention. In fact, one of the most frequent complaints from teachers is that such children never look upon the work before them more than a moment or two at a time. They are being constantly diverted to whatever is going on about them. It is needless to ask what is the outcome of this condition? The teachers get impatient and become constant fault finders; the children get discouraged, and the parents, in many cases, become dissatisfied and remove their children from school. What is the trouble?

Very likely a slight visual defect, but the cause is great enough to demand a competent medical inspection of our public schools. The teachers have not the knowledge nor the time to ferret out these cases and remove the cause. Slight defects of any one or several of the other senses, no doubt, retard immeasurably the prog. ress in the process of obtaining an education. The detection and suitable remedying of such, by a competent medical inspector, would be a very worthy undertaking for the city and be the means of enabling the pupil to attain a more ideal citizenship.

The jurisdiction of a medical inspector.

Under the immediate jurisdiction of the medical inspector would come the settling of the best school environments; to see that the schoolrooms are not imperfectly lighted; that

there be not less than the standard in the proportion between windows and floor space. Many rooms are so situated, as regards light, that they cannot by any means get a good direct light, but too often a reflected one from some adjoining high building. Such light is most injurious to the eyes and to the nervous system.

Then there is the question of heat and ventilation; the proper seating of the pupils at their desks; the character of the seats themselves are in too many cases the cause of permanent injury to the growing child. We have certainly occasion to pause and consider if we have not to reform in the physical and mental training of our children.

In addition to this, the medical inspector of our public schools would render incalculable service to the community by the detection of all contagious diseases in the earliest stages.

It will be readily seen that while there may not be at all times any special prevalence of contagious diseases among the school children, yet a material improvement in the death rate can be effected by a daily inspection of the pupils of the various public schools, and following up of all cases of absentees whose absence is believed to be caused by sickness, and in this way to afford the health department of the city timely information, whether the cases of sickness are of an infectious nature or otherwise.

All these and many other matters relating to the healthfulness of the school cannot be carried into execution except through the advice and supervision of competent medical authority. Our zeal for education must be equalled by our interest in the health of the people. The schools of our country are not meant to produce prodigies, but citizens, healthy as well as intelligent, and whatever tends to promote this end is sure to be right. Topeka, Kansas.

C. F. MENNINGER, M. D.

2. The stove in the center is a menace to health, and an obstruction to the movements of the school.

Note.-A store radiates heat in proportion to size, radiating surface, and quantity of fuel consumed. It radiates just as much heat when placed in the corner as it does when standing in the center of the room. The remote parts of the room are warmed by air currents no matter where the stove stands.

By placing the stove in a corner and enclos ing it in a sheet iron jacket the entire room will be heated by air currents, and if the windows and doors are tight the room will be almost uniformly heated. In a railroad car heated by stoves the passengers get roasted about as badly when in the middle of the car as when near the store. The fact is suggestive

$ The pipe over the heads of children and Teacher is a further menace to health.

4 Children occupying the seats near the stove sufer intensely. They are bound to have headache. So, too, the overhead pipe often aeCOLTS for hondache on the part of the teacher and those pupils who work under it.

1. The pisiform and stove combined render fr y balf of the floor space unavailable,

i. The widows are on opposite sidos and in HOIT This is a serious fault 1ight should Deve de sâmitted from opposite xades of the

Looking rp from desk work, children SHOLJË DE VIr de forced to face a window The Is në dutet room for the chaiden's It is nelcher hos cheat not comfortable dig in & room. Where there are forry SOLILAL OLET KATGERIN,

Many of our schoolrooms are designed to breed disease. Every one of them should be system. atically ventilated. Any well built house can be ventilated for a few dollars. The following is one way to provide ventilation:

(1) Set the stove in a corner of the room. 220 Enclose the stove in a sheet-iron jacket. 3) Let a duct leading from outside the building introduce a column of air so that it will enter the room beneath the store.

(4) In another corner of the room put a tin ventilating flue having the capacity of an eightinch pipe. Let the open end of this flue reach to within six inches of the floor; let it run to the ceiling and extend across the room to the smoke flue and empty into it.

Note-This is not "theory." This is fact, told by one who has made flues with his own hands. As soon as a schoolroom begins to breathe, it heats more readily and uniformly. Of course, where the smoke fue is used for this double purpose, it must be large enough to carry the smoke as well as the column of air which is being conveyed out of the room. If a cross section of the smoke fue has not an area considerably greater than thirty-two square mches, then the smoke from an ordinary sixinch stovepipe will about £ll it, and some other means will have to be adopted to secure ventilathen.

Every schoolbense fine should be built double, one part for the smoke and one part for Your·lation. Some navmmend a large due, say the chan, with the smoke pipe