only two hundred and fifty persons in each million of men, or by one person in each four thousand. This, be it remembered, is my narrowest area of selection. I propose to introduce no name whatever into my lists of kinsmen (unless it be marked off by brackets), that is less distinguished.

The mass of those with whom I deal are far

more rigidly selected-many are as one in a million, and not a few as one of many millions. I use the term "illustrious," when speaking of these. They are men whom the whole intelligent part of the nation mourns when they die; who have, or deserve to have, a public funeral, and who rank in future ages as historical characters.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

great need is pure air, sunlight, and more and better food. How they are to get these is the

and other unfavorable conditions?

ANSWER. No, but these opinions have been very generally received in former times, even by the highly educated. It is said that the Elector of Darmstadt was informed of the ap

proach of a total eclipse in 1699, and published the following edict in consequence: "His Highness, having been informed that on Wednesday morning next, at 10 o'clock, a very dangerous eclipse will take place, orders that on the day previous, and a few days afterward, all cattle be kept housed, and to this end ample fodder be provided; the doors and windows of the stalls to be carefully secured, the drinking-wells to be covered up, the cellars and garrets guarded so that the bad atmosphere may not obtain lodgment, and thus produce infection, because such eclipses frequently occasion whoopingcough, epilepsy, paralysis, fever, and other diseases, against which every precaution should be observed."

If we could observe the same caution regarding the real causes of disease as against the imaginary ones, we should escape most of our sicknesses.

SICKLY CHILDREN.

II. In passing through Baxter Street I observed hundreds of children who look pale, and

sickly, and scrofulous; can any thing be done

for them more than is done?

ANs. Much could be done if there was any body to do it. Many of these children are the offspring of degenerate drunken parents, and the product of the noxious influences that surround them. Of necessity many of them die. Their

not until human life is more sacred than now.

COUNTING A RAPID PULSE.

III. When the pulse is so rapid that it can not be counted, how are we to find out the num

ber of beats in a minute?

Axs. Count every other beat, and double the number for the true amount.

IV. What is meant by the phrase "social evil?"

ANS. Any evil that affects society is a social evil; but the phrase has a special meaning. It is a polite word for prostitution; or, as The Pacific Medical Journal says, men sprinkle prostitution with rose-water and call it the social evil."

SEDATIVES.

V. What is a sedative medicine?

ANS. Dunglison defines a sedative to be a medicine that depresses the vital forces. They are employed to diminish the action of any organ that may be too great. In cases of insanity, for instance, where the brain is preternaturally active, sedatives are used to depress this activity. Dr. Maudsley, who has had great experience in the use of sedatives in hospitals for the insane, suggests that the peace and quiet occasioned by the use of sedatives is deceitful in its character, and hurtful in its influence. And the London Lancet, the most able of the English medical journals, adds that "the use of sedatives in general medicine is open to a great variety of objections, not the least important of which, is the danger of causing patients to have habitual recourse to them after convalescence has been established."

DURATION OF life. VI. What is the average duration of life said to be?

ANS. The average duration of life is said to be about 33 years. One-fourth of the born die before they reach the age of 7 years, and the half before the 17th year. Out of 100 persons only 6 reach the age of 60 years, and only one in 1,000 reaches the age of 100 years. Out of 500 only one attains 80 years. Out of 1,000,000,000 living persons 330,000,000 die annually, 91,000 daily, 3,730, every hour, and 60 every minute; and still the population of the earth increases.

FORCE AND ENERGY.

VII. Is there any difference between force and energy?

"

ANS. By "force" in rigid signification, is understood the power of producing" energy; but to speak of the force of the cannon-ball is inexact. The words "actual" and "potential' are in frequent use to qualify the state in which energy is met with. By actual energy is meant energy in an active state, energy which is doing work. By potential energy, energy at rest-energy capable of doing work, but not doing it. In a bent cross-bow there is potential energy-energy in a state of rest, but ready to become actual, or to manifest itself, when the trigger is pulled. Again, actual energy is evolved from the sun. By vegetable life this is made potential in the organic compounds formed. In these organic compounds the energy is stored up in a latent condition; potential energy is reconverted into actual energy when they undergo oxidation during combustion, or in their utilization in the animal economy.

HYGIENE.

VIII. How should a doctor be chosen ?

ANS. The system of THE HERAald of Health is to teach people how to preserve the health so that doctors will not be necessary. Still, there will be times, even in the most orderly families, when their services will be required, and we will give in this connection some hints on the subject by Rev. T. K. Beecher :

"To have good sense as a doctor, one must have good sense as a man. If your doctor is a nincompoop about other things, you may be sure that he is a ninny as to medicine and surgery. If the doctor's office is untidy and vile to smell of, you may be quite certain that he will come short of giving good counsel as to health and tidiness of body. If he be clumsy

ers.

man.

in hitching his horse, you may be sure that he is not handy at surgery or midwifery. If he be a great, coarse, blundering fellow-careless of dress, a two-fisted, farmer-looking man, you may be sure that he will lack perception of those finer symptoms by which a good doctor is guided. If he slanders other physicians, do not trust him. Good, earnest doctors are too busy to find time to slander their rivals. It is all the same with lawyers, ministers and teachThe truly good and truly great do not detract from the reputation of others, they are generous and magnanimous even to rivals. If your doctor flatters you and humors your lusts and appetites, and helps you out of a bad scrape secretly, without reproof, as if you had done no wrong, distrust him. If you can hire him to do or say what he would not do without hire, beware of him. Good doctors can not be bought. Your doctor ought not to be a single He ought to have a wife and children, and if you see that his wife respects him and his children obey him, that is a very good sign that he may be trusted. If your doctor tells you how to keep well that is a good sign. You come to him with a toothache; he gives you creosote and clove oil for the tooth, and at the same time suggests that you do not work enough to keep well-that is a good sign. If the children like him, that is a good sign. If you find him reading in his office, that is a good sign, and especially if he be a settled middle-aged man. If you hear him say "I once thought so and so, but I was wrong," that is a good sign. If he understands how to bud roses, graft fruit-trees, mix strawberry pollen for im proved berries, cure chicken pip, and tinker a trunk lock, or put a clock in order, all these are so much to his credit. If, further, you love to meet him, the sight of him quickens you, and you are glad to hear him chat; and you know him thus to be a lovable, sympathetic man— he's the man for your doctor, your confidential friend-find him, trust him."

BEEF TEA.

IX. Is beef tea as nutritious as is generally supposed?

ANS. No; it has little nourishment, unless it is added in the shape of bread, corn, oat, or wheat meal. The Pacific Medical Journal says that within the last thirty or forty years a complete revolution has taken place in the dietetics of disease, by the substitution of nitrogenous for starchy food. Practitioners have followed their leaders implicitly, without inquiry or hesitation, in pouring beef tea into the

stomach, whether the patients be young or old, and whether they relish it or not. The idea seems to be that if a given quantity of beef tea can be crowded into the stomach, the strength of the patient must be sustained. Even young children who have always fed on milk, are filled with beef tea when sick. We are glad to see that doubts of the propriety of this plan are starting up, and that farinaceous food seems about to be restored to a place in the sick room. There is needed a wider range of the dietary than modern practice employs. Especially is the practice unsound which restricts young children when sick, as is frequently done, almost entirely to beef tea.

It may be added that in health institutions for many years, the practice of giving nutritious gruels made out of oat, corn, or wheat meal has prevailed to a large extent over the practice of giving beef tea, and we are glad if this practice is extending outside of these institutions.

LOCATION OF KITCHENS.

X. Would it be practicable, as is sometimes advised, to have the kitchen on the top floor of the house, so as to escape bad odors below?

ANS. In theory it might work well, but we fear in practice it would fail to give satisfaction. Kitchens should be on the ground floor, with arrangements for carrying the odors direct into the chimney. Builders should study to make this part of a house convenient for the use of the household, and light, sunny, and healthy. The odors of a hygienic kitchen are not unwholesome, and need not accumulate so as to injure the most delicate invalid, if proper care is taken to secure good ventilation.

OVER CROWDING.

XI. What is the greatest source of ill health in cities?

ANS. Over crowding-allowing too many people to live in too little space. It is the same with human beings that it is with trees; plant hundreds of them close together and there is not air, and sunlight, and soil enough for them to grow, so they stunt and starve each other. The race always deteriorates physically when there is crowding. The muscular system becomes weak, the teeth decay, the form is bent and small, and life is not worth having. Epidemic diseases always abound in such places.

COOKING WITHOUT BOILING.

XII. Is it necessary that the water should boil in order to cook potatoes, eggs, meat, etc. ?

ANS. No. The boiling of water in which meat is cooked to make broth, or in which veg. etables are prepared for the table, has no advantage other than that of showing, by the escape of steam-a phenomenon which attracts the attention- that the fire is sufficient to insure the cooking of the food; but, on the other hand, continued boiling during the process of cooking has two disadvantages: First, the aromatic principles carried off by the steam are dissipated in the atmosphere, and the flavor of the food is thus diminished. Secondly, a very considerable amount of fuel is wasted.

In order to cook food without boiling it would, however, be necessary to use a thermometer, which would be inconvenient and troublesome to most people.

GRAVY FOR CHILDREN.

XIII. Is there any way of making a wholesome, palatable gravy for children?

ANS. Yes. For a pint of gravy you want a large spoonful of flour, stirred smoothly into half a teacup of the cold milk. Let the milk be boiling when this is added, and kept constantly stirring, or the gravy will be lumpy. If cream is used instead of milk no butter is necessary. The milk should be stirred while coming to the boil to keep it from burning. It is less likely to burn if a little butter is melted in the spider before pouring in the milk. Add a little salt. For bread and potatoes it is better by far than meat gravy, and not only palatable and wholesome, but nutritious.

EXPENSE AND DISEASE.

XIV. Is there any data as to the expense of disease in any country?

ANS.-No, nothing reliable. The census, while it hints at the loss that the country sustains every year from ill health, gives no reliable data. The Edinburgh Medical Journal for January, 1872, says, "Some idea of the cost to the country of preventible disease may be gathered from a calculation in The Times of December 12, of the actual cost of enteric (typhoid) during the last ten years, since the death of the Prince Consort. The data are, on an average annual mortality of 10,000, a mortality of 1 in 6, a value of $500 for each life lost, and a cost of $60 per case in loss of labor and expense of maintenance. These data are manifestly conjectural, but they have a known basis of reality sufficient to entitle them to consideration as a rough measure, probably under the mark, of the extent of an evil we have hitherto tamely endured. And upon

If men, however, understand their weaknesses, they may in a great measure correct their weaknesses and change their temperaments so as to avoid disease, and live to grow near to, if not three score and ten.

RICH WORKERS.

XIX. Do you think rich people should work? ANS.-Yes, more than any body else if they have health and strength. The sun is richer in light and heat by many thousands of times than the moon, and see how much harder it works to warm the globe and keep vegetation growing. It was only the other day that the wife of William B. Astor died at a very advanced age, and the following tribute to her memory from The Post, shows a trait of character worth noticing here. "Her most distinguishing characteristics were simplicity and industry. Her hands were never idle. It were well for the present and coming generations to remember this-that the wealthiest woman in our land was the simplest and most busy. Her bocks and work were always at band; as one was laid aside the other was taken up. Her love of flowers was extreme, and during the

winter season a window of her sitting-room would be filled with plants, over which she watched with delighted interest."

SCARLATINA CONTAGION.

XX. Is there danger that a nurse will give scarlet fever if thorough ablution has been performed?

ANS.-Persons who have nursed children with scarlet fever should be thoroughly disinfected by several days of bathing, and at least once washing with carbolic acid soap before going among other children. Even the hair should be submitted to the same process as the rest of the body, otherwise it may prove a means of conveying the virus. Children who have had scarlet fever should be submitted to the same treatment from head to foot before going among other children. Those who have had the by dropathic treatment of this disease can rarely communicate it.

LIFE AND TEMPERATURE.

XXI. How high is the temperature of the air expired from the lungs ?

ANS. About 97 F. The temperature of the blood is about two degrees higher, or 99o.

THE HEART'S WORK.

XXII. How much work does the heart do every day of twenty-four hours?

ANS.-Hearts no doubt suffer, but it has been

estimated that they probably do, on an average, enough to throw a ton of iron one hundred and twenty feet high. A writer in Appleton's Journal says: "Many of us get tired after but feeble labors; few of us can hold a poker out at arm's length without, after a few minutes, dropping it. But a healthy heart, and many an unsound heart, too-though sometimes you can tell in the evening, by its stroke, that it has been thrown off its balance by the turmoils and worries of life-goes on beating through the night when we are asleep, and when we wake in the morning we find it at work, fresh as if it had only just begun to beat. It does this because upon each stroke of work there follows a period, a brief but a real period of rest; because the next stroke which comes is but the natural sequence of that rest, and made to match it; because, in fact, each beat is, in force, in scope, in character, in every thing, the simple expression of the heart's own energy and state."

GALVANIZED WATER PIPES.

XXIII. Are galvanized iron pipes proper for conveying water?

ANS.-No. The Boston Journal of Chemistry says: "We hear of a family of four persons, in Portsmouth, N. H., made very ill by using water drawn through the zinc-covered pipes. Dr. Jackson examined some of this water, and found six grains of oxide of zine in the gallon. Hundreds have suffered to a greater or less extent from zinc-impregnated water, and legislative enactment should forbid the use of the galvanized pipes, if there is no other way of reaching this desirable end."

ANE.-Men eat more than women, when their work is of the same kind. Take as an illustration, the agricultural classes of Germany. The breakfast generally consists milk-porridge and dumplings; the dinner of potatoes, peas, and beans, and the supper of porridge, with herring and potato soup. On Sunday, baked fruit is added, and also, three times a week, from In one-fourth to one-half a pound of meat. addition, the men get fourteen pounds of bread a week, and one pound of butter, and the women ten pounds of bread and twelve ounces of butter. It does not follow, however, that because men eat more that they get more strength from their food, for generally women have better digestive organs, and abstract more nutriment from the same amount of food.