Earlier text: BY ELLEN G. WHITE.And not only has the physical and mental health of children been endangered by being sent to school at too early a period, but they have been the losers in a moral point of view. They have had opportunities to become acquainted with children who were uncultivated in their manners. They were thrown into the society of the coarse and rough, who lie, swear, steal, and deceive, and who delight to impart their knowledge of vice to those younger than themselves. Young children if left to themselves learn the bad more readily than the good. Bad habits agree best with the natural heart, and the things which they see and hear in infancy and childhood are deeply imprinted upon their minds, and the bad seed sown in their young hearts will take root, and will become sharp thorns to wound the hearts of their parents. During the first six or seven years of a child’s life special attention should be given to its physical training, rather than the intellect. After this period, if the physical constitution is good, the education of both should receive attention. Infancy extends to the age of six or seven years. Up to this period, children should be left like little lambs, to roam around the house, and in the yards, in the buoyancy of their spirits, skipping and jumping free from care and trouble. Parents, especially mothers, should be the only teachers of such infant minds. They should not educate from books. The children generally will be inquisitive to learn the things of nature. They will ask questions in regard to the things they see and hear, and parents should improve the opportunity to instruct, and patiently answer, these little inquiries. They can in this manner get the advantage of the enemy, and fortify the minds of their children, by sowing good seed in their hearts, leaving no room for the bad to take root. The mother’s loving instructions at a tender age is what is needed by children in the formation of character. The first important lesson for children to learn is the proper denial of appetite. It is the duty of mothers to attend to the wants of their children, by soothing and diverting their minds, instead of giving them food, and thus teaching them that eating is the remedy for life’s ills. If parents had lived healthfully, being satisfied with simple diet, much expense would have been saved. The father would not have been obliged to labor beyond his strength, in order to supply the wants of his family. A simple nourishing diet would not have had an influence to unduly excite the nervous system, and the animal passions, producing moroseness and irritability. If he had partaken only of plain food, his head would have been clear, his nerves steady, his stomach in a healthy condition, and with a pure system, he would have had no loss of appetite, and the present generation would be in a much better condition than it now is. But even now, in this late period, something can be done to improve our condition. Temperance in all things is necessary. A temperate father will not complain if he has no great variety upon his table. A healthful manner of living will improve the condition of the family in every sense, and will allow the wife and mother time to devote to her children. The great study with the parents will be in what manner can they best train their children for usefulness in this world, and for Heaven hereafter. They will be content to see their children with neat, plain, but comfortable garments free from embroidery and adornment. They will earnestly labor to see their children in the possession of the inward adorning, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. Before the Christian father leaves his home, to go to his labor, he will gather his family around him, and bowing before God will commit them to the care of the Chief Shepherd. He will then go forth to his labor with the love and blessing of his wife, and the love of his children, to make his heart cheerful through his laboring hours. And that mother who is aroused to her duty, realizes the obligations resting46 upon her to her children in the absence of the father. She will feel that she lives for her husband and children. By training her children aright, teaching them habits of temperance and self-control, and in teaching them their duty to God, she is qualifying them to become useful in the world, to elevate the standard of morals in society, and to reverence and obey the law of God. Patiently and perseveringly will the godly mother instruct her children, giving them line upon line, and precept upon precept, not in a harsh, compelling manner, but in love, and in tenderness will she win them. They will consider her lessons of love, and will happily listen to her words of instruction. Instead of sending her children from her presence, that she may not be troubled with their noise, and be annoyed with the numerous attentions they would desire, she will feel that her time cannot be better employed than in soothing, and diverting their restless active minds with some amusement, or light, happy employment. The mother will be amply repaid for her efforts in taking time to invent amusement for her children. Young children love society. They cannot, as a general thing, enjoy themselves alone, and the mother should feel that, in most cases, the place for her children, when they are in the house, is in the room she occupies. She can then have a general oversight of them, and be prepared to set little differences right, when appealed to by them, and correct wrong habits, or the manifestation of selfishness or passion, and can give their minds a turn in the right direction. That which children enjoy, they think mother can be pleased with, and it is perfectly natural for them to consult mother in little matters of perplexity. And the mother should not wound the heart of her sensitive child by treating the matter with indifference, or by refusing to be troubled with such small matters. That which may be small to the mother is large to them. And a word of direction, or caution, at the right time, will often prove of great value. An approving glance, a word of encouragement and praise47 from the mother, will often cast a sunbeam into their young hearts for a whole day. The first education children should receive from the mother in infancy, should be in regard to their physical health. They should be allowed only plain food, of that quality that would preserve to them the best condition of health, and that should be partaken of only at regular periods, not oftener than three times a day, and two meals would be better than three. If children are disciplined aright, they will soon learn that they can receive nothing by crying or fretting. A judicious mother will act in training her children, not merely in regard to her own present comfort, but for their future good. And to this end, she will teach her children the important lesson of controlling the appetite, and of self-denial, that they should eat, drink, and dress in reference to health. A well-disciplined family, who love and obey God, will be cheerful and happy. The father, when he returns from his daily labor, will not bring his perplexities to his home. He will feel that home, and the family circle, are too sacred to be marred with unhappy perplexities. When he left his home, he did not leave his Saviour and his religion behind. Both were his companions. The sweet influence of his home, the blessing of his wife, and love of his children, make his burdens light, and he returns with peace in his heart, and cheerful encouraging words for his wife and children, who are waiting to joyfully welcome his coming. As he bows with his family, at the altar of prayer, to offer up his grateful thanks to God, for his preserving care of himself and loved ones through the day, angels of God hover in the room, and bear the fervent prayers of God-fearing parents to Heaven, as sweet incense, which are answered by returning blessings. Parents should impress upon their children that it is sin to consult the taste, to the injury of the stomach. They should impress upon their minds that by violating the laws of their being, they sin against their Maker. Children thus educated will not be difficult of restraint. They will not be subject to irritable48 changeable tempers, and will be in a far better condition of enjoying life. Such children will the more readily and clearly understand their moral obligations. Children who have been taught to yield their will and wishes to their parents, will the more easily and readily yield their wills to God, and will submit to be controlled by the Spirit of Christ. Why so many who claim to be Christians, have numerous trials, which keep the church burdened, is because they have not been correctly trained in their childhood, and were left in a great measure to form their own character. Their wrong habits, and peculiar, unhappy dispositions, were not corrected. They were not taught to yield their will to their parents. Their whole religious experience is affected by their training in childhood. They were not then controlled. They grew up undisciplined, and now, in their religious experience, it is difficult for them to yield to that pure discipline taught in the word of God. Parents should, then, realize the responsibility resting upon them to educate their children in reference to their religious experience. Those who regard the marriage relation as one of God’s sacred ordinances, guarded by his holy precept, will be controlled by the dictates of reason. They will consider carefully the result of every privilege the marriage relation grants. Such will feel that their children are precious jewels committed to their keeping by God, to remove from their natures the rough surface by discipline, that their lustre may appear. They will feel under most solemn obligations to so form their characters that they may do good in their life, bless others with their light, and the world be better for their having lived in it, and they be finally fitted for the higher life, the better world, to shine in the presence of God, and the Lamb forever. FASHION makes people visit when they had rather stay at home, eat when they are not hungry, and drink when they are not dry. She ruins health, and makes fools of her followers. TO PARENTS AND GUARDIANS.
PARENTS have a responsibility in regard to their offspring originating prior to their birth. Their own state of health—the health of father and mother—has a very important bearing upon the constitutions of their yet unborn children. If a father’s nervous system has been marred and broken by habits which are at war with nature’s law, the children following him will be more or less unhappily affected. While, then, he is doing wrong to himself, he is doing wrong and bringing suffering to his posterity. If a mother’s system has been weakened by violations of law, her children will be obliged to participate with her in suffering the penalty. And, having received the inheritance of disease or debility before birth, they must, more or less, be partakers of it through life. Parents have also a heavy responsibility on them, touching the moral character given to their children before birth. If parents are accustomed to undue indulgence in any of the natural propensities,—in eating or drinking, or any other animal appetite,—their children may inherit appetites of the same kind, possessing a similar degree of undue activity and moral tendency. In the same way children are affected in their dispositions. A child, after birth, and more or less through life, will give a living illustration of the feelings and immediate character of his mother during the period of her pregnancy. If the mother, during that period, especially the latter part of it, indulge a gloomy, evil-foreboding state of mind, her child will give proof of it in after life. If she indulge a peevish, or fretful, or crying disposition, her child will give her ample testimony to the fact after birth. Some have inherited, directly from a mother, an almost unconquerable appetite for strong drink; some for tobacco; others, an almost uncontrollable inclination to theft; not because their mothers, in all cases, were habitual drinkers or thieves, but because they suffered strange appetites and feelings to affect them strongly some50 time during their pregnancy. Some physicians would deny the truth of these statements; but no one who has taken the pains of observing facts touching this matter, will be found in that category; for facts are unconquerable things. The inspired proverb,—“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,”—contains a great practical truth as a general rule; but, under the most judicious discipline, the child will bear, in greater or less degree, the moral complexion and physical appetites which his mother gave him before she gave him birth. Fathers, as well as mothers, and all those with whom a mother may associate, are involved in this responsibility. The father should remember that his manner and treatment of his wife during her pregnancy has much to do with the disposition she may possess during that period. He should be careful to remove, so far as possible, every source, real or imaginary, of uneasiness, unhappiness, peevishness, or gloominess, from her way. He should take pains to make her happy and cheerful: and see that every appetite which comes up is, if possible, forthwith, gratified. If that appetite should be for strong drink, it had better be gratified to the full, rather than that she give, by that continued longing, an indelible imprint of that kind upon her offspring. In the light of these truths, what tremendous responsibilities are evidently laid upon parents! The physical appetites, mental inclinations, and moral feelings, in a very large degree, are enstamped on the character of children so deeply in this way, that they may remain visible in all after life. If, through the moroseness of the father, the mother be driven into a desponding, discouraged and lifeless state of feeling, her child may bear traces of the same features of ill feeling for life. If she indulge in an irritable or ill-tempered disposition, she will probably mark these characteristics on her offspring. If, on the other hand, she indulge a habit of great levity, trifling or recklessness, she will probably see more or less of her own likeness in her child. Responsibilities of unmeasured extent also are laid on parents, in regard to the influence of a right physical training of their children for the security of health, during childhood and youth. One great cause of the feebleness of constitution with which the great body of community is at this day afflicted, may be found in the total ignorance or recklessness of parents and guardians of the laws of health, as applied to those under their care. To look in upon many domestic circles, and see how the children are managed, is enough to move a heart of marble with sorrow for the children, and with indignation toward their parents. The children may be seen, about every hour in the day, with a lunch of bread, or pie, or cake in hand. Their young and tender stomachs are kept in continual confusion and toil. Consequently, a deranged tone and action of that organ must exist, which prepares the way for other unnatural habits of eating and drinking, and lowers the tone of mental sprightliness and moral feeling. Children should eat only three times a day. They should be brought under the same dietetic rules which are laid down for all persons. It requires about as much time for their organs to digest food as is required for grown persons. And, if the digestive process be hurried and confused, their food does not nourish them as well, and they cannot grow as strong and robust. Little new-born infants’ constitutions are not unfrequently ruined for life, by mismanagement. Because the child cries a little, it must be dosed with a little peppermint, or anise-essence, or paregoric, or some other stimulating article, which begins at once to derange its stomach: and through its stomach, its whole system is injured, and perhaps for life. And if the inquiry should be made, in after years, what can be the cause of such a feeble, slender constitution? an enlightened observer might be able to reveal the secret, by showing the treatment it received in its infancy. A systematic diet should always be adopted by mothers and nurses at the very dawn of the child’s existence. In the first place, after birth, a little cold52 water only should be put into the child’s mouth. The habit of beginning to give some stimulant, as though the Creator of the child had given it only half life enough, is perfectly murderous: instead of giving it a chance to live of itself, a course is taken which is adapted to kill it; or, if not kill it, to maim its little constitution for life. If the writer of this could be heard, he would “cry aloud, and spare not,” in the ear of every nurse, with the little being in her arms, LET THAT CHILD LIVE! The Creator gave it natural life: he made it to live: and it will live, if not killed. If it be necessary to give the child any nourishment before it can obtain it from the mother, it might take a little slippery-elm water, or something of that mild and simple nature: but, if it can draw its first nourishment from the fountain which the Author of its being has provided, it is better. Babes should be nursed but three times a day. This may seem a preposterous rule; but let us reason together upon it. The food which nature has provided for the child is adapted to its age and capacity for digesting: and it requires about the same length of time for the infant to digest its meal as it does the man of ripe age to digest his; and the various steps in the digestive process are the same in both cases. Then, if five hours are required to complete the process well, why disturb it till it is finished? By letting the child have only its regular breakfast, dinner and supper, it digests its food well, and is well nourished by it. But, adopt the course usually taken, and the little one’s stomach is kept confused and oppressed, and its system is but half nourished from the same quantity of food which would be requisite under a regular system. As infants are usually treated, they are subject to repeated vomiting, colic, and, not unfrequently, fits; and the cause is obvious: the stomach has been overloaded. Only feed infants right, and there is no reason why they should vomit, any more than grown persons. What danger can there be of a child’s suffering from want of food before the expiration of the five hours between meals, when they not unfrequently go from twelve to twenty-four53 hours, and sometimes longer, after birth, before they take any substantial nourishment? The idea that a child will suffer hunger, if it does not take food oftener than once in five hours during the day, is all nonsense; and, worse than this, great injury is done by such a notion. The “little and often” system is destructive—contrary to the laws of health—contrary to true philosophy and reason; and should forever be abandoned. As infants are now treated, they have but a small chance for life. By confusing and fretting their stomachs, they have wind, and colic, and heart-burn, and other distress: then, if they cry, they are put to the breast, and nursed so full that they cannot cry. They become so oppressed as to produce stupefaction of brain and nerves; and then, if at all restless, they are put into the cradle and rocked from side to side, till they have no senses left. Then the child, from extreme pressure of the stomach, vomits—Nature’s kind effort to save it from fits and death. Then the mother or nurse exclaims,—“What a healthy child! See how it vomits!” See how it vomits:
Why does the child vomit? Because the abused stomach rebels against its ill-treatment, and tries to save itself. What sort of symptom of health would it be in an adult to go along the street vomiting up his dinner? Would the old ladies put their heads out of their windows, and exclaim,—“Oh, what a healthy man that is!” The stomach of the child should be so well treated that there should be no occasion for its vomiting. It should have a full breast on which it can depend for a full meal, three times during the day, and never be nursed during the night. If the breast be scanty in its allowance, the child must nurse what it can get, and have its meal finished by a little diluted sweetened new cow’s milk. Then let it be gently moved about for awhile, and finally go to sleep. In this way the stomach has time to digest its food, and time to gather up its forces for another regular meal. Its meals should be about the time of regular meals for adults. Under this course, there would be little occasion to use those rocking brain-destroyers.54 Cradles could then be broken up for fuel—a much better purpose than their present use. If any old ladies think they have more wisdom, let them attend the school of natural law another term: let them study Nature, and demonstrable facts. This matter has been tested. Since entering the medical profession, nearly thirty years ago, it has been my determination to examine and test these and other matters pertaining to this general subject. And these truths, as demonstrated by myself and others of my acquaintance, fully sustain and justify my position. The most healthy and robust children which have ever come under my observation, were brought up in the way here advised. No failure in this experiment has ever come under my knowledge. Let those mothers try it who really wish for healthy children. Let the child have all it wants three times a day. Do not half nurse or feed it, and thus starve it to death, and then cry out condemnation: but give it a full breast, or make up a full meal by feeding: keep it awake an hour, and then let it sleep, if it choose, till within a short space of another meal. Keep it clothed in accordance with the weather and the season, and give it free air to breathe; and not keep it stived up in a room hot enough to roast beef, where the oxygen is all consumed by the fire and respiration, and no fresh air is admitted. If infants from the first were treated in this way, they would not only be more healthy, but altogether more quiet, and easy to be taken care of. Then, instead of putting the child to the breast to stop its mouth and get rid of its crying, it would feel better, and be far less likely to cry. And generally, instead of worrisome nights,—usually caused by a disturbed stomach,—it would sleep quietly till morning; and the mother with it. The food of the infant, taken just before it sleeps, or in the night, interferes with its quiet rest; just as the rest of an adult person is disturbed from a similar cause. This method has been tried, and proved successful; let others try it. A gentleman recently informed me of a test he had made in this matter. A child fell into his hands who55 lost its mother at its birth. He found himself obliged to bring it up by hand. He began and continued his undertaking, by giving the child as much milk, properly prepared, as it would receive three times a day, and no more. He said,—“A more healthy, thriving, robust child I never saw. It was subject to none of the ordinary illnesses of children, has continued in perfect health up to the present time, and is now twelve years of age.” A relative informs me that his family physician in Vermont is bringing up his children in this way, from their birth; and that they are unusually healthy and vigorous. When children are old enough to take solid food, they should have only three meals a day. If they eat oftener, their stomachs will be deranged, and their food will not so well nourish them. If any mother will take pains to look at the laws of digestion, she will at once see that no child can take food oftener than once in five hours, without interfering with a previous meal, and injuring the healthful operation of the digestive organs. Those young people who have been brought up on the exclusive system of eating but three times a day, have been found to be more than ordinarily strong and healthy. While others have been afflicted with worms, colic, cholera-morbus, and a host of other ailments common to the young in general, they have usually escaped. Why, then, will mothers suffer their children to violate the laws of their natures, and expose themselves to suffer the penalty of those violated laws? Will a mother have such a tender concern for her offspring’s gratification, as to suffer it to destroy its own comfort and health, and perhaps life? It is often said, “My child has no appetite for breakfast; therefore it must have a lunch before dinner.” But this is a sure way of prolonging the difficulty; the child will never be likely to have an appetite for breakfast, as long as this irregular and unlawful course is indulged; and especially as long as the child knows that he may depend on the precious lunch. Let the child go from breakfast-time till dinner, and it will not be long before he will eat his regular breakfast.56 If parents would secure for their children a healthy appetite and a sound constitution, let them rigidly insist on their eating but three times a day, using simple food, and having other things in keeping with nature’s laws; and, so far as all human means are concerned, they may be sure of accomplishing their purpose. The almost continual hankering for food which many children have, arises wholly from a habit of constant eating. If their eating were reduced to a regular habit, their appetite would become regular. This irregular appetite is not natural; it is created, and unhealthy. If we get into a habit of eating seven times a day, we shall hanker after food as many times. If we once establish a habit of eating but three times a day, we shall want food only as many times. Now, what will mothers and nurses do? Will they begin with the infant by a regular system, and continue it? or will they go on in the old beaten path, to the injury of those they profess to love and cherish? Will they make a mock of paternal love and fondness, by unrestrained and unlimited indulgence? or will they love so sincerely as to keep the child from every hurtful thing? That pretended love, which, knowing the evil consequences at all hazards, seeks only to gratify, proves its own falseness. Shame—SHAME on that mother’s love which passes heedlessly by her child’s chief and ultimate good, to indulge it in a momentary gratification, or to save herself the trouble of controlling its solicitations! Shame on that mother’s humanity, even, whose refined and tender sympathy cannot refuse indulgence where health, and, it may be, life are at stake! If mothers and fathers have a substantial affection for their offspring, let them manifest it under the dictates of reason and common sense,—let them seek their permanent good. If those having the care of children would be able to give a final account of their guardianship in peace, let them, next to their morals, seek, for those under their charge, soundness of constitution. And, in doing this, they do perhaps as much for their morals as could be done through any other means; for physical and moral health are closely allied. We take the following from Dr. Jackson’s lectures on the use of water upon the human body, published in the Laws of Life for April, 1860: “THE QUALITY OF WATER TO BE USED.—Water, to be of the highest benefit when used either by the healthy or the sick, should be pure and soft. By purity I mean freedom from impregnation by mineral substances, or earthy salts, or the infusion of vegetable matter, either or all of which render it more or less unfit for external or internal application. There never was a greater mistake in the use of an agent whose natural and ordinary effect is to promote human health, than is made by those who are led to believe that water impregnated with earthy and medicinal substances is more beneficial than water which is entirely free from them. Hence the popular belief that to wash the body in medicated water, or to use it as a drink, is superior to the use of pure water, leads to most doleful results. Water, therefore, which is to be used for bathing, or for drinking purposes, should be as free from all substances which do not enter essentially into its composition, as it is possible to obtain it. Hence in addition to its purity it should be soft. Hard water is neither fit to use as a detergent, nor as a diluent. Its unfitness for external use upon the body is readily perceived by whoever applies it for any length of time. For, the skin which in its healthy conditions is soft, and velvety to the touch, and feels to one who has the sense of touch nicely developed, as if it were covered with oil, and then rubbed with the softest material till it is polished like Mahogany, when it is washed for any length of time in hard water, loses that softness, and acquires in its stead a roughness and harshness which is very unpleasant to the sight and to the touch. Housewives who have their hands much in water, know the difference between the effects upon their skin, of hard and soft water. In one instance the skin of the hands becomes dry, and readily cracks, making them sore: in the other, the hands are soft,58 the skin pliable and smooth. It is a very great mistake, therefore, on the part of persons who are in health, ever to use hard water for purposes of bathing: and however desirable it is to have what in common language is known as ‘living water’—whether from a running brook, or a living spring, or a bubbling, boiling well—over water which is stagnant, by having been gathered and confined in a reservoir, still the difference is in favor of the latter when it is soft, and the running water is hard. Thus, if a family has near its dwelling a living spring of hard water, and in one corner of the house a well-built cistern in which water from the clouds is caught and kept pure, the fact that the rain-water has been for some time confined in a cistern, while the water from the spring is constantly fresh, does not overthrow the superiority of the rain-water—its softness being a quality which makes up for any lack of freshness that it may have. To satisfy one that this view is correct, it needs only to be used for the purposes of bathing a sufficient length of time to show its effects. WATER AS A DRINK.— It is not only for its effects upon the skin, and indirectly upon the organs lying immediately subjacent to the skin, that water should be pure and soft; but, if possible, its effects upon the internal structure of the body, when taken as a drink, render it more imperatively necessary that pure and soft water should be used. Eighty per cent. of the human creature is made up of water. Thus, if you take a person weighing a hundred pounds, and place him where all the fluids in his body shall be removed, and you only have left the actual dry material of which he is composed, he will be reduced in weight to twenty pounds. Now, for all this organic use, this great life-sustaining purpose, nothing but pure water will serve. Just to the degree that there is in it any material which does not enter essentially into the formation of this remarkable substance, is it spoiled for the uses to which we wish to put it. You can have no lime, soda, magnesia, arsenic, sulphur, nor any other medicinal substances in it;—nor the essences of vegetable substances, without rendering it unfit for the purposes for59 which it is intended in the great constructive policy of Nature, as applied to the human body. This proposition being correct, we only need to go one step further to demolish entirely the popular belief in the virtues of medicinal springs. And this can be done easily enough whenever the occasion for doing it shall be appropriate. But my purpose at this time is to state my objections, not against the use of waters which are usually termed medicinal, but against the use of waters which are not so considered, but are generally regarded as fit for use in the common purposes to which water is put as a drink, and in the preparations of our food. In other words, I wish to call your attention to the unfitness of all waters which are simply hard, for use as a drink, and for the purposes of cookery. “On no single point is there need of enlightenment more than on this, of the superior quality of soft over hard water as a hygienic agent. Not only is hard water productive in many instances of diseased kidneys, irritation of the bladder, mucous dyspepsia, and scrofulous development, but as I have said before, its effects on the skin are to leave it rough, causing it to put on a dry, scaly appearance, making it to crack—and its effects on the mucous membrane are even worse, creating an irritation of that texture, serving to introduce dyspeptic conditions, sore throat, nasal catarrh, inactivity of the liver, costiveness, piles, and headache. Persons using it as a daily drink, never mingling it with anything else, would be marked over whole districts of country by habitual constipation, by dry skin, by shrivelled muscle, and are therefore, as if by instinct, led to avoid its use, unless modified by articles such as milk, sugar, tea, coffee, and alcoholic mixtures. I have known persons taking hygienic treatment for constipation of the bowels, whom physicians had utterly failed to cure by any hydropathic appliance, and have been compelled to resort to medicines, immediately relieved on the use of pure soft water as a drink. But this is only half its value. Its power as a solvent, as well as a tonic, its gentle and invigorating effect on free mucous surfaces, thus indirectly securing the health of all the senses, whose niceties of action60 depend on the health of the mucous tissue, are evidences of its advantage as a hygienic agent. “We who are so artificially educated in all that pertains to the nicety of perception by the special senses, know very little of the instinctive dislike which the unperverted taste would show toward hard water as a drink. The animals might teach us on this point. Horsemen, who study the natural conditions of their horses, and seek to preserve their health, are very particular in procuring soft water for them to drink, they having been taught that the taste of the horse is so perfect and nice in this matter, as to cause him even when thirsty, to refuse to drink at hard-water springs, and go for miles till he can find soft water. Besides, horsemen say that the remote effects of hard water as a drink for the horse, are, that instead of a glossy, sleek appearance of the hair which the horse shows when in the habit of drinking soft water, there arises a staring, dry, and apparently half-deadened condition of the hair and skin, making the grooming of the animal doubly difficult. “I am satisfied that right views and a practical reformation on this point on the part of the people, would do much toward introducing them to better conditions of health, even though other things should remain as at present. And I should advise every family who may read this lecture, and who use hard water either for drink or for culinary purposes, to take measures immediately to supply themselves with soft water in abundant quantities; and if it can only be obtained by being caught in reservoirs as it falls from the clouds, to filter it before it is used. Filtered rain-water is perfectly unobjectionable as a drink; and an expenditure of from five to twenty dollars in the purchase of a filter, would secure to any family in this land the means of purifying all the water they might need for drink and for cooking purposes.” I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Ps. cxxxix, 14. The following is taken from an editorial in the Laws of Life for Feb., 1862: “In the treatment of diseases by hygienic means, we apply water at different temperatures, and of course comparatively cold, and sometimes at such a degree of cold as to produce a decidedly stimulating effect; but not for the mere purpose of making the patient feel better immediately. The object in such applications is to induce changes in the structures of the tissues, or in the nervous or circulatory relations of the system, such as shall result in more healthful conditions. In this we feel justified, which we could not do in summoning into action an extra amount of vitality, that it might be expended in work; unless, indeed, it should be in an emergency which demanded, and was worthy, a sacrifice. Yet it is not a difficult thing to do, and there is no doubt that it has been done, in thousands of instances, by Water Cure physicians, and in as many more by invalids on their own responsibility, in applying water for the purpose of inducing healthful changes, to summon up vital action to a destructive degree. It is as true of this method of treatment as it is of the Allopathic, that a patient may be undergoing a most successful cure by it, and that by the time he is cured, he will die. There is no contradiction here. Morbid conditions may be overcome by means which exhaust the constitutional powers, and leave nothing for the person to live upon. “As great a mistake has been made in regard to the propriety of severe friction applied to the skin, as in the matter of cold bathing. To a considerable extent the flesh-brush has been used separate from the application of water; and as a general thing, persons using cold baths take pains to get the coarsest, roughest linen obtainable for wiping the body. The tendency of harsh friction of the skin is to destroy its sensitiveness and healthfulness. One who, at first, can only bear the flesh-brush applied in the gentlest manner, can, after a few months, use it with as much impunity on62 his own skin as he could upon that of a rhinoceros; and he thinks, may be, that he has gained something by the change; whereas he has actually destroyed the natural sensibility of the very delicate nerves which are distributed so abundantly upon the inner layer of the skin. The human body was never intended to be as hardy as that of the rhinoceros. If it had been, it would have shown that condition without having to be put through such an artificial process. All friction applied to the body after a bath, should be of the gentlest character. The linen used for wiping may be coarse, but it should be soft and pliable, and rubbing with the dry hand afterward should be brisk, but gentle.”