able, and, as bedrooms go, well ventilated. The first night after going to bed I awoke in early morning with the most oppressive of headaches, with a sense of nausea, and with coldness of the body. The thought that these unpleasant symptoms arose from smallness of the room and close air led me to open the window. I was soon somewhat relieved, but could sleep no more that morning, so I dressed, took a walk, and after a few hours felt fairly well, and as wanting nothing more than a few hours of extra sleep. The next night I took the precaution to set the window open, but again in early morning I woke as before, and even in worse condition. I now canvassed all possible causes for the phenomena. Had I contracted some contagious disease? Was this bedroom recently tenanted by a person suffering from a contagious malady? Had I taken some kind of food or drink which had disagreed with me? The answer to each of these queries was entirely negative. All I could get at was that I had a sense of an odor of a very peculiar kind, which came and went, and which seemed to have some connection with the temporary derangement. On the third night I went to bed once more, but rather more restless and alert than before; and an hour or two after I had been in bed I woke with a singular dream. I was a boy again, and I was reading the story, so I dreamed, of Philip Quarles, who, like Robinson Crusoe, was lost on a desolate island, and who could not sleep on a pillow stuffed with the feathers of certain birds which he had killed, and the feathers of which he had used for a pillow. The dream led me to examine the pillow on which my own head reclined. It was a soft large downy cushion, with a fine white case and a perfectly clean tick; but when I turned my face for a moment on the pillow and inhaled through it, I detected the most distinct sulphur ammoniacal odor, which was so sickening I had no difficulty in discovering mine enemy. The bolster I found to be the same. I put both away, made a temporary pillow out of a railway rug, went to sleep again, and woke in the morning quite well. It turned out that the pillow and bolster had been recently made up with imperfectly dried feathers, and some of these were undergoing decomposition.

This experience of mine is a good illustration detected, as it happened, on the spot. It is by no means singular. Little children are often made sleepless, dreamful, and restless in their cots from a similar cause.

BED VENTILATION.

In treating of bed and bedding I have dwelled on the importance of allowing the clothes so to lie on the sleeper that they shall not too closely wrap him up in his own cutaneous exhalations. What I wished to convey by this teaching was that the bed should be ventilated not less than the room. Benjamin Franklin L. M, iv-3

used to take what he called an air bath, which consisted in walking about in an open room, sharply, for a short time in a loose dress, so that the air might come well and briskly on to the surface of his skin and exert its purifying and cleansing influence on the cutaneous envelope. The good and refreshing effect of this simple measure of cleanliness is well experienced by those who resort to it, and part of the value of the Turkish bath is due to Franklin's method, which is there of necessity carried out. But there is no doubt that an improvement might be made in beds themselves by a process of ventilation of them, and I am glad to say that this principle has been introduced lately by a clever and simple invention, called O'Brien's Bed-ventilating Tube. The late Dr. Chowne showed that the ordinary motion of the air through tubes vertically placed and open at each end is in one continued upward direction, the air inclosed within the tubes being always of slightly higher temperature than that outside. I saw many of Dr. Chowne's experiments on this subject, and although I could never see what he called the siphon principle which he supposed to be in action, I am bound to admit that he could in the most equable and even atmosphere cause a current of air to circulate down a short arm of a vertical tube, and up a longer arm of another tube connected with the shorter by a joint or bend. Mr. O'Brien, taking advantage of this fact, has then invented a tube which ventilates the bed while the sleeper is in it. A tube of two inches diameter at the foot of the bed opens just under the bedclothes; it passes beneath the frame of the bed to the bed's head, and runs up at the bed's head until it nearly reaches the ceiling, or when convenient passes into a flue. Through this tube a current of air, entering the bed at the upper part and passing over the sleeper, is made to circulate out of the bed by the ventilating tube, carrying with it the watery matter that is exhaled by the skin, and keeping up, in fact, a perfectly ventilated space, in which the body for so many hours reposes. The quantity of fluid from the skin which condenses in this tube in the course of a night is, to common observation, quite remarkable, consisting of several ounces. I consider the O'Brien tube to be a marked hygienic improvement in the construction of bedsteads and bedding. It ought to be fitted to every bedstead, and in the beds of all sick-rooms and wards of hospitals it should have an immediate and settled introduction.

WINDOW CURTAINS AND WINDOW BLINDS IN THE BEDROOM.

There is much difference of opinion on the question of window curtains and window blinds in the bedroom. Some persons who have been unhealthily educated are unable to sleep except when the room is entirely dark, the faintest ray of light being sufficient

to break their repose. Others can sleep when light enters into the room in the fullest degree. I have no doubt those are most healthy who can sleep without any window shade whatsoever, and I am sure that every one can be trained so as to sleep without blinds if the training do but commence early enough in life. Light purifies and invigorates; and children that sleep in darkness, by their blanched faces alone, may be distinguished from those who sleep in a well-lighted room. More than this, the admis sion of daylight early in the morning tends to create a habit of early rising, which is so conducive to health. He who hails the sun instead of letting the sun hail him is the wise man. Those who sleep like moles in a hole, though they may grow sleek and fat, are not sun-healthy; they are feeble, subject to headaches, excitable, pale, and nervous. For these reasons I would, therefore, teach that the half-blind of muslin is all that is sufficient for the bedroom window, and that the roller-blind should only be used to prevent the actual glare of the sun, or to shut out the view into a room that is exposed to other houses that overlook it. Heavy curtains for bedroom windows, or curtains of any kind, are altogether out of place, except as mere ornamental appendages, and they, when present for appearance' sake, should never be drawn except on emergency, in seasons of extreme cold or heat.

A light green color is best for the muslin blind and the rollerblind.

ANSWERS TO SOME INQUIRIES.

Before I leave the bedroom it is well for me to take the opportunity of replying to one or two of a great number of inquiries that have been sent to me respecting the various points that have been mooted in these papers.

1. For daylight reflectors Chapuis's are, I think, up to this time, without a rival.

2. For the floors of bedrooms in cases where the wooden flooring is bad, an oil-cloth covering is in all particulars good. The oilcloth can be cleaned by the dry method perfectly well.

3. A portion of stove-piping carried from the calorigen stove to the outer air for the purpose of admitting fresh air answers fairly well; but no plan is so good as to clear away all rubbish from beneath the floor of the room, make plenty of opening from the outer air to beneath the floor, and then let the tube for feeding the fresh air to the stove perforate the flooring into the space beneath. 4. The open gas fireplace in the bedroom is perfectly safe so long as there is a good chimney draught, but if there is anything like a down draught the stove is very dangerous to health. The product which injures most from the gas fire is not carbonic acid, but carbonic oxide.

5. The mean temperature of the bedroom should be from 60° to 65° Fahr. This is easily maintained by the calorigen stove, and at a very moderate expense. The calorigen that burns with coal is perhaps the steadiest of the varieties of coal stoves which warm and ventilate at the same time.

6. A paper, for walls, which "will wash like linen," as one of my correspondents suggests, is not at all out of the question. Indeed, since these essays have been in progress, Dr. Scoffern has sent me a small specimen of his cupri-ammonium prepared paper which can even be boiled or steamed without being destroyed. A little improvement in a paper of this construction, so as to make it more artistic, would give a basis for a perfectly healthy wall paper, which could be put up, in panel, without paste, on a glazed wall, and permit of being taken down, at any time, for cleansing, as easily as a picture.

7. There is, it must be acknowledged, a great difficulty in admitting air into the bedroom from the outside, and at the same time excluding damp. In foggy weather, in such seasons as the one we have just passed through, this difficulty is almost insurmountable, and we are unfortunately placed between Scylla and Charybdis în relation to it. I have tried several plans for drying air in its course from the outside into the room, but only with partial success. When the air of the room is well and equally warmed, the injury arising from moisture is greatly lessened, and it is therefore of moment, in foggy seasons, to keep up a considerable temperature in the room by which the water vapor will be removed, if there be at the same time free exit ventilation. But all plans of artificial drying are partial or mischievous. To stretch a layer of porous and dry woollen stuff over the opening that lets air into the room is the only mechanical plan I can suggest that is of real value. This at all events filters the air. It might be supplemented by introducing into the ventilating tube some loosely packed charcoal in goodsized pieces, over which the air would pass on its entrance into the chamber. Dr. Stenhouse has suggested this plan as u means of purification of air, and it is a good suggestion in that particular.

THE STAIRCASE LANDING.

We e may leave the bedroom now, and pass to the landing of the staircase outside. This space, or landing, is, as a rule, a terrible trouble to the sanitary mind. It is a rialto on which varied kinds of sanitary difficulties combine. It often is deficient in light. On it is placed the receptacle, necessary but fearful, of the housemaid's cupboard or closet. On it is placed the sink and water-butt. Worst of all, in nearly every London house it is the place for the water-closet. When there are two landing floors in the house these

convenient inconveniences are usually divided, but frequently, in houses less fortunately placed, they are all in conjunction.

GOOD LIGHT AND COSTLESS VENTILATION.

It is essential on the landing of the bedroom floor first of all tc have abundance of light. The window should be made as large as is consistently possible, and it should be kept specially clean. When light is deficient here the reflector ought to be brought into immediate use. In a large and newly-built house in this metropolis, into which I was, lately, led by a professional summons, an artificial light had actually to be kept for a portion of the day, and for the whole day when the sky was clouded, in order that the pas sage could be sufficiently illuminated for ordinary purposes. A great blank of dead wall opposite the window kept up a perpetual eclipse. I suggested a reflector, and as soon as it was in position the passage became actually brilliant with light, to the immense comfort of the occupiers of the house.

After light on the landing of the staircase comes the admission of air by the window, and here I can have no hesitation what to recommend. The costless system of ventilation introduced by Dr. Peter Hinckes Bird is for all intents the best. Dr. Bird's plan is simplicity itself. The lower sash of the window is lifted up about three inches, and in the space between the sill and the sash a piece of wood is introduced to fill up the space. The lower sash at its upper part is thus brought a few inches above the lower part of the upper sash, which it by so much overlaps. In this manner there is left in the middle between the two sashes an open space, up which the air is constantly passing from the outside into the house. At all times the air is finding its way, and, as the current is directed in an upward course, draught is not felt even when the air blows in freely. At the same time the sashes can be opened or closed as may be desired without altering the arrangement for ventilation. I have recommended and employed Dr. Bird's costless ventilation so many years with such excellent practical results, I hardly like to venture on a shade of suggestion for its modification. There is, however, one change in it which, while it adheres entirely to the principle, is, I venture to think, an improvement in detail. This consists simply in letting the lower sash remain un changed, and in bringing down the upper sash three inches, so as to let it by that distance overlap the lower. The space above on the upper part of the top sash has then to be filled up, and I recom mend for this purpose a permanent bar of wood, against which the upper sash can close. The advantages of this detail are, that the window looks better; that light at the lower part is saved; that lower blinds are not interfered with; that the interposed piece