University of Virginia Library

Hygiene ineffectual

We hear it said: " I exercise daily in the open air. I take cold baths, in order to overcome a predisposition to take cold; and yet I have continual colds, catarrh, and cough." Such admissions ought to open people's eyes to the inefficacy of material hygiene, and induce sufferers to look in other directions for cause and cure.

Instinct is better than misguided reason, as even na- ture declares. The violet lifts her blue eye to greet the early spring. The leaves clap their hands as nature's untired worshippers. The snowbird sings and soars amid the blasts; he has no catarrh from wet feet, and procures a summer residence with more ease than a na- bob. The atmosphere of the earth, kinder than the at- mosphere of mortal mind, leaves catarrh to the latter. Colds, coughs, and contagion are engendered solely by human theories.