Nothing invites disease so much as the present style of living among the
well-to-do people. Nearly everything tends among this class to
deteriorate general health, and, since their numbers have within the
last decade greatly increased, the influence on the country must be
markedly detrimental, and, but for the steady flow of vitalizing blood
from the Old World, the whole Yankee race would ere long, inevitably
disappear.

We have dwelt in this chapter at considerable length on the importance
of right training and education of the young, and especially of girls,
though no more than the subject seems to demand. Boys are naturally more
out of doors, since their love of out-of-door life is greater than that
of girls, and their sports all lead them into the open air, and by this
means they more easily correct the constitutional and natural tendencies
to disease, if any there be. Then, too, the iron hand of fashion has not
fastened itself so relentlessly upon them as to dwarf their bodies and
warp their souls, as it has in some degree the gentler and better and
more tender half of mankind, to whom the larger share of this chapter
seems the more directly to apply.




CHAPTER IX.

HINTS TO INVALIDS AND OTHERS.

Indiscretions.--Care of themselves.--Singular effect of consumption on
mind.--How to dress.--Absurdities of dress.--Diet.--Habits of