ourselves?



THE TWO BREATHS {4}



Ladies,--I have been honoured by a second invitation to address
you, and I dare not refuse it; because it gives me an opportunity
of speaking on a matter, knowledge and ignorance about which may
seriously affect your health and happiness, and that of the
children with whom you may have to do. I must apologise if I say
many things which are well known to many persons in this room:
they ought to be well known to all: but it is generally best to
assume total ignorance in one's hearers, and to begin from the
beginning.

I shall try to be as simple as possible; to trouble you as little
as possible with scientific terms; to be practical; and at the
same time, if possible, interesting.

I should wish to call this lecture "The Two Breaths:" not merely
"The Breath;" and for this reason: every time you breathe you
breathe two different breaths; you take in one, you give out
another. The composition of those two breaths is different.
Their effects are different. The breath which has been breathed
out must not be breathed in again. To tell you why it must not
would lead me into anatomical details, not quite in place here as
yet; though the day will come, I trust, when every woman entrusted