SEC. 2. Seeing.

Importance of seeing.  Near-sighted people—­why so common.  Heat of our rooms.  Very fine print.  Spectacles.  Reading when tired.  Rubbing the eyes.  Cold water to the eyes.

SEC. 3. Tasting and Smelling.

Benumbing the senses.  How this has often been done.  The teeth.  How to preserve them.

SEC. 4. Feeling.

Corpulence and slovenliness.  Sense of touch.  The blind—­how taught to read.  Hint to parents.  The hand.  Neglecting the left hand.  Physiology of the hand and arm.  Evils of being able to use but one hand.  Both should be educated.

CHAPTER XX.  ABUSES.

Bad seats for children at table and elsewhere.  Why children hate Sunday.  Seats at Sabbath school—­at church—­at district schools.  Suspending children between the heavens and the earth.  Cushions to sit on.  Seats with backs.  Children in factories.  Evils produced.  Bodily punishment.  Striking the heads of children very injurious.  Beating across the middle of the body.  Anecdote of a teacher.  Concluding advice to mothers.

* * * * *

PREFACE.

There is a prejudice abroad, to some extent, against agitating the questions—­“What shall we eat?  What shall we drink? and Wherewithal shall we be clothed?”—­not so much because the Scriptures have charged us not to be over “anxious” on the subject, as because those who pay the least attention to what they eat and drink, are supposed to be, after all, the most healthy.

It is not difficult to ascertain how this opinion originated.  There are a few individuals who are perpetually thinking and talking on this subject, and who would fain comply with appropriate rules, if they knew what they were, and if a certain definite course, pursued a few days only, would change their whole condition, and completely restore a shattered or ruined constitution.  But their ignorance of the laws which govern the human frame, both in sickness and in health, and their indisposition to pursue any proposed plan for their improvement long enough to receive much permanent benefit from it, keep them, notwithstanding all they say or do, always deteriorating.

Then, on the other hand, there are a few who, in consequence of possessing by nature very strong constitutions, and laboring at some active and peculiarly healthy employment, are able for a few, and perhaps even for many years, to set all the rules of health at defiance.

Now, strange as it may seem, these cases, though they are only exceptions (and those more apparent than real) to the general rule, are always dwelt upon, by those who are determined to live as they please, and to put no restraint either upon themselves or their appetites.  For nothing can be plainer—­so it seems to me—­than that, taking mankind by families, or what is still better, by larger portions, they are most free from pain and disease, as well as most healthy and happy, who pay the most attention to the laws of human health, that is, those laws or rules by whose observance alone, that health can be certainly and permanently secured.