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The Ministry of Healing
miasma. This matter is often too lightly regarded. Continuous ill-
health, serious diseases, and many deaths result from the dampness
and malaria of low-lying, ill-drained situations.
In the building of houses it is especially important to secure
thorough ventilation and plenty of sunlight. Let there be a current of
air and an abundance of light in every room in the house. Sleeping
rooms should be so arranged as to have a free circulation of air day
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and night. No room is fit to be occupied as a sleeping room unless it
can be thrown open daily to the air and sunshine. In most countries
bedrooms need to be supplied with conveniences for heating, that
they may be thoroughly warmed and dried in cold or wet weather.
The guestchamber should have equal care with the rooms in-
tended for constant use. Like the other bedrooms, it should have air
and sunshine, and should be provided with some means of heating,
to dry out the dampness that always accumulates in a room not in
constant use. Whoever sleeps in a sunless room, or occupies a bed
that has not been thoroughly dried and aired, does so at the risk of
health, and often of life.
In building, many make careful provision for their plants and
flowers. The greenhouse or window devoted to their use is warm and
sunny; for without warmth, air, and sunshine, plants would not live
and flourish. If these conditions are necessary to the life of plants,
how much more necessary are they for our own health and that of
our families and guests!
If we would have our homes the abiding place of health and
happiness we must place them above the miasma and fog of the
lowlands, and give free entrance to heaven’s life-giving agencies.
Dispense with heavy curtains, open the windows and the blinds,
allow no vines, however beautiful, to shade the windows, and permit
no trees to stand so near the house as to shut out the sunshine. The
sunlight may fade the drapery and the carpets, and tarnish the picture
frames; but it will bring a healthy glow to the cheeks of the children.
Those who have the aged to provide for should remember that
these especially need warm, comfortable rooms. Vigor declines as
years advance, leaving less vitality with which to resist unhealthful
influences; hence the greater necessity for the aged to have plenty of
sunlight, and fresh, pure air.
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