Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1880 — Light in the Home. [ARTICLE]

Light in the Home.

’ Th* eminent English writer, Dy. Richardson, produces in one of our contemporaries, aa article called “ Health at Home,” which is replete with wisdom. A most important point, and one on which he dwells, is the fact that so many people are afraid of the light. “ In a dark and gloomy house you never can see the dirt that pollutes it. Dirt accumulates on dirt, and the mind soon learns to apologize for this condition because the gloom conceals it.” Accordingly, when a house is dark and dingy, the air becomes impure, not only on account of the absence of light, but from the impurities which are accumulated. Now, as Dr. Richardson cleverly puts it, we place flowers in our windows that they may have the light. If this be the case, why should we deprive ourselves of the sunshine and expect to gain health and vigor? Light, and plenty of it, is not only a purifier of things inanimate, but it absolutely stimulates our brains. ■ It is in regard to sick rooms that this excellent authority is particularly impressive. . It used to be the habit of physicians in old times to sedulously darken the rooms,,sad this practice continues to some extent even to-day. In certain very acute cases of nervous diseases, where light, the least ray of it, disturbs in over exciting the visual organs, this darkening of the room may be permitted, but ordinarily to keep light out of the room is to deprive the patient of one of the vital forces. Children or old people condemned to live in darkness are pale and wan, exactly like those plants which, deprived of light, gtpw white. Darkness in the'daytime undoubtedly makes the blood flow lees strongly and checks the beating of the heart, and these conditions are precisely such as bring constitutional suffering and disease. The suppression of the fight of day actually increases those contagious- maladies which feed on uncleanliness. ’Dr. Rich xrdson states: L once found by ex periment that certain organic poisons, analogous to the poisons which propagate these diseases, are Tendered innocuous by exposure to light. "r—Scientific American.