Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1881 — How ear Ancestors Lived. [ARTICLE]

How ear Ancestors Lived.

Oar fathers and mothers ate, drank and breathed m happy freedom. If the food was palatable and sufficient, the water clear and cool, the air fragrant and refreshing, they were thankfhl and grew strong. We suspect that half their vigor and health Was due to just this. Of tire much which the world baa since leaned about these things they were in blissful ignorance. Happy mortals! they were not afflicted with the anxieties and fears with which so much Wisdom is overwhelm-

ing us. Whether zinc, iron, or lead, cement or wood, were best as conductors of water, they had no need to ask. They never thought of inquiring whether bolted or unbolted flour was most nutritious, whether there was* m >re nitrogen in flesh, fish, or fowl, what was good for brain and what for muscle, or what for summer with its beat and winter with its cold. We do not suppose half of them knew what the word miasma mentp whether they ware noxious exhalations or minmte germs, subtle gases, for vibriones. And, dear sank, may didn’t care! Such ignorance was both safe and in the fashion then. Now we must knout all these things, and must suffer mental agonies to correspond. To conclude, we never read a scientific or health paragraph which we breathe, there lurk, unseen without the aid of the microscope, the seeds of numberless. 111$,’’ without a feeling akin to that whk-h moved deminie to exclaim: “How much longer shall knowledge be allowed to go on Increasing?"