Flour of sulphur dusted into the soles of the shoes and stockings is said to be a perfect preventive. The exciting causes of rheumatism are cold or wet applied to the body when in a state of heat, exposure to cold winds, remaining long in wet clothes, sleeping in a damp bed, or blood-poisoning. Acute attacks of rheumatism should be treated by painting the affected part with tincture of iodine.
=Seasickness.=--Experts claim that seasickness can be regulated by a system of breathing. One must sit still and time the breathing to the upward and downward motion of the boat. As the boat falls there should be a full expiration, and as the boat rises start on an inspiration ending just as the boat begins to drop.
=Sleep.=--The "Home Maker" says: "Up to the fifteenth year most young people require ten hours, and till the twentieth year, nine hours. After that age everyone finds out how much he or she requires, though, as a general rule, at least six to eight hours are necessary. Eight hours' sleep will prevent more nervous derangements in women than any medicine can cure. During growth there must be ample sleep if the brain is to develop to its full extent, and the more nervous, excitable, or precocious a child is, the longer sleep should it get if its intellectual progress is not to come to a premature standstill, or its life be cut short at an early age."
A doctor of prominence says: "There is no doubt in my mind but the belief that human beings should sleep with their bodies lying north and south has its foundation in true scientific facts. Each human system has two magnetic poles--one positive and one negative. Now, it is true that some persons have the positive pole in the head and the negative pole in the feet, and _vice versa_. In order that the person sleeping should be in perfect harmony with the magnetic phenomena of the earth, the head, if it possesses the positive pole, should lie to the south, or if the feet possess the positive pole the head should lie to the north. The positive pole should always lie opposite to the magnetic center of the continent and thus maintain a magnetic equilibrium. The positive pole of the person draws one way, but the magnetic pole of the earth draws the other way and forces the blood toward the feet, affects the iron in the system, tones up the nerves, and makes sleep refreshing and invigorating. But if the person sleeps the wrong way and fails to become magnetically _en rapport_ with the earth, he will then probably be too magnetic, and he will have a fever resulting from the magnetic forces working too fast, or he will not be magnetic enough, and the great strain will cause a feeling of lassitude, sleep will not be refreshing, and in the morning he will have no more energy than there is in a cake of soap. Some persons may scoff at these ideas, but the greatest scientific men of the world have studied the subject. Only recently the French Academy of Science made experiments upon the body of a guillotined man, which go to prove that each human system is in itself an electric battery, one electrode being represented by the head, the other by the feet. The body was taken immediately after death and placed on a pivot, to move as it might. After some vacillation the head portion turned toward the north, the body then remaining stationary. One of the professors turned it half way around, but it soon regained its original position, and the same result was repeatedly obtained, until organic movement finally ceased."