THE TWO BREATHS. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT WINCHESTER, MAY 31, 1869.

Ladies,--I have been honoured by a second invitation to address you here,
from the lady to whose public spirit the establishment of these lectures
is due. I dare not refuse it: because it gives me an opportunity of
speaking on a matter, knowledge and ignorance about which may seriously
affect your health and happiness, and that of the children with whom you
may have to do. I must apologize if I say many things which are well
known to many persons in this room: they ought to be well known to all;
and it is generally best to assume total ignorance in one's hearers, and
to begin from the beginning.

I shall try to be as simple as possible; to trouble you as little as
possible with scientific terms; to be practical; and at the same time, if
possible, interesting.

I should wish to call this lecture "The Two Breaths:" not merely "The
Breath;" and for this reason: every time you breathe, you breathe two
different breaths; you take in one, you give out another. The
composition of those two breaths is different. Their effects are
different. The breath which has been breathed out must not be breathed
in again. To tell you why it must not would lead me into anatomical
details, not quite in place here as yet: though the day will come, I
trust, when every woman entrusted with the care of children will be
expected to know something about them. But this I may say--Those who
habitually take in fresh breath will probably grow up large, strong,
ruddy, cheerful, active, clear-headed, fit for their work. Those who
habitually take in the breath which has been breathed out by themselves,
or any other living creature, will certainly grow up, if they grow up at
all, small, weak, pale, nervous, depressed, unfit for work, and tempted
continually to resort to stimulants, and become drunkards.

If you want to see how different the breath breathed out is from the
breath taken in, you have only to try a somewhat cruel experiment, but
one which people too often try upon themselves, their children, and their
work-people. If you take any small animal with lungs like your own--a
mouse, for instance--and force it to breathe no air but what you have
breathed already; if you put it in a close box, and while you take in
breath from the outer air, send out your breath through a tube, into that
box, the animal will soon faint; if you go on long with this process, it
will die