es can be produced by sleeping together. The bed of a
consumptive, it is well known, is a powerful source of contagion. In
Italy it is the custom, after death, to destroy the bed-clothes of
consumptive patients. Tubercular disease has, within the past few years,
been transferred from men to animals by inoculation. Authentic cases are
upon record of young robust girls of healthy parentage, marrying men
affected with consumption, acquiring the disease in a short time, and
dying, in some instances, before their husbands. In these significant
cases, the sickly emanations have apparently been communicated during
sleep. When, therefore, either husband or wife is known to have
consumption, it would be highly imprudent for them to pass the long
hours of the night either in the same bed or in the same room.

WHAT KIND OF BED IS MOST HEALTHFUL?

Feather-beds are not conducive to the health of either sex. Mattresses
made of wool, or of wool and horsehair, are much better. The bed should
be opened, and its contents exposed to the air and sunlight, once every
year. Beds long saturated with the night exhalations of their occupants
are not wholesome. A number of ancient writers have alleged--and it has
been reasserted by modern authorities--that sleeping on sponge is of
service to those who desire to increase their families. The mattresses
of compressed sponge recently introduced, therefore, commend themselves
to married people thus situated. Hemlock boughs make a bed which has a
well-established reputation for similar virtues.

The odor of cone-bearing trees has a well-known influence upon the
fruitfulness of wedlock. Those who live in pine forests have ordinarily
large families of children.

Excessive clothing at night is highly injurious. So also is a fire in
the bed-room, except in case of sickness. If the body be too much heated
during sleep, perspiration occurs, or the action of the heart is
increased, and the whole economy becomes excited. Either condition
prevents sound sleep and reinvigoration of the body. Wives in feeble
health, and those liable to attacks of flooding, should therefore have a
particular regard to the quantity of clothing on their beds.

THE DIGNITY AND PROPRIETY OF THE SEXUAL INSTINCT.

A distinguished medical writer has divided women into three classes in
regard to the intensity of the sexual instinct. He asserts that a larger
number than is generally supposed have little or no sexual feeling. A
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