nless the outer temperature is high, and for such, woolen
undergarments are very useful. The outer garments in winter, to be
efficient, must have two qualities, namely, an impervious surface so
that winds may not penetrate and a loose open weave in which air may be
held so that warmth may be secured.

Rubber boots, although very common in the country, are not desirable as
a foot covering, because they do not allow the perspiration to
evaporate, but rather hold the foot in a moist condition very
detrimental to it. Rubber-cloth overshoes or arctics are much better
than rubber boots, and felt overshoes are equally satisfactory.
Chilblains are fostered by the use of rubber boots, and cloth shoes are
a great relief when the feet are thus affected.

_Ventilation of bedroom._

Since the agitation for fresh air has become so extensive and the
knowledge of the dangers of tuberculosis so widespread, much more
attention has been given to the ventilation of bedrooms, and whereas
formerly the night air was religiously excluded from a sleeping room, it
is not at all uncommon now for a window to be kept wide open, even
through the coldest nights of winter. From what has already been said on
the subject of ventilation, it is plain that to breathe over and over
one's expired air is not healthy, and while it is possible that a
bedroom may be so large that the concentration of the organic matter in
the air may not affect an individual sleeping in the room, yet in most
cases it must be admitted that the bedroom is so small or the number of
people in the bedroom so large that this possibility does not exist. It
is, again, possible that the structure of the house may be so poor that
it is not necessary to open a window to get plenty of fresh air; the
writer remembers sleeping in rooms where, with the windows shut, paths
of snow across the floor in the morning showed the intimate connection
between the inside and the outside of the room.

But the tendency nowadays is to build better houses, to cover the walls
with paper, to put on double windows, and even to paste up the cracks to
make the room as air-tight as possible. To sleep in such a room without
a window open may not be committing suicide, but it is a deliberate
method of reducing the vitality, of insuring a headache or a numbed and
stupid mental condition, and of loading up the system with poisons which
ought to be eliminated by the oxygen which fresh air supplies. It would
add man