Much has been said for and against low-necked dresses. In the early days of Pennsylvania, the law-makers took the subject in hand, and enacted-"that if any white female, of ten years or upward, should appear in any public street, lane, highway, church, courthouse, tavern, ball-room, theatre, or any other place of public resort, with naked shoulders (i. e. low-necked dresses), being able to purchase necessary clothing, shall forfeit and pay a fine of not less than one, or more than two hundred dollars." It was, however, graciously provided, that women of questionable character, might go with bare shoulders, as a badge of distinction between the chaste and unchaste. It is astonishing how men are always interfering with women's attire by legislative enactment. Will the women retaliate when they have the ballot, and the law-making power? The style of dress prohibited by the early "Pennamites," is now fashionable at balls and parties even in Pennsylvania.

It would be

If both men and women could be induced to let the neck go undressed at all times, there would be less throat and pulmonary disease. The evil lies in sometimes dressing the neck warmly, and at others not at all. For instance, during the winter our fashionabl women not only commonly wear high-necked dresses, but in addition, thereto, fur capes and tippets. But you will meet the less sensible of them at some social gathering, with either no neck-dress at all, or with one made of some fabric of transparent texture. If they escape a cold after such exposure, it is altogether a miracle. greatly to the advantage of people of both sexes, if they would toughen the neck like the face by exposure. But this can only be done by throwing aside all neck-dress at all times, both out as well as in-doors. The fur capes of the women, and the fur and woollen tippets of the men, are a fruitful source of bronchial and throat difficulties. Many a disease of this kind may be cured by simply leaving off neck dresses. When considerable care is exercised, colds are contracted by tender throats and necks, made so by fur and woollen. When a lady or gentlemen enters the house, furs and tippets are laid aside, often when the temperature is colder in-doors with them off, than out of doors with them on. so manage such neck-dresses as to escape injury in consequence of It is next to an impossibility to this fact. Especially imprudent is it to put furs and woollens on the necks of children. It is actually "killing them with kindness." They are not, and cannot always be under the eye of an attendant,

and their little necks, made sensitive by such warm dressing, are affected in a moment by some unexpected exposure. They may

LOOSE FITTING GARMENTS OF A JAPANESE FAMILY.

even go out at times without their tippets, though carefully watched, and then mamma has no idea how Charley or Ida contracted those horrid colds. Would it not be well for those having the car

of children, and who are so careful to muffle them up when they go out, to give this matter a little serious reflection, and ask themselves when they have done the little folks all up so securely, whether they have any guaranty that they will return in the same condition. If not, are you not prepared to acknowledge with me that all this muffling is attended with injury, rather than benefit? You often wonder why the children of the poor do not more often die in winter from their exposure to the cold; but the cold seldom kills indigent children. Badly ventilated rooms in winter, and bad food in summer, make the mortality of this class greater; but they do not suffer with those coughs and colds, bronchial difficulties and snuffles, which affect the children of the rich.

We might learn something from our antipodes in the way of dressing loosely. On the previous page is illustrated the free and airy clothing of the Japanese. There is looseness enough for freedom of motion and circulation of air about the skin and a chance for electrical radiation to go on unobstructedly. There is not much weight to such clothing, and what there is, drapes from the shoulders. It is not well adapted to our colder climate and to the diversified employments of our women; but the lesson of comfort and hygiene is there, and we can adopt something of the principle if not the style.

Dr. Frank Hamilton has made a fling at the costume of the men of America, which I shall quote here, for the criticism is worthy of consideration. He says: "We have adopted as a national costume, broadcloth a thin, tight-fitting, black suit of broadcloth. Το foreigners, we seem always to be in mourning; we travel in black, write in black, and we work in black. The priest, the lawyer, the doctor, the literary man, the mechanic, and even the city laborer, chooses always the same unvarying, monotonous, black broadcloth; a style and material which ought not to have been adopted out of the drawing-room, or the pulpit; because it is a feeble and expen sive fabric; because it is, at the North, no suitable protection against the cold, nor is it any more suitable at the South. It is too thin to be warm in the winter, and too black to be cool in the summer; but especially we object to it because the wearer is always afraid of soiling it by exposure. Young men will not play ball, or pitch quoits, or wrestle, or tumble, or do any other similar thing, lest their broadcloth should be offended. They will not go out into the storm. because the broadcloth will lose its lustre if rain falls upon it. They

will not run, because they have no confidence in the strength of the broadcloth; they dare not mount a horse, or leap a fence, because broadcloth, as everybody knows, is so faithless. So these young men, and these older merchants, mechanics, and all, learn to walk, talk, and think soberly and carefully; they seldom venture to laugh to the full extent of their sides."

The invention and adoption of knit shirts and drawers have done much to destroy the purity of the blood, and the harmonious action of vital electricity. The use of flannel as an article of under dress, in changeable climates, is certainly commendable. But to obtain

the benefit which wearers usually seek, i. e., health and comfort, such garments must be made loose, and changed often. Red flannel, too, is better than white. There is something in the chemical qualities of the red coloring inatter that seems to act healthfully, when worn next to the skin. People of a rheumatic tendency are greatly protected from attacks of rheumatic pains by the wearing of red flannel. Those who are susceptible to colds, are less liable to take one when red flannel is worn.

Knit shirts of whatever color usually set closely to the skin, and often draw so tightly around the chest as to prevent a free action of the lungs. I have had occasion to examine consumptive invalids who were hastening decline by wearing flannel shirts so closely fitted to them, that india rubber could not have been much more objectionable. When worn so closely to the skin, these garments tend to gum up the pores by pressing back upon them their effete exhalations. Flannel shirts should therefore be made up from the cloth, and loose enough to admit a free circulation of air between them and the skin. It is well to wear two, each twenty-four hours, laying off at night the one worn through the day, and laying off in the morning the one which has been worn during the night, so that the exhalations and impurities which may have been absorbed by the flannel, can have an opportunity to pass off.

In this connection I would not omit to warn invalids against the use of plasters. Almost daily am I consulted by those who have been in the habit of wearing them more or less for years. "But," says one, "they are recommended by my physician.' Shame on your physician! If he knows the offices of the pores of the skin, he is guilty of willful malpractice; if he does not, he ought not to be your physician. I know that by thus speaking I shall incur the

maledictions of the "regulars," and not a few of those who call themselves "reformers," but what do I care-I have them already. There are said to be nearly three thousand pores in every square inch of the human body, and there are from seven to ten square inches in an ordinary sized plaster. Now think, for one moment, of the effects which must ultimately ensue from plastering up twenty to thirty thousand of those useful little orifices through which the electrical radiations of the system carry off the noxious and waste matter of the blood. True, you feel a temporary suspension of pain, but do you not know that skillfully prepared embrocations will produce this happy result as well, while they allow the machinery of nature to go on uninterruptedly? When an invalid comes to me plastered up from the top of his neck to the extremity of his spine, I am invariably reminded of the way in which some South Americans kill prisoners. It is at Monte Video, I believe, that they sew them up in a wet hide, leaving only the head and neck exposed to the vitalizing influences of the atmosphere. When the hide becomes dry it sticks just about as close as a "pitch plaster," and the unfortunate victim dies a slow, but excruciating death. Why, "Mr. Doctors" (as the Germans sometimes call the members of our profession), do you not know that the pores are of as much importance to the human system as the safety-valves to the steam-engine? The pores are actually safety-valves to the animal machinery, and the Divine architect has not made one more than is necessary. Do not, then, delude the suffering victim to disease, who has already more noxious and health-destroying matter in his system than he can carry, with the hope that a plaster can be of any possible benefit to him. pains and you cannot cure them with unexceptionable remedies, pass him over to some of your brethren who can. "There is a balın in Gilead, and a physician there."

If he has

In speaking of the office of the pores, a writer remarks that the Infinite care of the Creator is seen nowhere more conspicuously than in the admirable provision inade for the removal of the waste matters from the system, the form in which they are expelled, and the prompt and certain means by which nature is ready to make them inoffensive and innoxious. The skin is not only, as Bichat eloquently observes, a sensitive limit placed on the boundaries of man's soul with which external forms constantly come in contact to establish the connections of his animal life, and thus bind his existence to all that surrounds