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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 15, 1867

FromThe Advent Review & Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 18

Light Your Fires.

The unexampled wet summer, followed by a warm, dry autumn, has produced its natural and disastrous effect upon the general health of the country. The earth, first deeply saturated with moisture, and its surface subsequently baked and cracked with heat, has become a veritable Pandora’s box, with an open lid, from which is escaping its plentiful supply of diseases. Thus in the southern portion of our country the intense miasmatic poison has generated yellow-fever, with a virulence hardly ever before equaled, and in the north and west, where congestive and intermittent fevers usually prevail in a mitigated form, even in seasons most favorable to health, they have this year become more rife and severe. So intense is the miasmatic poison, and such its diffusive force, that there is reason to believe that it is exerting its baleful power in places which have been hitherto proof against its influence.

There is a simple and most effective means of weakening, if not of annulling, the force of the miasmatic poison. Where this is less intense such means will of course be more advantageously applied, although they will be of use even in the presence of its most virulent manifestation. The means alluded to consist merely of a good blazing fire, lighted at least every morning and evening, but still better, kept burning the whole day. In spite of our sunny autumnal days, and seductive Indian Summers, it would be advisable for every family in town or country to have daily a fire of wood or coal in each inhabited room of the house. No furnace will do; there must be a blaze in the open fire-place, so not only that the apartment may be dried by the heat, but that it may be thoroughly ventilated by the current set in motion by the burning fuel exposed to the air. Don’t be governed either by your sensations, your thermometers, or the date of the month, in first lighting the fires. Light them betimes, even now, and keep them burning long. If the heat should force you to open the window, so much the better, for thus you will have a stronger and purer current of air. If you wish to escape agues and fevers, we repeat: “Light your fires.”—Harper’s Weekly.