Sunshine by G. | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 21, 1865

“Sunshine.”

By G.

THE following “clip” on the Health Question, is an editorial in the last issue of the Phrenological Journal. Perhaps there is more to this “sun-cure” theory, than many have imagined. If the sun is good for plants, why is it not also good for humans? G.

By the use of this term we do not mean merely sun-light, but the direct rays or shine of the sun. Mankind are dying for the want of it. We build our houses, to be sure, with a world of windows, but they are chiefly put in to make a handsome display outside. We are careful to curtain them inside and blind them outside so as to shut out the precious rays of the sun. It is a good argument in favor of curtains and blinds, that if the light be let in too strongly it will fade the carpet. So far as carpets are concerned this is true, as they are generally made, but can we have no colors in carpets which the light will not seriously affect? If carpets fade by letting the light in, there is another thing that fades by keeping the light out, viz., the human being. On the shady side of the street, the hospital and prison, cholera, scrofula, billious complaints, and nervous diseases are more frequent and fatal than on the sunny side. We advise everybody to live on the sunny side of their houses. The room in which the family spends most of its time should be on the side where the sun can find its way into it. Let the parlor, if it be seldom used, he on the shady side. We observe that there is not a cottager so ignorant that will not set her plants, if she have taste enough to grow them, in the east window in the morning, and at noon carry them to a south window, and in the afternoon put them in a west window. But perhaps she is careful to keep her children in the shade, and her precious self, so far as possible, out of the rays of the sun. The plants in obedience to natural law are kept healthy, while the children and mother being kept in the shade, suffer in consequence.

Light is beginning to be considered a great curative agent, and we apprehend that the time is not far distant when there will be sun-baths. Corridors with glass roofs will be so adjusted that persons can properly remove their clothing and take a bath in the sun for an hour or two, much to the improvement of their health. The chief advantage of going to the country is to get into the sunshine, and to be in the pure breezes. If we desired merely to keep cool, we should stay in the shady

city. People talk of "hot walls" and "burning pavements;" it is much hotter in the country, for the breeze that plays there in mid-day brings only heated air in from out-doors. But in the city the breeze brings air in from the shady side of the street, and the lower rooms of a city house are consequently much cooler in mid-day than the exposed houses of the country.

Our soldiers, who were able to bear the labor and fatigue of war, are invigorated by the out-door life they lived. We know a young man in New York who came back from the war and resumed his former occupation of book-keeping, and lost thirty pounds' weight in six weeks. It would do him good to be a farmer.

Parents can do nothing better for their puny sick boys than to put them on a farm for three or four summers and let the sun bathe them the livelong-day. They will, by such a life, grow rapidly, and become tough, brawny, and broad. We have seen this tried to the highest advantage in more than one instance under our advice.

Our attention has recently been called to this subject by a series of articles in the New Jerusalem Messenger, by Dr. John Ellis. We commend the subject to other physicians, to preachers, teachers, and parents. Be not afraid of sunshine.