tation, on the part of every mother who values the future health and
happiness of her offspring. Among other things, he insists on mothers
taking more active exercise in the open air than they usually do. He
also cautions them against allowing a feeling of false delicacy to keep
them confined in their rooms for weeks and months together. At such
times especially the mind ought to be kept free from gloom or anxiety,
and in that state of cheerful activity which results from the proper
exercise of the intellect, and especially of the moral and social
feelings.

But if seclusion and depression be hurtful to the unborn progeny, surely
thoughtless dissipation and late hours, dancing and waltzing, together
with irritability of temper and peevishness of disposition, can not be
less injurious. Every female that is about to become a mother should
treasure up the remark of that sensible lady, the Margravine of Anspach,
who says, "when a female is likely to become a mother, she ought to be
doubly careful of her temper, and, in particular, to indulge no ideas
that are not cheerful and no sentiments that are not kind. Such is the
connection between the mind and the body, that the features of the face
are moulded commonly into an expression of the internal disposition; and
is it not natural to think that an infant, before it is born, may be
affected by the temper of its mother?" If these things are true--and
they are as well authenticated as any physiological facts are or can
be--then not only _mothers_, but all with whom they associate, and
especially _fathers_, are interested in knowing these important
physiological laws; and they should aim, from the very beginning, so to
observe them as to secure to posterity, physically and mentally, the
full benefits that are connected with cheerful obedience.

_A due supply of properly oxygenated blood_ is another condition upon
which the healthy action of the brain depends. Although it may not be
easy to perceive the effects of slight differences in the quality of the
blood, still, when these differences exist in a considerable degree, the
effects are too obvious to be overlooked. Withdraw entirely the stimulus
of arterial blood, and the brain ceases to act, and sensibility and
consciousness become extinct. When carbonic acid gas is inhaled, the
blood circulating through the lungs does not undergo that process of
oxygenation which is essential to life, as has been explained in a
preceding cha