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250 ESOTERIC ANTHROPOLOGY.
given to a hog to fatten him, would feed a man more
than ten times as long as the pork into which it is con
verted. There is no comparison for health and purity.
I shall have occasion to speak further of diet as one of
the causes of disease. [See Appendix.]
OF AIR.
Another condition of health is a pure air to breathe.
There were some reasons for making this the first condi
tion, as it is the most vital. We can go for days without
food, but not an hour without air. Respiration is the
first act of independent life. We eat and digest at in
tervals, but we breathe continually. The stomach rests,
but never the lungs. We need food every day, though
not absolutely ; but we must have air every minute. Air,
then, of some kind, is a very vital necessity. I wish to
show that pure air, and plenty of it, is necessary to health.
The atmosphere, as has been beautifully demon
strated by M. Dumas, is the great reservoir and labor
atory, from which is obtained the most important
materials of the organic world. It is a mixture of
about four-fifths of nitrogen, one-fifth oxygen, from
three to five ten-thousandths of carbonic acid, a trace of
the nitrate of ammonia, and traces of phosphureted
and sulphureted hydrogen. It also holds in solution a
large quantity of water in vapor, which we see con
densed into clouds, fog, dew, rain, etc. The atmosphere
also contains and bears about odors of vegetables, and
other aromal qualities, healthy and noxious. Of the
latter are the miasms of intermittent, and other forms
of fever, and certain contagious diseases. These our
chemists have failed to detect.
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