EVERYDAY MISTAKES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XXI, 27 May 1899, Page 744

EVERYDAY MISTAKES.

SOME THINGS FEW PEOPLE KNOW HOW TO DO PROPERLY.

Everybody eats, drinks, breathes, ami sleeps, and everybody who has the due allowance of legs and feet walks. Yet not one person in a hundred does either of these things properly. That is the verdict of a writer in a French scientific publication, who furthermore gives instructions as to how the errors should be corrected.

As to sleeping, his specifications apply more to France and the continent of Europe generally than to this country. In this country fewbeds are enclosed in the absurd 'heavy curtains which are so common in France —curtains which cut off the supply of oxygen. It has long been axiomatic with us that bedroom windows should be open at night, that the bed should be without curtains and in the middle of t'he room, and that the room in the daytime Should be exposed to all the sunlight possible. As to walking, the errors are confined to no particular nation. People of ALL COUNTRIES WALK BADLY, and their chief mistake is in regard to the centre of gravity of the body. It should be kept as nearly as possible, in locomotion, at an even distance from the ground. Must people wobble, lurch, or hop in t'heir.gait, thus alternately raising, lowering, and throwing first to one side and then to the other the gravity centre. This greatly increases the fatigue of walking. Furthermore, care should be taken not to walk on either the toes, the heels, or t'he side of the feet. The foot should be placed flat on the ground, and the knee, ankle, and hip joints should be moved evenly, and each assigned to its just allowance —and no more —of the work.

As to eating, drinking, and breathing, the common errors are generally well known, and as generally prevalent. Everybody knows that it is bad to drink in great gulps, just as everybody knows it is bad to gobble food without proper mastication. Both induce dyspepsia and other ills. And in the same way breathing through the mouth instead of the nose leads to annoying and often deadly bronchial ailments.