Observe a Few Simple Things of Great Importance.

27 July 1850, Sydney Morning Herald

Fresh air is needful for your health.

As often as you can open all your windows, if only for a short time, in bad weather; in fine weather - keep them open, but never sit in draughts.

When you get up open the windows wide, and throw down the bed clothes that they may be exposed to fresh air some hours daily before they are made up.

Keep your bed clothes clean; hang them to the fire when you can. Avoid wearing at night what you wear in the day.

Pure water is needful for your health. Wash your bodies as well as your face, rubbing them all over with a coarse cloth. If you can-not wash thus every morning, pray do so once a week.

Get rid of all slops and dirty water at once, but do not throw them out before your doors ; and never suffer dead cabbage leaves or dirt of any kind lo remain there.

All these poison the air and bring fevers. All bad smells are poison: never rest with them.

Keep your back yards clean.

Pigsties are very injurious; slaughter-houses are equally hurtful; the smells from both excite typhus fever, and cause ill health.

Wash your rooms and passages at least once a week, use plenty of clean water, but do not let your children stay in them while they are wet, it may bring on croup or inflammation of the chest. It is a good old saying that "cleanliness is next to godliness."

Wholesome food is needful for your health.

Buy the most strengthening. Pieces of fresh beef and mutton go the farthest. Eat plenty of fresh salt with food, it prevents the cholera.

Pray do not let your children waste their half-pence in tarts, cakes, sour fruit, &c, they are very unwholesome, and hurt the digestion. People would often, at twenty years of age, have a "nice little sum of money to help them on in the world if they had put in the provident society the money so wasted.

Cocoa is cheaper and much more nourishing than tea. None of these liquids should be taken hot, but lukewarm; when hot they inflame the stomach and produce indigestion.

Beer, when genuine, and not acid, is wholesome, especially for the hard-working people, provided it be taken sparingly: when taken in excess it is very injurious. Spirits are an absolute poison, destructive alike to the body and the soul. Pray abstain from them altogether. Money saved from drink will help to educate your children and make your homes happier.

We are all made to breathe the pure air of heaven, and therefore much illness is caused by being constantly in doors, this is especially the case with mothers of families, young milliners, ironers, shoemakers, tailors, &c. Let such persons make a point, whenever it is possible, of taking exercise in the open air for at least an hour and a half daily. Time would be saved in the long run, by the increased energy and strength gained, and by the warding off disease.

Be sure to get your children vaccinated, between the third and six month after birth, before teething begins, and when they are in a good state of health for it. This would save a great many lives. Wash, and rub them well when washed.

On no account give your children laudanum, or any kind of sleeping medicine; numbers are killed by it.

Whenever any of you are taken ill, apply at once (delays are dangerous) to some well known medical man. Do not attempt to prescribe for yourselves.

Should it please an all-wise providence to remove any of your friends by death, let not the living occupy the same room with the dead. Attend carefully to the thorough ventilation, of the whole house, use chloride of lime powder and water for sprinkling the rooms and linen, and bury without needless delay.