Ella Adelia Fletcher

"BREATH IS LIFE."

IS it wontedness and use, or perhaps, that unspeakably deadening factor thoughtlessness, that has robbed the pregnant aphorism " BREATH IS LIFE " of every atom of its profound significance?

None has ever gainsaid it, yet to the mass of mankind it means no more than if one were to write omicron muf And to that suicidal mania, fear of fresh air and draughts, and its accompanying folly, flagrant neglect of the primal function of breathing, the world pays an annual tribute of at the lowest estimate a quarter million lives; all sacrificed to -preventable disease! Even without a regret for those sent thus prematurely through the " Gates Ajar," think of the crushing weight of sorrow this entails upon the world! Though not our loss, the sorrow affects all within its environment.

But not alone the mass of humanity have been thus apathetic. Until the beneficial cult of deep breathing, a growth in rational doing and thinking of the present generation only, the man of science whose life work is to relieve human suffering equally ignored this flaring torch "BREATH IS LIFE," pointing unerringly to fundamental truths of being, but which throughout the centuries of Western civilization might as well have been a dark lantern. It is my grateful task nay, happy opportunity to prove to you that it is a torch of such wonderful illuminating power that man's electric searchlights should pale before it. It was a gain, a stalwart stride in the right direction, to call attention to the error of commonly fixed habits; but all that has yet been accomplished is little more than one drop of purity in a swamp of miasma. Busy people think they have too much to do to give attention to a function they have always supposed automatic, never dreaming of the subtle sources of disorder affecting its normal activity, and as subtly feeding and sowing disease. Also, to make a bad matter worse, in all the so-called " systems " of breathing taught, good, bad, and indifferent, the fundamental principle of rhythmic harmony has attracted little attention, and is rarely understood.

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