Hygiene: a manual of personal and public health (New Edition)Newsholme, Arthur, Sir
Science
Hygiene: a manual of personal and public health (New Edition)
Newsholme, Arthur, Sir
Hygiene; Public health -- Great Britain; Sanitation
2. Clothing requires to be adapted to _climate and season_. In winter
and in cold climates the amount of clothing must be increased, and
warmer materials chosen. In the changeable climate of Great Britain, it
is difficult to adapt the character of one’s dress to the requirements
of the weather. _Clothing ought, however, not to be changed according
to the calendar_, but according to the weather. The tendency is to
assume summer clothing too early in the spring, and to continue it too
far into the autumn. According to Boërhave, winter clothing should be
put off on Midsummer day, and resumed the day after. This, although
rather exaggerated, may serve to impress the caution required. The same
authority says that only fools and beggars suffer from cold, the latter
not being able to procure sufficient clothes, the former not having the
sense to wear them.
3. _Age._ Those at the two extremes of life are specially susceptible
to cold. The mortality of infants during the first three months of
life is nearly doubled in winter. Bronchitis and pneumonia prove fatal
chiefly at the two extremes of age.
The younger a child the larger is its surface as compared with its
bulk, inasmuch as the area of a body varies as the square of its
dimensions, while its mass varies as their cube. Thus a cube 1 inch
each side has 6 square inches of surface to 1 cubic inch of bulk, while
a cube 10 inches each side has 600 square inches of surface to 1000
cubic inches in bulk. Similarly a child 1∕10 the size of its mother,
besides its feebler powers of producing heat, has ten times as much
surface in proportion to its size by which heat is lost.
After the age of thirty-five, it is better to exceed than to be
deficient in clothing. A degree of cold that would act as a useful
tonic to the robust and middle-aged, produces serious and even fatal
depression of the vital powers in children or aged people. For the same
reason it is advisable to discontinue cold baths as age advances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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