Jaros Hygienic Wear: The therapeutic and prophylactic application.Jaros, I.
Science
Jaros Hygienic Wear: The therapeutic and prophylactic application.
Jaros, I.
Underwear -- Catalogs
By greatest porosity best provision is made for the evaporation of
perspiration, the quantity of which varies greatly under different
conditions. In a day of rest the amount as determined by Seguin and
Voit is 900 grams (about 1 quart). During exercise it may increase to
quantities incredible, were the figures not furnished by the best of
observers. For example: Dalton mentions its increase to 380 grams per
hour! and Dr. Southwood Smith has seen it rise to 1,600 grams per hour
during violent exercise in a heated atmosphere! Now, if a clothing
possesses no porosity, _e. g._, the mackintosh, and rubber clothing
generally, even without exercise, there would collect somewhere beneath
it a quart of water, but if exercise be indulged in, the quantity
may become large indeed; particularly after the atmosphere beneath
has been surcharged with vapor, and evaporation ceases to occur from
the surface, and with it the grateful cooling process. The French
Government has not permitted its introduction into its army for such
obvious reasons. Of course, for a short time during a shower they
may and do prove useful; but I am convinced that many have incurred
most serious injury, even death, by throwing off the rubber clothing
after the inner clothing had become permeated with moisture, when the
chilling, incident to the sudden increased evaporation, has resulted in
some acute inflammation.
Moreover, the evaporation of the normal cutaneous moisture (with that
of the lungs) requires 750 heat units or one-fifth of all the heat
produced in the system. (Dalton.) Conservation of part of this loss
contributes an equivalent amount of force to the organism, since heat
and force are interchangeable terms. _This can be done._
Under normal conditions evaporation of perspiration occurs in the
"insensible," _i. e._, vapor state, but change of these conditions
(increased heat, and moisture in the atmosphere, increased exercise,
etc.,) causes it to collect upon the integument in the visible or
sensible state, and unless conducted away, may chill the body.
Prevention of such condensation will avoid such dangerous and
deleterious influences. The cause of condensation is a lowering of
the temperature. _We have simply to maintain its temperature until at
a perceptible distance from the body. This can be accomplished by a
layer of loose wool, such as is hereafter described. The "residual air"
having been once raised to the body temperature, it remains so, and the
vapor does not assume the liquid state until meeting with the chilling
influences in the outer layer of cloth._
Finally, bodies passing from the gaseous to the liquid state emit the
heat--latent heat--which was essential to their assuming the gaseous
condition. This occurring in the case of perspiration in the cloth
interstices increases by just so much their warmth, in other words
lessens the demand for heat production.
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