Circumstances, also, become much more equalized in the artificial summer of the overheated room. Whereas people taking a brisk walk in a cold and bracing atmosphere return with rosy cheeks and a roaring appetite, the unfortunates who persist in passing the day in overheated, especially steam-heated places with a confined atmosphere will not feel a natural hunger, will eat without a healthy appetite, and will have insufficient gastric juice (see chapter on appetite), exposing themselves to digestive troubles in consequence. Their need for food will be less, and a bad condition of health will follow. Another and most imminent danger of overheated rooms is the facility with which we are apt to take cold by walking from a room kept at summer heat to the outside cold of winter. We all know how we catch cold, as a rule, but we never know how it may end. Sometimes a simple cold is followed by sore throat, but often also by catarrh of the bronchi, and even of the lungs. In persons addicted to alcohol a fatal pneumonia from such a cause is common; but, in any event, there is a great failing of the general health for a long time, all of which may have originated from an overheated room which has made us more sensitive to the effects of cold. When we keep ourselves cool we are less liable to catch cold, as is well known; for then our body is not first heated up and then cooled off rapidly. This has been shown by experiments on animals. It is certain that people accustomed to a temperature of 15° R. have much less tendency to take cold than those living in rooms at 75° to 90° F. Such a temperature is also a breeding place for billions of dangerous microbes, which certainly prosper better at such a warm temperature. Still more dangerous are the consequences from the overheating of railway compartments, as then it is still less impossible to avoid rapid changes of temperature. When there are many persons in overheated places, and the exhaled air from all of them contains an enormous quantity of virulent bacilli, the danger of infection is still greater; especially so when there is steam-generated heat, with its injurious effects on the mucous membranes, whose resistance to bacillary invasion is thus lowered. Steam heat is the most injurious of all heat, as it dries up the mucous membranes and renders them thereby more liable to infection. We have often noticed in persons with large tonsils inflammation of these glands, which commenced every time that such persons inhaled steam-generated heat for several hours. Such frequent tonsillitis will also undermine the health, especially if we consider that not infrequently an acute glomerulo-nephritis may ensue (and often does follow, in an insidious way, without even being diagnosed). There have also been plenty of cases of appendicitis in which the tonsillitis has been in prior etiological relation to its development.