Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/113

Rh fell on my neck." Or else, the boys caught it by playing in the garden and not changing their stockings when they came home. Resolved, that a person cannot be too careful as long as there is any snow on the ground. But even that explanation fails in spring, and when the incubatory influence of the first moist heat is brought to bear on the catarrh-germs of a large city, a whole district-school is often turned into a snuffling congress. The latter part of March is the season of epidemic catarrhs, and the evil is ascribed to "dampness," when the cold-theory becomes at last too evidently preposterous.

To an unprejudiced observer that theory, though, is equally untenable in the coldest months of the year. No man can freeze himself into a catarrh. Out-of-doors we cannot "catch cold."

"I have, upon the approach of cold weather, removed my undergarments," says Dr. Charles Page, "and have then attended to my outdoor affairs, minus the overcoat habitually worn; I have slept in winter in a current blowing directly about my head and shoulders; upon going to bed, I have sat in a strong current, entirely nude, for a quarter of an hour, on a very damp, cold night,