Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/2027

Rh at once removed to a cool, shady place, and the head, neck and chest rubbed with small pieces of ice, to reduce the temperature.

Extreme cold is no less fatal in its effects than extreme heat. In a minor degree it gives rise to frost-bite and chilblains. When only a small part of the body has become frozen (recognizable by the spot turning a dull, yellowish-white colour) serious injury may often be prevented by thawing it very gradually, which may be done by bathing the affected part with ice-cold water or rubbing it with snow.

Cold also acts as a disease-producing agent by checking perspiration, and thus prevents the carrying off of injurious worn-out materials of the body by that great avenue of purification—the skin.

Another effect of a chill is to drive a great part of the blood out of the little blood-vessels which run everywhere just beneath the surface of the skin. This it does by its contracting and constricting influence, and the blood so driven away flows inwards to the warm parts of the body, filling them too full of blood, or, as it is called, congesting them.

When the surface of the body has been chilled in consequence of exposure to cold and wet, the feet should be soaked for 10 minutes in hot mustard and water, and the patient covered over with blankets in a warm room, and given one or two cups of hot milk, cocoa, tea or gruel, to induce free perspiration.

In soaking the feet, the mustard and water should only be moderately hot, to commence with, and the temperature of the foot-bath gradually raised by the addition of boiling water provided in a jug at the side of the bath. The general mistake is to have the water in the basin or bath so hot to commence with that the sufferer is quite unable to put even his toe in. Consequently he waits till the water is little more than lukewarm, and then immerses his feet, when the bath is of very little practical use. By starting as suggested with water only moderately warm, and then making additions of boiling water as the feet become accustomed to the bath, a much higher temperature can be borne, and the bath is thus rendered much more effectual.

Pure Air.—The importance of a sufficient supply of pure air can scarcely be over-estimated. In ill-ventilated places the proportion of carbonic acid in the air becomes greatly increased, which renders it deleterious and dangerous our very life being dependent upon the blood unceasingly gaining fresh oxygen, and getting rid of stale carbonic acid.

Among the more important causes of atmospheric vitiation are the carbonic acid and other substances given off from the lungs; gases arising from drains, sewers, cesspools, and decomposing animal matters which often contaminate the air, giving rise to pestilential disorders; the vapours given out from thickly crowded graveyards, which greatly increase the sick and death-rates of the neighbourhoods in which they are disseminated; noxious gases from manufactories, chemical works of various kinds, and the air of marshes or low-lying meadows, which