Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/205

Rh consider dress in relation to season; the amount and kind of clothing that should be worn at different periods of the year.

On this subject there is great contrariety of opinion, and perhaps still greater contrariety of practice. There are those who maintain that to be healthy the body should be hardened by exposure to cold, and that to wrap up and coddle is the weakest and worst of all plans. It must be admitted that there are some persons who seem to flourish under this régime, and who live to advanced age without suffering from cold even when lightly clad. I have known myself three men who have approached their ninetieth year, and who always vigorously refused to wrap up at all. Such persons are great examples, but they are too exceptional to be counted as safe ones. The majority of the aged die, as a rule, rapidly during the cold weather. I have known children that have lived through their childhood half clothed in coldest seasons; and these are great examples, but they also are too exceptional to be accepted as safe examples. As a rule, ill-clad children in cold weather suffer intensely, and often die.

On, the other hand, no doubt, some persons do greatly over-encumber themselves with clothes; and it is curious to observe that stout persons, who are wrapped and thoroughly lapped in their own subcutaneous non-conducting layer of fat, and who are generally feeble, encumber themselves with more clothes than their lithe and spare-ribbed friends, who really require most protection.

The truth is, that extremes on both sides are bad, and that a dash of good common sense is required to equalize them.

In this climate the regulation of dress in relation to health is an actual necessity during the varied seasons that prevail. We may take it as a general rule that, when the body requires more food and more sleep to meet the cold, it requires also more clothes than it does at times when sleep and food are also less wanted. There is a very remarkable physiological truth bearing on this point which every one ought to know, inasmuch as a knowledge of it becomes a guide to us in our daily life, not only in relation to dress, but to food, exercise, labor, and repose. The truth is so practical that I dwell upon it with some detail. It is this: There are certain periods of the year, in this climate, during which, independently of our wills or our actions, we are gaining in bodily weight, while there are other periods when we are losing, both periods showing a regularity which is as singularly correct as it is singularly interesting. This truth was first discovered by my late friend Mr. W. R. Milner, for many years medical superintendent of the large prison at Wakefield. His discovery was elicited by the laborious process of weighing, daily, immense numbers of prisoners through various seasons for a long series of years. I give his results as he himself has stated them.

The prisoners were all males between the ages of sixteen and fifty, and were presumed to be in good health when sent. The cells in