Page:Structure and functions of the body; a hand-book of anatomy and physiology for nurses and others desiring a practical knowledge of the subject (IA structurefunctio00fiskrich).pdf/51

 needed to eat it. Muscular work is another factor. And finally the whole matter of heat production seems to be under the control of the nervous system. Not much is known on this point except that there is a heat center in the medulla which plays an important part in heat production and whose influence is seen where the temperature shoots way up in disease just before death. It is now thought that fever is due to a disturbance of this nervous mechanism, though just what the disturbance is is not known.

Fever is a condition of increased bodily temperature, due to increased production or to decreased loss of heat. As a rule, in all fevers the metabolic changes in the body are increased. Hence the patient becomes emaciated in a long fever. The frequent increase in the amount of urea during fever shows an increase in protein metabolism. The temperature in fevers rises as high as 106° and in sunstroke sometimes to 110°. Except in sunstroke a higher temperature than 106° generally means death. Subnormal temperature is due to a decrease in the bodily metabolism and so to lessened heat production. As a rule, if the functions are all active, especially that of the sweat glands, a person can be exposed to severe heat without the temperature being affected, though sometimes on a hot summer day it may be up half to one degree. The cause of heat-stroke with its high fever is unknown, but probably it is due to some effect on the heat center in the brain. Heat prostration is also due to prolonged exposure to heat, but is generally accompanied by a subnormal temperature. The effect of cold, as in freezing, is to diminish all the metabolic activities of the body. The temperature can be artificially regulated more or less by variations of food, varying amounts of exercise, by drugs, etc.

Sense of Touch.—Before passing on to a discussion of the individual parts, a few words might well be said of the sense of touch, since that is general and resides largely in the skin, whose other functions have just been de