Selections from essays on health-culture and the sanitary woolen system / by Gustav Jaeger ... (Tr. from the German.).

  • Gustav Jäger
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selections from essays on health-culture and the sanitary woolen system / by Gustav Jaeger ... (Tr. from the German.). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    cold, and the odors are again exhaled when the fibre is warmed or wetted. Clothing, bedding, and, gener- ally, all material of vegetable fibre, while cold, {i. e., not in use,) and placed in the atmosjihere of human beings, attract the malodorous exhalations until no more can be absorbed; as soon as such clothing, bed- ding, etc., come in contact with the warm body, these emanations are given off in proportion to the degree of temj^erature. This directly induces spasmodic action of the capillaries of the skin, (a feeling of chill,) and the atmosphere breathed is corrupted. Both effects are intensified when the fibre is damp. Wet, unvarnished, or unpainted wooden floors, and damp linen or cotton shirts, or bedding, are notoriously dangerous to health. 6. Just as living, animal substance, when at rest, stores up oxygen, so, under similar conditions, it stores up the noxious emanations proceeding from the digested food; but while the chlorophyl of living vegetable fibre assimilates such emanations, the living animal substance does not possess that faculty. These noxious emanations therefore readily become disen- []^aged in the body, (especially when there is excessive internal heat,) and permeate the tissues and juices, inducing similar phenomena to those caused by the direct inhalation of malodorous air; viz., spasmodic action of the capillaries of the skin, with feverish shivering while the spasms last. Further, the insuf- ficient throwing-off, by the skin, of the internal warmth is felt, when the spasms subside, as febrile heat on the surface. The retention of the noxious emanations which proceed from the digested food, is thus tantamount to a disposition to feverish sickness.