Thermal comfort, or, popular hints for preservation against colds, coughs and consumption / by Sir George Lefevre.

  • Lefevre, George, Sir, 1798-1846.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thermal comfort, or, popular hints for preservation against colds, coughs and consumption / by Sir George Lefevre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    does not dread that most awful of all moments when he must leave a warm hed, with his teeth chattering in his head as he emerges inta a frost-chilled room from out his close-drawn curtains. No warming-pan, lackered and shining, is seen suspended near his kitchen fire- place. He is not troubled with a species of barking, which may be denominated the hed-room cough, cha- racteristic of an English house, so audible when the transit is made from the face-scorching fire-place to the cold, freezing dormitory. In each room of a Russian house is placed a thermometer, by which the heat is regulated. If it be oppressive, a ventilator soon reduces the temperature. If the apartment be too cold, more fuel is thrust into the stove. These, then, are the means employed by the natives against the cold of their climate, and they are sufficiently efficacious to prevent its per- nicious effects, and such are, I believe, the real causes of their escaping the many pectoral complaints which are prevalent in more temperate zones. If it be inquired whether the climate in itself be not a sufficient guarantee, owing to the steadiness of its temperature, it may be answered that no city in Europe is more subject to variations of temperature than St. Petersburg. Situated in a morass, and exposed to sea and land breezes, sheltered by no surrounding hills, it is subjected to continual currents of air; and such are the variations in its temperature, that the thermometer will sometimes fall twenty degrees in as many hours. The man who makes excursions in the neighbourhood may leave the city in the morning, wra]iped up in w'arm furs, and enter it again at night, dripping with rain;
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