Dress, with reference to heat : being a lecture written for, and published by the Australian Health Society / by Walter Balls-Headley.
- Balls-Headley, Walter.
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Dress, with reference to heat : being a lecture written for, and published by the Australian Health Society / by Walter Balls-Headley. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![finer tubes, we call it bronchitis ; if on the walls of the delicate ■chanibers of the lungs, where the chemical changes are effected, it is inflammation of the lungs; similarly in the bowels or •elsewhere, to each individual in the part which in him is peculiarly his somewhat more delicate, or less strong situation; and this is first congestion, and presently inflammation of this or that particular ])art. Now all this misery and more or less dangerous illness result from the removal of a little too much heat from the body : that is, the system spent a little more heat than it was able to afford : now this kind of extravagance in our heat, that is, in our strength of body, like some others we are very disposed to indulge in, and for the same reason, that it is very agreeable, is apt to turn to our loss : but there is this diffei'ence ; that if oxir extravagance in money is beyond what we are able to afford, we may always have at least the chance of repairing our loss by making more ; whereas, in the matter of health, the very loss is by disease the cause of increased •expenditure, and, from our beds of sickness, we never rise so young or so strong as we were before. It therefore becomes us, if we have any appreciation of corporeal economy, not to risk such waste ; but to dress in sucli a manner that, while in our pi-ecaution we are only following the example of the aboriginal of the country, we may serve to reduce in our own persons the death rate of the colony. It is not the custom of the blackfellow in his native state to wear calico fitting so closely to adjacent parts of his body, as that it becomes saturated with perspiration : he may have a piece of calico wrapt round him, but not fitting into all his corners. Next when change of temperature occurs, or, which is practically the same thing, when he ceases to make an increased quantity of heat by ■exertion, he either makes a fire and sits by it, or wraps around him his opossum rug, and he generally does both : by these means he either again increases the temperature of the external air, so that 'his body heat shall not be removed from him, when his nervous system is enfeebled and his ca])acity for heat formation is reduced; or he puts a powerful non-conductor, in the form of his rug, between him, the warm object, and the cold outer air. Thus the wild man](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2227215x_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
