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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![way from her home she is usually well covered by her cloak, and the room she enters is perhaps more or less warm : presently she dunces, going through such exertion, that she is thoroughly heated ; she takes an ice, and seeks the draught of an open window, a cosy staircase, a cool conservatory, or draughty verandah ; despis- ing her mother's directions to put on her cloak or be careful. But , we doctors know of the frequent results; but say nothing of our patients' troubles, for doctors are, or should be like dead men, who tell no tales; and whereas women should, fi-om the nature of their protected life, be the most healthy part of the nation, as they are the longest lived, they form the mass of the doctors' patients. Similarly with the child : he goes out, runs unceasingly, so that he is wet with his heat; and, returning home, bathes in the river, sits gossiping on the stone door step, or chills himself pleasantly at the open window : what wonder that he is restless and feverish at night, and is found to have taken cold 1 Or the half-naked child, whose mother so clothes him, delighting in his chubby legs: perhaps too hot at midday, yet, with change of wind, his bare limbs are chilled ; the blood is driven to his body, and he has an attack of such disease as he may be disposed to, whether croup, diarrhoea, rheumatism, convulsions, or other. The only wonder is that the system is so frequently able to sustain these manifold strains by its natural elasticity and tendency to maintain the balance of health : but the aboriginal inhabitants of a country do not risk so much for an hour's pleasure, when the trifling precaution is so easy. Nor are old people so careful as they should be; especially as it has been already shown, that more than twice as many deaths occur among them in the coldest month of the year, as in the warmest. They go out on cold nights ; the old gentleman stays in / the garden, smoking his ])ipe, after the sun has set, or a cold wind has sprung up ; and the old lady goes out without her bonnet; or presently leaves a public room at a temperature of 70 deg., and goes into the cold outer air, which is perhaps 25 deg. colder, without having an extra shawl to wrap round her shoulders ; and to-morrow will complain of growing pains in her bones, which](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2227215x_0028.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
