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
Catalogue details

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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    ilrcss, [mih |lcfcrciTcc to |)cat. PART I. It is, p(M-liaps, not so well known as is desirable, that the temperature or heat of the human body in health is uniform ; that is, that, whether heated by exercise, or chilled by cold on a frosty morning, so long as we are in health, our heat as taken by the thermometer is practically always the same, and is quite independent of our sensations of cold and heat. Our natural temperature, which may be called our normal blood heat, is 98^ deg. ; and in health, under no circumstances practically, do we go more than one single degree above or below this point. It seems sui-]jrising that the body heat of the Greenlander in hi& Arctic winter is the same as that of the Central African or the Australian aboriginal in a ti-opical sitmmer ; yet so it is. The extent of the range of heat of the human body, consistent with life, in health and disease is 15 deg. ; and it is but in rare cases that such extreme ranges as these are met with. Personally, though for 10 years I have i)aid great attention to the subject of medical thermometry, I have never known the temperature of the human body to sink lower than 95 deg., that is 3| deg, below the normal, and that in only one case; nor to I'ise higher than 107 deg., that is 8^ deg. above the normal; both of which cases ended fatally. This is a range of only 12 deg., and that in extreme illnesses. Similarly among the lower creatures : birds have a higher blood heat than man ; and among them is a great diflference of heat, the cock having a temperature of 104 deg., and the Guinea fowl of 111 deg. B