CLIMATE AND HEALTH. 



3 2 3 



a small quantity of the water will sometimes do it to the extent 

 here contemplated. 



There is some danger to the novice in going into semitropical 

 regions in being unacquainted with and unprepared for the de- 

 gree of apparent cold which he is likely to find to his great sur- 

 prise. And when he looks at the thermometer he is further sur- 

 prised to see it so high while his feelings indicate a much lower 

 temperature. He is still more astonished to notice that the 

 natives do not mind the cold that makes the novice shiver. 

 The fact is that without his accustomed fire and housewarming 

 facilities, and subjected to air currents, the practical temperature 

 in its physiological effects is much lower than the thermometer 

 registers. In Spain, Italy, and in general along the Mediterra- 

 nean shore, they have a semitropical climate during eight or nine 

 months of the year, during which time the native inhabitants 

 hold their calorifacient function in reserve, and when they reach 

 their short and moderately cold season they have no difficulty 

 in drawing sufficiently on their reserve heat-making power. The 

 man from the north has no such reserve, and what he has the 

 temperature is not sufficiently stimulating to call into full ac- 

 tivity. He has used up his caloric in the greater cold of the 

 north. People from the extreme south enjoy their first north- 

 ern winter. I met, in Teneriffe, an intelligent captain of a whal- 

 ing ship who had several times fished in the Bering Sea. He 

 said it is customary for whalers to make up for loss of men 

 from desertions by taking on South Sea islanders. He said they 

 bear the cold and hardships of the north as well as New Bedford 

 whalemen, and in proof related the following incident: One 

 morning, when far north, he noticed on coming on deck one of 

 his South Sea islanders entirely naked taking a bath. There 

 was a strong wind blowing, and it was so cold that the water he 

 dashed over him froze as it struck the deck. The man seemed to 

 enjoy it, though he had never seen frozen water or snow before. 

 There are good reasons why people of the north with impaired 

 stamina should not expect to bear exposure so well as natives of 

 semitropical regions and should make themselves, in regard to 

 temperature, more comfortable than would be sufficient for the 

 natives. 



Northern people should be particularly careful in going to a 

 climate with a temperature too low for comfort without a fire 

 and too high for comfort with a fire. Even the increased sun- 

 shine is not sufficiently constant, and all rooms do not face the 

 south. No matter what natives may say, Americans ought al- 

 ways to have the means for heating when occasion requires, and 

 a southern aspect to their rooms everywhere in southern Europe, 

 if they are at. all sensitive to cold, irrespective of the thermometer, 



