DRESS IN RELATION TO HEALTH. 



1Q 3 



consider dress in relation to season ; the amount and kind of clothing 

 that should be worn at different periods of the year. 



On this subject there is great contrariety of opinion, and perhaps 

 still greater contrariety of practice. There are those who maintain 

 that to be healthy the body should be hardened by exposure to cold, 

 and that to wrap up and coddle is the weakest and worst of all plans. 

 It must be admitted that there are some persons who seem to flourish 

 under this regime, and who live to advanced age without suffering 

 from cold even when lightly clad. I have known myself three men 

 who have approached their ninetieth year, and who always vigorously 

 refused to wrap up at all. Such persons are great examples, but 

 they are too exceptional to be counted as safe ones. The majority of 

 the aged die, as a rule, rapidly during the cold weather. I have known 

 children that have lived through their childhood half clothed in coldest 

 seasons ; and these are great examples, but they also are too excep- 

 tional to be accepted as safe examples. As a rule, ill-clad children in 

 cold weather suffer intensely, and often die. 



On, the other hand, no doubt, some persons do greatly over-encum- 

 ber themselves with clothes ; and it is curious to observe that stout 

 persons, who are wrapped and thoroughly lapped in their own sub- 

 cutaneous non-conducting layer of fat, and who are generally feeble, 

 encumber themselves with more clothes than their lithe and spare- 

 ribbed friends, who really require most protection. 



The truth is, that extremes on both sides are bad, and that a dash 

 of good common sense is required to equalize them. 



In this climate the regulation of dress in relation to health is an 

 actual necessity during the varied seasons that prevail. We may take 

 it as a general rule that, when the body requires more food and more 

 sleep to meet the cold, it requires also more clothes than it does at 

 times when sleep and food are also less wanted. There is a very re- 

 markable physiological truth bearing on this point which every one 

 ought to know, inasmuch as a knowledge of it becomes a guide to us 

 in our daily life, not only in relation to dress, but to food, exercise, 

 labor, and repose. The truth is so practical that I dwell upon it 

 with some detail. It is this : There are certain periods of the year, in 

 this climate, during which, independently of our wills or our actions, 

 we are gaining in bodily weight, while there are other periods when 

 we are losing, both periods showing a regularity which is as singularly 

 correct as it is singularly interesting. This truth was first discovered 

 by my late friend Mr. W. R. Milner, for many years medical superin- 

 tendent of the large prison at Wakefield. His discovery was elicited 

 by the laborious process of weighing, daily, immense numbers of pris- 

 oners through various seasons for a long series of years. I give his 

 results as he himself has stated them. 



The prisoners were all males between the ages of sixteen and fifty, 

 and were presumed to be in good health when sent. The cells in 



TOL. XVII. 13 



