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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



time, upon the human organism a resisting pow- 

 er against the injurious influence of cold, is with- 

 out foundation. The subjective feeling of warmth, 

 which, under such circumstances, is universally 

 admitted to occur, is not an unimportant fact; 

 whereas, a slight lowering of the body tempera- 

 ture, even should it be proved to occur, is not 

 inconsistent with perfect heath, provided no sense 

 of chill accompanies it. It is a well-known fact 

 that subjective feelings of warmth and chilliness 

 are by no means wholly dependent upon, or pro- 

 portional to, the actual temperature of the body 

 as registered by the thermometer. In the shiv- 

 ering stage of ague, when the teeth are chattering 

 and the subjective feeling of cold is intense, the 

 thermometer often registers a body temperature 

 six to eight degrees above the normal. 



Now, before we accept the theory of the alco- 

 holo-phobists that alcohol, in any dose, small or 

 large, lessens rather than increases the power of 

 resisting the injurious influence of cold, let us 

 examine the question more carefully, for it has a 

 most important practical bearing. When, on a 

 bitterly cold night, we send out to our coachman 

 a glass of hot brandy-and-water, are we running 

 a great risk of having him laid up with inflamma- 

 tion of the lungs the next day ? When the coun- 

 try doctor is summoned, on a cold night, out of 

 his warm bed to take a drive of four or five miles 

 in the teeth of a cold east wind, is he running 

 increased risk of taking cold by drinking a tum- 

 blerful of mulled claret before he starts ? 



In order to answer these questions satisfacto- 

 rily, we must ask another question. In what way 

 does exposure to cold affect us injuriously ? And 

 it must always be remembered that I am not re- 

 ferring to continuous exposure to the cold of the 

 arctic regions, but to such temporary and occa- 

 sional exposure as is common in a changeable 

 temperate climate like our own. In order to an- 

 swer the question I have asked, I will quote two 

 short passages from Huxley's well-known " Ele- 

 mentary Lessons in Physiology : " 



" The feeling of warmth or cold is the result of 

 an excitation of sensory nerves distributed to the 

 skin" (p. 192). 



" When exposure to cold gives a man catarrh, 

 or inflammation of the lungs, or diarrhoea, or some 

 still more serious affection of the abdominal vis- 

 cera, the disease is brought about through the ner- 

 vous system. The impression made by the cold 

 on the skin is conveyed to the nervous centres, 

 and so influences the vaso-motor nerves (as the 

 nerves which govern the walls of the vessels are 

 called) of the organ affected as to cause their par- 

 tial paralysis, and produce that state of congestion 



(or undue distention of the vessels) which so com- 

 monly ends in inflammation " (p. 53). 



It is clear, then, that if mischief arises from 

 exposure to cold, it is due to an impression made 

 on the peripheral nerves, and that the injury to 

 deep-seated organs is usually caused by a reflex 

 influence acting along the nerves of those organs. 

 Now, when such injurious impression is made on 

 the peripheral nerves, it is almost invariably re- 

 membered as a disagreeable feeling of chilliness. 

 But, I contend, a moderate dose of any warm bev- 

 erage containing alcohol, judiciously taken before 

 temporary exposure to cold, does commonly tend 

 to prevent this injurious impression, and it does so, 

 in the first place, by quickening the circulation and 

 so conveying the warm blood more freely and fre- 

 quently through the cutaneous vessels, and second- 

 ly, by its tendency to relax the vessels of the skin, 

 it counteracts the opposite tendency of cold, which 

 is to constrict them, and so, by maintaining a free 

 circulation of warm blood over the surface of the 

 body, the sensitive extremities of the peripheral 

 nerves remain bathed, as it were, in warm fluid, 

 instead of being starved and chilled, through con- 

 striction of the blood-vessels, by the external cold. 



It is argued, and, to a certain extent, no doubt 

 truly, that the contraction of the vessels of the 

 surface by cold is a natural conservative effort by 

 which the blood is kept from coming to the sur- 

 face of the body, and there parting with its heat 

 by evaporation, etc. But, apart from the fact 

 that in a very cold atmosphere little heat can be 

 lost by evaporation, it is pretty well known that 

 the so-called conservative processes of Nature 

 prove often very indiscriminating processes, and, 

 in this particular instance, it is precisely when 

 this process reaches an extreme degree that the 

 baneful effects of chill are produced ; and it would 

 seem that, in the careful and moderate use of al- 

 coholic beverages, we have an agent that will help 

 us to resist this extreme degree of Nature's con- 

 servatism. 1 



1 Dr. Brunton, with whose observations on "The 

 Physiological Action of Alcohol " I, in the main, 

 agree, makes the following judicious remarks on the 

 point discussed above: 



"While alcohol is thus injurious during prolonged 

 exposure to cold, the case is very different after the 

 exposure is over, and its administration may thus be 

 very beneficial. Supposing a man, after being out all 

 day, comes home much chilled to a warm fireside. He 

 stands before the grate and turns himself round and 

 round, but he cannot get himself warmed through. 

 The cutaneous vessels so long contracted by the cold 

 will not relax all at once, and the deeper tissues gsdn 

 heat very slowly, just as they very slowly lose it by 

 mere conduction through the skin. If a little spirit 



