2S6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



who, by pouring it straight into their throats, 

 lose all its pleasant coolness in the mouth. The 

 New York limes, we see, objects to iced-water, 

 but the New York Times is only laughing at the 

 teetotalers through a bizarre use of their alarm- 

 ist phraseology. Water iced till it trembles on 

 the verge of solidification, and taken after a full 

 meal, may injure some weak stomachs ; but wa- 

 ter iced till it has the temperature of a cool spring 

 will hurt nobody at any time or in any quantity 

 whatever that an ordinary appetite is likely to 

 crave. One would think, to hear some people 

 talk, that thirst was in itself a good, instead of a 

 symptom of exhaustion. But water has other 

 qualities than the allaying of thirst. It has a 

 permanent determination to evaporate, which 

 Nature obeys, and, as it cannot evaporate with- 

 out heat, it positively diminishes in the process 

 the heat of our rooms. Pans of water, the cool- 

 er the better, stationed about a bedroom will pos- 

 itively reduce, not the sensation of heat, but the 

 heat itself. Let anybody who doubts that have 

 his tub, with its shallow depth and wide surface, 

 filled with spring-water, or water with a good 

 block of ice in it, and placed in his bedroom, and 

 mark in half an hour how many degrees the 

 thermometer has fallen. It ought to be 6° at 

 least, and will be 8° if he is not stingy with his 

 ice, and the improvement, equivalent in comfort 

 to a fire on a winter's night, will last for hours. 

 If that is still insufficient, let him throw up his 

 bedroom windows, fasten an old blanket or trav- 

 eling-rug across the space, and drench that well 

 with water, and in five minutes the air in the 

 room will be reduced to that water's temperature. 

 Never mind about breeze. The air will seek the 

 cooler place of itself, without being driven in 

 from the outside, and the temperature will de- 

 cline almost instantaneously to a reasonable point. 

 Not one of those expedients necessitates any 

 architectural improvements, or any change of 

 habits, or any expense whatever, though of course 

 a shilling or two laid out on ice will make the 



improvement more rapid, and in the case of a 

 sick-room, or of any one who really suffers from 

 heat — suffers as if in sickness, we mean — will be 

 money well laid out. And so in the case of little 

 children, especially, will a few shillings on the 

 sheet of woven cane — we have unfortunately for- 

 gotten the trade-name — which is used in the hot- 

 test corners of the East Indies and China for pil- 

 low-cases and sofa-covers. The silica with which 

 this material is coated will not get warm, and every 

 other covering for beds or pillows with which we 

 are acquainted will. It keeps perfectly dry, can- 

 not get dirty, and can be procured as soft as any 

 covering that ever was placed upon a mattress. 

 There is hardly any luxury like it in intense and 

 stifling heat, and we have known sick people, 

 half maddened with heat acting on exhausted 

 frames, sleep on it when sleep seemed otherwise 

 unprocurable. With plenty of wholesome water, 

 wetted blankets for window-curtains, and a sheet 

 of cane, no one in London ought to be rendered 

 sleepless by heat, or indeed, unless he persists in 

 gorging himself with the food which he needs 

 only in cold weather, to suffer any appreciable 

 discomfort. 



We may add one word about bathing. The 

 tendency of human nature in hot weather is to 

 bathe in cold water, and Nature, as we said be- 

 fore, seldom blunders ; but Nature sometimes 

 provides rather for health than comfort. A 

 bathed man can work or walk in hot weather 

 much better than an unbathed man, because he 

 will perspire more freely, which Nature, not hav- 

 ing considered the question of clothes fully, in- 

 tended him to do. But it is extremely doubtful 

 whether bathing at night tends to produce sleep 

 so much as rheumatism from chilled perspiration. 

 The head is the better for sponging, but the body, 

 more especially in an artificially-cooled room, is 

 the better for being dry, with the blood as far 

 from the surface as possible, and the whole man 

 as quiescent and torpid as the heat will allow him 

 to be. — Spectator. 



