6 74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of our clothing and of the fitness of different materials for special 

 purposes. But, to say the truth, Science has not yet done much in 

 this direction. 



There is still one of our garments to be considered which generally 

 is not regarded as such. I mean the bed that piece of clothing in 

 which we spend such a great part of our time. It is equally indis- 

 pensable to the sick and to the healthy, and at all times it was con- 

 sidered as a sign of bitterest want if a man had no place to lay his 

 head. 



The bed is not only a place of rest, it is especially our sleeping- 

 garment, and has often to make up for privations endured during the 

 day and the day's work, and to give us strength for to-morrow. 

 You know all the different substances and materials used for it. 

 They are the same as our garments are made from. Like them, the 

 bed must be airy and warm at the same time. We warm the bed by 

 our body just as we warm our clothes, and the bed warms the air 

 which is continually flowing through it from below upward. The regu- 

 lating strata must be more powerful in their action than in our day- 

 clothes, because during rest and sleep the metamorphosis of our tis- 

 sues and resulting heat become less, and because in an horizontal posK 

 tion we lose more heat by an ascending current of air than in a ver- 

 tical position, where the warm ascending current is in more complete 

 and longer contact with our upright body. 



The warmth of the bed sustains the circulation in our surface to 

 a certain degree for the benefit of our internal organs at a time 

 when our production of heat is at the lowest ebb. Hence the iim 

 portance of the bed for our heat and blood economy. Several days 

 without rest in a bed not only make us sensible of a deficiency in the 

 recruiting of our strength, but very often produce quite noticeable 

 perturbations in our bodily economy which the bed would have pro- 

 tected us from. 



I wish, therefore, to impress upon you that your charitable exer- 

 tions for the poor may become extended to the bed, that kind of gar- 

 ment which can make up to a great degree for other lamentable defi- 

 ciencies, as in food, dwellings, clothing, toward which you are in the 

 habit of directing your efforts. 



I am quite aware that I have anything but exhausted the subject 

 of the functions of our clothes, but still I believe that I have directed 

 your attention to such essential points as to convince you of the 

 importance which a scientific consideration of the subject possesses 

 in the interest of the heat-economy of the human body. 



As our health is so intimately connected with this economy, a 

 better insight into the laws and proceedings of the same must in the 

 end turn out profitable to health in general. 



Thus we have learned in our last glorious war how important it is 

 to provide well for the soldiers' clothing, and that a few days' want 



