124 POPULAR ERRORS. 



feet or heaU, and which the general excess in the heat of the system 

 had rendered very greatly more susceptible to be acted on. 



From these facts, tlierefore, which are mideniable, and which the 

 experience of most persons will confirm, we may assume that cold is 

 taken from a chilling agent applied to a limited portion of the body 

 when its heat is in excess. Hence the best preventative against the 

 habit of taking cold is moderation in the quantity of dress employed, 

 as the most assured method of creating the habit is indulging in the 

 use of an excess of it. The error, then, which on this subject prevails 

 in the public mind, is in favour of excess in the use of clothing ; and 

 there are few persons who are not chargeable with this error. The 

 circumstances under which persons generally are placed, necessarily 

 subject them to the accident of a partial exposure to the action of chilling 

 agents ; and when covered with clothing in excess, they are precisely 

 in the situation of the traveller in the coach, or of a person receiving 

 a current of air at the open window of a wann apartment ; and such is 

 the tenderness of some persons from superfluous clothing, that the 

 standing for a moment on a cold floor, or passing along a cold pas- 

 sage, or even the touching of a cold object, as the brass handle of a 

 door, is suflScient to inflict a cold upon them. 



With a certain class of invalids, whose chief ailments consist 

 in the frequent taking of cold, it is not unusual, in addition to 

 their excessive general clothing, for them to wear something especialy 

 warm on the chest or about the throat, such as a portion of /ur 

 or fleecy hosiery ; and by this they increase the gross heat of the 

 body, and with it increase their susceptibility to take cold; and 

 what is worse, as well as contrary to the popular belief, without in 

 the least securing the part thus especially covered from the effects 

 of the cold it assists in producing. Could the parties who use 

 clothing in excess escape breathing the cold air, or never be exposed 

 to a current of it, which is impossible, or never tread upon the 

 wet and cold pavement, which with the great mass of mankind is 

 likewise so, all the mis-directed care by collars of fur with fleecy 

 hosiery might be used with a chance of impunity ; but circumstanced, 

 however, as society is in the natural world, this impunity is impossible. 



Before passing from the subject which has now engaged our 

 attention, there is a point connected with it wliicli I feel unwiling to 

 leave unnoticed. I mean the plan lately introduced in Gennany of 



