150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but in the mean time we might restrict our calorific efforts to the eight 



coolest months of the year. 



In the first place we might curtail the number of our warm meals, 

 or cook them on the cooperative plan in a separate buildmg, where ten 

 or twelve families could use a common stove and a jomt stock of fuel 

 and certain groceries, and thus save our sitting-rooms and studies from 

 the effects which even a basement-kitchen fire exerts on the domestic 

 atmosphere. Heat-producing food, too, might very well be dispensed 

 with The vegetarian school has demonstrated beyond the possibility 

 of a* doubt that farinaceous dishes, sweet milk, and fruit are sufficient 

 to maintain a hard-working man in perfect health, and such a diet might 

 certainly be substituted for our greasy steaks and ragouts auring the 

 hottest weeks of the sultry season. Whether or not such mild stimu- 

 lants as tea and coffee are preferable to pure water, it is certain that 

 they are sudorific drinks, and that even their moderate use mcreases 

 the temperature of our blood by several degrees during their passage 

 through the digestive apparatus. Smoking-hot dishes and such spices 

 as pepper, mustard, onions, and ginger, are liable to the same objection 

 and we should not forget that sultry weather retards the digestion of 

 all fatty substances by several hours. . ^ ^ 



Cooling and non-stimulating drinks of a temperature of not less 

 than 5° above the freezing-point might, on the contrary, be freely 

 used in any enjoyable quantity, for the prevailing "^[lons in regard to 

 the danger of "cold drinks in the heat" prove nothing but the mar- 

 velous tenacity of popular superstitions. Like the prejudice against 

 raw fruit, night air, and "draught" (i. e., the passage o a current of 

 pure air through the vitiated air of a human dwelling), tins notion has 

 furnished a pretext for the strangest sanitary aberrations, and has been 

 defended with the same ingenious sophistry that supplies the adver- 

 tisers of patent nostrums with their specious arguments To prevent 

 cold water from « chilling our stomachs," we are advised to mix it with 

 a few drops of brandy, to wash our wrists and let our faces cool off or 

 to chew a preliminary bread-crust; and parents solemnly warn their 

 children not to endanger their health by gratifying an imprudent ap- 



^''But the craving of our heated system for a refrigerating beverage 



is a natural instinct which we share with all warm-blooded ammals and 



which manifests itself in children and savages as --"^^^^-.^f;f ,"^^ 



civilized men. We see horses, hounds, and stags, walk bodily into a 



cool river after a hot chase, or quench their thirst -^-f\''^''']^^''^^ 



perfect impunity, and the idea that Nature shoud thus tenipt us to 



anything positively injurious implies a deplorable ignorance of the 



lano-uage of our physical conscience. Injurious things, as poisons, ex- 



ces:iveleat,or exce'ssive cold, are disagreeable; -^^^ -^^^-;:. ^^^s' 



able is beneficial, unless instinct has been supplanted by artificial habits. 



It might, for instance, be said that the appetite of a drunkard tempts 



