THE PERILS OF RAPID CIVILIZATION. 237 



natural moisture is not allowed to dry. The man is in an atmosphere, 

 now hot and moist, now cold and moist. His clothing can not adjust 

 itself to the changes of temperature so well as his skin once could. He 

 gets wet in a rain, and is chilled by the drenched clothing which does 

 not dry as his skin would have done. He begins to experience the 

 phenomenon of taking cold. The multiform ailments which thus origi- 

 nate begin to beset him. The lungs especially are apt to suffer, and 

 his health is seriously broken. Once he had a thick skin, the perfect 

 clothing which Nature gives her animals. Now, a thinner, more sensi- 

 tive one grows under the habiliments that mark the new social order. 

 This is not merely theory. The New-Zealanders themselves ascribe 

 their physical decay in part to their assumption of clothing.* Mr. 

 Nordhoff, in his book on the Sandwich Islands, also alludes to this as 

 one possible cause of the decay of that people. In the case of the Af- 

 rican slaves the element of clothing is of less consequence. For here 

 the people have been removed from their native climate to one which 

 necessitates some clothing on grounds of actual comfort. Morover, 

 they were not as a rule obliged to wear more than the real demands of 

 the climate required ; so that there was not even a temporary decrease 

 of their numbers from this cause. But in tropical peoples, and in all 

 others where the innovation in the matter of dress is independent of 

 any real physical requirements, theory and fact agree in ascribing a 

 malign influence to the change. In the ancient myth, Hercules un- 

 tiringly endured his mighty labors, and was victorious in all his 

 sturdy conflicts with opposing forces ; but, at last, the poisoned robe 

 of Nessus brought him to his death. So to many a child of Nature 

 has the garb of civilization proved an envenomed mantle, consuming 

 its wearer. 



Closely connected with the subject of clothing is that of food ; for 

 physiology shows us a reciprocal relation between them. The life of 

 a starving animal can be prolonged by retaining his warmth, or, in 

 other words, by clothing him ; and, conversely, an increase of cloth- 

 ing diminishes the consumption of food. When our newly civilized 

 barbarian puts on clothing which the temperature of his climate does 

 not require, he must lower his diet in a corresponding degree. The 

 extent of this influence may be appreciated from a brief view of the 

 physiology of nutrition. The non-nitrogenous articles of food and 

 the non-nitrogenous modicum which remains after the splitting up of 

 the nitrogenous (proteid) foods furnish the energy of the body. This 

 is estimated in the average man at one million metre-kilogrammes 

 daily ; the force required to raise one kilogramme in weight one metre 

 in height being the unit of force. Now, of this force, 150,000 metre- 

 kilogrammes are expended in muscular work, and the remainder, four 

 fifths or more, are required to maintain the animal heat. But three 

 fourths of the entire heat expenditure is made by radiation and con- 



* Vide r. D. Fenton, loc. cit, " Journal of the Statistical Society," pp. 624, 529. , 



