IRVING 

 Another important difference was in the expression of pain. Most 

 white people find fingers around 10 C painful, and our white subjects 

 spoke very plainly about the cold as disturbingly painful. The two Es- 

 kimo young ladies said their fingers pained a little. The Eskimo men 

 and boys did not openly express or demonstrate pain or appear anxi- 

 ous to terminate the test as did the white people; but on questioning 

 two of the nine said their fingers became a little painful. Most of the 

 Eskimos said, however, that their hands became very cold. Keith 

 Miller is now analysing records obtained at the Arctic Research 

 Laboratory, Barrow, during exposureof hands to justbelow freezing 

 air in 12 Eskimo men, 4 women, 15 children, and 14 white men, 7 

 of whom were accustomed to work outdoors. His records substan- 

 tiate with details the general impressions gained from Eskimos at 

 Anaktuvuk Pass. 



With fingers so cold that the pain would have disturbed us the 

 Eskimos seemed undisturbed. But the lively thermal reactions of the 

 Eskimo boys showed that their vasomotor regulation was sensitive. 

 After they had been happily and noisily at play for several hours 

 their hands were so cold as to appear beyond our safe tolerance. Al- 

 though they do not appear to depend upon warning by pain they 

 cannot be insensitive to cold, for when the children's fingers verge 

 upon dangerous cold conscious and unconscious attention for re- 

 warming must be especially accurately controlled in order to pro- 

 tect the little fingers with their relatively feeble supply of heat. 



Eskimos cannot safely expose their hands to severe arctic cold 

 longer than a few minutes; therefore this adaptation of part of the 

 surface of Eskimos is small in comparison with the degree and ex- 

 tent of the adaptation of the extremities of arctic animals. But even 

 this small adaptation extends their ability to work sufficiently to al- 

 low for many essential acts which can only be performed with hands 

 unencumbered by mitts. That frostbite is so rare among Eskimos 

 is the result of their keen conscious and unconscious appreciation 

 for the limits of time and intensity of cooling that they can endure. 



Oberservations on the Integration of Heterothermous Tissues 



For individual existence to be coherent it must be continuously 

 related to information about its internal condition and external cir- 

 cumstances. Apparently an individual must always appreciate certain 



146 



