BOW TO WARM OUR HOUSES. 235 



in the approximately — if not for a time absolutely — stable mass of 

 blood in the encephalic vessels as a whole, in the arrangement of 

 the vessels themselves, and in the relation of their contents to the 

 pressure of the atmosphere, we have conditions which contrast so re- 

 markably with those we find in any other part of the body, that a con- 

 sideration of their significance is surely deserving more attention from 

 physiologists than it has yet received. — Brain. 



HOW TO WAEM OUR HOUSES. 



By E. Y. BOBBINS. 



IF a blizzard of unusual severity were coming from the northwest 

 that would send the thermometer down 50° or 70° in three hours, 

 we should expect a great increase of pneumonia and other respiratory 

 diseases, resulting in many deaths. Now, instead of three hours, sup- 

 pose the mercury were to drop threescore degrees in three minutes — 

 or take another step in fancy, and suppose this great change to take 

 place in three seconds — what would likely be the effect on health ? 

 And yet we bring about, artificially, changes to ourselves quite as 

 sudden and as severe as this. 



"VVe make an artificial climate in our houses. TVe live in-doors in 

 an atmosphere heated by stoves, furnaces, or steam-pipes, to 70° or 

 80° ; and we pass from our parlor or hall so heated into the open air. 

 At a step, literally in a breath, the temperature of the air has, for us, 

 dropped 50° or 70°. We may put on an extra coat or shawl and 

 shield the outside of the body and chest, but we can not shield the 

 delicate linings and membranes of the air -passages, the bronchial 

 tubes, the lung -cells. Naked, they receive the full force of the 

 change — the last breath at 70°, the next at freezing or zero — and all 

 unprepared. We have been sitting, perhaps for hours, in a tropical 

 atmosphere ; nay, worse, in an atmosphere deprived by hot iron sur- 

 faces of its ozone and natural refreshing and bracing qualities. Our 

 lungs are all relaxed, debilitated, unstrung ; and in this condition the 

 cold air strikes them perhaps 60° below what they are graduated to 

 and prepared for. Is it strange if pneumonia and bronchitis are at 

 hand? 



If we are in the West Indies, or even in Florida, and wish to come 

 North in winter, we try to make the change gradual. But in our houses 

 we keep up a tropical climate, or worse, for you have not the freshness 

 of air that prevails in an open tropical atmosphere, and we step at once 

 into an atmosphere as much colder as 40° difference of latitude will 

 make it. It is in effect going from Cuba to Iceland — or at least to 

 New York — at a step, and we make the journey perhaps a dozen 

 times a day. And often, while we are still shut up in our domicili- 



