4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6o 



The hardy men of the north were evolved to stand the vagaries 

 of climate — cold and warmth, a starved or full belly, have been their 

 changing lot. The full belly and the warm sun have expanded them 

 in lazy comfort ; the cold and the starvation have braced them to 

 action. Modern civilization has withdrawn many of us from the 

 struggle with the rigors of nature ; we seek for and mostly obtain 

 the comfort of a full belly and expand all the time in the warm 

 atmosphere afforded us by clothes, wind-protected dwellings, and 

 artificial heat — particularly so in the winter, when the health of the 

 business man deteriorates. 



Cold is not comfortable, neither is hunger ; therefore we are led 

 to ascribe many of our ills to exposure to cold, and seek to make 

 ourselves strong by what is termed good living. In reality the 

 bracing effect of cold is of supreme importance to health and 

 happiness ; we become soft and flabby and less resistant to the 

 attacks of infecting bacteria in the winter not because of the cold, 

 but because of our excessive precautions to preserve ourselves from 

 cold ; the prime cause of " cold " or " chill " is not really exposure to 

 cold, but exposure to the overheated and confined air of rooms, fac- 

 tories, and meeting-places. 



Seven hundred and eleven survivors were saved from the Titanic 

 after hours of exposure to cold. Many were insufficiently clad and 

 others were wet to the skin. Only one died after reaching the 

 Carpathia, and he three hours after being picked up. Those who 

 died perished from actual cooling of the body. Exposure to cold 

 did not cause in the survivors the diseases commonly attributed to 

 cold. 



Conditions of city and factory life diminish the physical and 

 nervous energy, and reduce many from the vigorous health and 

 perfectness of bodily functions which a wild animal possesses to a 

 more secure, but poorer and far less happy, form of existence. The 

 ill-chosen diet, the monotony and sedentary nature of daily work, 

 the windless uniformity of atmosphere, above all, the neglect of 

 vigorous muscular exercise in the open air and of exposure to the 

 winds and light of heaven — all these, together with the difficulties 

 in the way of living a normal sexual life, go to make the pale, 

 undeveloped, neurotic, and joyless citizen. Nurture in unnatural 

 surroundings, not nature's birth-mark, moulds the criminal and the 

 wastrel. The environment of childhood and youth is at fault rather 

 than the stock ; the children who are taken away and trained to be 

 sailors, those sent to agricultural pursuits in the Colonies, those who 



