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WEEKLY EVENING MEETI 



Friday, January 28, 1916. 



His Grace The Duke of Xorthumberland, P.C. K.G. D.C.L. 

 F.R.S., President, in the Chair. 



Leoxard Hill, Esq. M.B. F.R.S. 

 The Science of Clothing and the Prevention of Trench Feet. 



The lecturer began by contrasting our well clad and housed people 

 with the Terra del Fuegians described by Darwin as enduring naked 

 a climate worse than ours. " Nature, by making habit omnipotent 

 and its effects hereditary," has fitted the Fuegians to the cHmate. 

 Our people nowadays generally over-clothe themselves, and weaken 

 the defensive mechanism of the body against cold by over-coddling. 

 The Channel swimmer, robust and well lined with the natural 

 coat of cutaneous fat, and thickly smeared with grease to prevent 

 maceration of the skin, has endured the sea-water as long as 23 hours, 

 and yet water has 240 times the conductivity of air and over 3000 

 times its capacity for taking up heat. The adaptability of body 

 habit, on the one hand to exposure, on the other to over-clothing 

 and hot atmospheres, is enormous. The doctrine so universally 

 believed that cold is the cause of all our ills is erroneous and per- 

 nicious. The vastly improved health, vigour and manhood of our 

 conscripts, taken from desk, shop or factory and put to hard exercise 

 in the open air, shows how much ill-health and deficient vigour 

 arises from sedentary confined occupations. No less striking is the 

 effect on children of open-air schools, which should be made universal. 

 Cerebro-spinal fever and similar respiratory infections (common 

 colds, etc.) are spread by close contact of the carriers of disease with 

 others in confined places. Those living an open-air life with great 

 exposure to cold do not suffer from these epidemics. Exposure to 

 cool moving air tones up the body through the cutaneous nerves 

 and leads to the taking of muscular exercise to keep up the body- 

 heat : thus metabolism is maintained at a high level, appetite and 

 digestion kept vigorous, the breathing deepened, the circulation of 

 the blood invigorated, and the abdominal organs massaged by the 

 deep breathing and the muscular exercise — this is most essential to 

 the circulation and well-being of their function. The sedentary 

 confined worker, housed in tenements, suffers the atrophy of disuse, 

 and misses the enjoj'ment of life that comes from perfect physical 

 health — the wild animal's heritage. With appetite impaired, he is a 

 prey to minor alimentary disturbances. 

 Vol. XXL (No. 11 n) 2 p 



