50 



merits of Dr. Edwards, on the young of warm-blooded 

 animals. Dr. E. found that where young puppies, kittens, 

 and rabbits, which had a temperature at birth equal to, or 

 a little higher, than the parent, were isolated for an hour 

 or two, at a temperature of from 60 to 88 degrees F., they 

 lost their heat rapidly, until it exceeded by only a few degrees 

 that of the surrounding atmosphere. Young birds, likewise, 

 which had a higher temperature when taken from their 

 nest, fell from 96 to 66 F., the surrounding atmosphere 

 being 62 degrees. The want of feathers was not the cause, 

 as the adult bird, stripped of its feathers, and placed in 

 contact with its young, maintained its temperature. The 

 power of generating heat, which was at its minimum at 

 birth, gradually augmented until, about the 1 5th day, it 

 corresponded with the parent. The same law applied very 

 closely in the human subject. The normal temperature 

 of the infant at birth scarcely differed from the parent — 

 according to the recent experiments of Roger, the average 

 was 98° F. ; in a small proportion of cases it was superior 

 by 2 degrees. When this occurred it was most probably 

 due to heat imparted from the uterine organs at birth ; 

 nevertheless, whatever might be the temperature at birth, 

 it fell quite as rapidly as in the young of mammiferous 

 animals, until the day following birth, when it assumed its 

 normal or physiological standard, and so continued as 

 long as health, clothing, and other requisites were secured 

 for it ; deprived of this protection, the same results hap- 

 pened as in the young of animals just alluded to. 



Although the temperature of the human body differed but 

 little at different ages, it was necessary to bear in mind that 

 the power of resisting cold was at its minimum in the two 

 extremes of life ; a fall in the barometer from 44 to 4 or 5 

 degrees below the freezing point, destroyed, in the metro- 

 polis alone, from 400 to 500 persons, and produced the same 

 results, on a larger scale, all over the country, — and there 

 could be no difficulty in estimating its pernicious effects 

 upon infancy, when it was considered that the one admitted 

 of a much wider range than the other. Thus, the tempera- 

 ture of adults, from disease, never varied more than from 

 94° to 107°, a difference of 13 degrees; whilst, in the 

 infant, the difference was often found to be 39 degrees, say 

 from 68 to 107. The temperature, therefore, descended 

 proportionally much more than it ascended, the variations 

 below comprising double the number of degrees above the 

 extreme limits. For example, if an infant gained twenty- 

 one degrees of heat death resulted ; if a disease in an inverse 



