ANIMAL HEAT LOWEST IN INFANCY. 63 



in which a leech-bite has caused a fatal hemorrhage. 

 The circulation is, in fact, cutaneous ; for the lungs, 

 the stomach, the liver, and the kidneys are as yet 

 new to life, and feeble in their functions. If the 

 infant, then, be rashly exposed to a cold atmosphere, 

 the mass of blood previously circulating on the sur- 

 face of the body is immediately driven inwards by 

 the contraction of the cutaneous vessels, and, by 

 over-stimulating the internal organs, gives rise to 

 bowel complaints, inflammations, croup, or convul- 

 sions, which sooner or later extinguish life. This 

 shows the inexpressible folly of those who bathe 

 infants daily in cold water even in winter, and freely 

 expose them to the open air, or to currents from 

 open doors or windows, with a view to harden 

 their constitutions ; when it is quite certain that no 

 more effectual means could be resorted to in the 

 earlier months of life to undermine the general 

 health and entail future disease on the unhappy 

 subjects of the experiment. 



This hurtful practice has perhaps arisen in some 

 degree from the prevalent error of supposing that 

 infants have naturally a great power of generating 

 heat and resisting cold. That the very opposite is 

 the fact has been established by the experiments 

 of Dr. Milne Edwards, which show that " the power 

 of producing heat in warm-blooded animals is at its 

 minimum at birth, and increases successively to adult 

 age" and that instead of young animals being warmer 

 than adults, they are generally a degree or two 

 older, and part with their heat more readily. In 

 en healthy infants, from a few days to two hours 

 old, the mean temperature was observed by Dr. 

 Edwards to be only 94. 55 Fahr., that of adults be- 

 ing 97 or 98 ; and in a seven months 1 child, three 

 hours after birth, he found the temperature so low 

 as 89. 6, although the child was well clothed and 

 near a good fire. That exposure to cold is really 

 so injurious in infancy is unhappily proved by a 



