184 PHYSIOLOGY AJSD HEALTH. 



hunger and his low temperature may seem to him to be mere- 

 ly coincident circumstances, accidentally coming together; 

 but, in truth, one is the cause of the other. For want of 

 food, his body is not supplied with fuel, and its internal fire 

 burns feebly, arid therefore does not warm him. One of the 

 best means of protection against the effects of exposure to 

 the cold air of winter is proper nutriment. 



430. Alcoholic spirit is sometimes taken for this purpose, 

 but with a mistaken view of its effects upon the heat of the 

 body. It stimulates the stomach, excites the nervous system, 

 and quickens the action of the heart, and the flow of the 

 blood. It supplies to the flame carbon and hydrogen, the 

 most combustible of materials; but these soon burn out, and 

 their fire is then exhausted, and the body is afterward cooler 

 than it otherwise would have been. Food, alone, can sustain 

 a permanent fire. Two travellers met, in a very cold day of 

 January, 1810, at a tavern in Groton, Massachusetts. One 

 of them called for a mug of hot flip, and advised the other to 

 do the same ; for, he said, " When I am going out in the 

 cold, I always drink hot 'spirit." The other refused, but 

 said, " When I am going out in the cold, T eat a good din- 

 ner." The temperate traveller acted from his own experi- 

 ence, and also, without knowing it, upon the truest physio- 

 logical principles. 



431. Flesh, containing more carbon and hydrogen, sup- 

 plies more fuel to the fire than vegetable matter. Meat, 

 therefore, warms a man more than bread, and we eat it more 

 freely in the winter than in the summer. For this reason, 

 the coachman, the sailor, and the teamster, who are exposed 

 to the coldest air abroad, need more meat than the mechan- 

 ics, who work in warm shops, or those persons whose life and 

 occupations are in warm houses. In the northern regions, 

 where winter reigns with great severity, there is a more rapid 

 loss of heat through the skin, and of course a necessity of 

 creating more within the body, than in the warmer re- 

 gions, at and near the equator. To keep the body warm, 

 there must be more fuel, or food containing more carbon and 

 hydrogen, in the cold than in the hot climate. Nature sup- 



