THE INTEGUMENT, OR SKIN 61 



are very serious. Experiments have been performed upon 

 certain smaller animals, as rabbits, to ascertain the result of 

 closing the pores of the skin. When they are covered by a 

 coating of varnish impervious to water and gases, death ensues 

 in from six to twelve hours the attendant symptoms resem- 

 bling those of suffocation. (Read Note 3.) 



19. It is related that, at the coronation of one of the Popes, 

 about three hundred years ago, a little boy was chosen to act 

 the part of an angel ; and, in order that his appearance might 

 be as gorgeous as possible, he was covered from head to foot 

 with a coating of gold-foil. He was soon taken sick, and 

 although every known means were employed for his recovery, 

 except the removal of his fatal golden covering, he died in a 

 few hours.* 



3. On Taking Cold. "Of all the things to which humanity is liable, 

 there is none which recurs more frequently, and whose consequences are 

 more troublesome and often dangerous, than ' taking cold' Some persons 

 have quite a faculty for taking cold, while others do so but rarely. And 

 yet the one does not argue delicacy of constitution, or the other strength. 

 The body of man has a constant and agreeable temperature in health, the 

 variation being slight. In fact, any great variation is incompatible with 

 health, and constitutes disease. Clothes, by preventing the radiation 

 away of heat from the surface, retain it, and so the feeling of cold is not 

 so great that is, the surface does not become so cold. Clothes are non- 

 conductors of heat when dry ; but let them be saturated with water, and 

 unless the loss of heat be met by increased production, there is a lowering 

 of the body temperature ' taking cold.' Thus, if exertion be continued, 

 and more heat is produced to meet the loss until a change of dry clothing 

 is procurable, no injury results. But let the wet clothes be worn without 

 a corresponding heat production, as when children sit down in school in 

 their wet clothes, or the shop-boy stands in his moist garments ; then 

 there is a rapid loss of heat, a lowering of the body temperature, and a 

 cold is ' caught. ' So is a cold caught by wet feet, when the heat is radi- 

 ated away from the feet ; if exercise be continued the cold is not experi- 

 enced. A damp bed gives cold because the moist bedclothes conduct 

 away the heat, and the body temperature is lowered." Fothergill on the 

 Maintenance of Health. 



* A clogged action of the skin is disastrous in many diseases, but 

 especially those attended by an eruption, or "breaking out." One of 

 these small-pox is exceeding fatal among the American Indians, whole 

 tribes having been swept away by it. And this is explained by the fact 



19. Give the story in relation to the boy covered with gold-foil. 



