714 INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON THE 



us warm while we fasted ; but if enabled to go to 

 bed with full stomachs, we passed the night in a 

 warm and comfortable manner." (Journey to 

 the Polar Sea, in 181922, p. 447.) We are also 

 informed by Claridge, that at Graefenberg in 

 Germany, where the celebrated quack Priesnitz 

 subjects his patients to the cold bath, from fifteen 

 minutes to an hour, three times a day, and makes 

 them drink from ten to twenty glasses of cold 

 water in the same time, for the cure of all dis- 

 eases, they consume an enormous amount of 

 animal food and pastry, that " the water cure 

 gives an appetite, and forces the invalid to eat 

 more than he was accustomed to in health."* 

 (Hydropathy, p. 254.) 



On the other hand, in the tropical portions of 

 India, Africa, America, and New Holland, the 

 thorax is narrow, flat, and its circumference con- 

 siderably less than in the higer latitudes, accord- 

 ing to the best information I have been able to ob- 

 tain from writers on the Natural History of Man. 

 The reason of which is, that whenever the tem- 

 perature of the atmosphere rises above the point 



* It is therefore manifest, that men require a more abundant 

 supply of animal or oily food when exposed to intense cold, and 

 are badly clothed, than when protected by warm houses and gar- 

 ments. Nor could the patients of Priesnitz obtain a sufficiency 

 of animal heat by respiration to keep them alive under his cruel 

 practice, without an abundant supply of oleaginous food, or such 

 as abounds with carbon and hydrogen, as will be further shown 

 when I come to treat of aliments. 



