ALCOHOL AND COLD WEATHER 123 



them, and the skin feels warm and comfortable for a 

 little while. Unfortunately, however, the warmer the skin 

 is the more it takes from the real heat of the inside of 

 the body. The outside feels warmer after a man drinks 

 alcohol, because the blood is there, but the inside is just 

 so much the colder to make up for it. 



For our best health it is most important that the tem- 

 perature of the inside of the body should remain the same 

 day and night, winter and summer. Anything, therefore, 

 that reduces the inside heat too much is bad for us. Now 

 the reason a man does not notice the change when the 

 inside of his body is growing colder is that alcohol is 

 also doing another thing. It is making the nerves less 

 sensitive. This is most serious, for our nerves are as 

 important to our body as an engineer is to his train. If 

 the engineer of a train is stupid, or if he is asleep, the 

 train is not safe. No passenger cares to travel for a 

 moment on a train with a sleepy engineer. So it is 

 with the body: dreadful things may happen to it if the 

 nerves are too dull to tell us when we are in danger. 



That is what happened to those men in their camp. 

 No doubt those who took so much whisky felt a good 

 deal warmer when they went to bed than those who did 

 not take any. They felt so warm that they could not 

 imagine they had disturbed the heat' regulation of their 

 bodies ; they did not know they were in danger. Per- 

 haps they dreamed they were warm and comfortable even 



