576 Of the Salubrity of Warm Rooms, 



would be the most economical, would, we have reason 

 to think, have been adopted by Providence in respect 

 to brute animals ; but beasts and birds, which pass the 

 winter in cold climates, are all furnished with warm 

 winter garments. 



What provident Nature furnishes to brute animals, 

 man is left to provide for himself, or to supply the want 

 of it by his ingenuity. 



If living in cold rooms really tended to give strength 

 and vigour to the constitution, and to enable men to 

 support without injury the piercing cold of winter, we 

 might expect that the dwellings of the inhabitants of 

 the polar regions would be kept at a very low tempera- 

 ture ; but this is so far from being the case in fact that 

 we always find the hottest rooms in the coldest cli- 

 mates. 



If the transition from a hot room to the cold air were 

 so dangerous as it is represented, how does it happen 

 that Swedes and Laplanders, who live in rooms that 

 are kept excessively hot, do not take cold when they ex- 

 pose themselves to the intense cold of their winters ? 



Swedes and Russians who pass the winter in Eng- 

 land never fail to complain of the uncomfortable cold- 

 ness of our houses, and seldom escape catarrhs and 

 other disorders occasioned by cold. And the sickness 

 and mortality which prevailed among the Russian sol- 

 diers and sailors, who wintered in this country in the 

 years 1 798 and 1 799, were generally, and no doubt 

 justly, ascribed to their being unable to support the 

 cold to which they were exposed in our barracks and 

 in our hospitals, — a degree of cold to which they never 

 had been accustomed within doors, and which to them 

 appeared to be quite insupportable. 



