222 
Dr. Currie s Account of the 
of heat by the rapid changes of the surrounding medium, as 
the foregoing experiments point out. 
3. Whether, in high and cold winds without rain or snow, 
and where a situation may be chosen beyond the reach of the 
waves, it is safer to continue in the air, or to seek refuge in 
the sea, must depend upon several circumstances, and cannot 
perhaps be certainly determined. The motives for choosing 
the sea will be stronger in proportion as the wind is high and 
cold, and in proportion as the shore is bold. 
The foregoing narrative shows that men may survive twen- 
ty-three hours immersion in the sea, of the temperature of 38° 
or 40° (as great a cold as it almost ever possesses) without food 
or water, and almost without hope of relief; but that any 
man ever survived an equally long exposure to the higher de- 
grees of cold of the atmosphere, in the same circumstances, 
does not appear. Though in the case related, immersion in 
water did not prevent thirst, yet there is no doubt that it alle- 
viated it, a circumstance of high importance towards the pre- 
servation of life. 
Liverpool, 
December 25, 1791. 
P. S. I have purposely avoided any reasoning on the causes 
of the loss of vital heat on the change of media in the ex- 
periments recited. It may be supposed that during immer- 
sion, the water immediately in contact with the skin having 
become heated to a certain degree, the naked body, on rising 
from it into the air, was in fact exposed to a colder medium, 
and thus the loss of heat, in this instance, produced. My ex- 
amination of the heat of the water during immersion not 
