52 
WATCH THE THERMOMETER! 
House 
Garden 
& 
This article was prepared specially for House & Garden by the United States 
Fuel Administration. It shows that proper temperatures in our houses not 
only make for better health but aid in the vital war activity of fuel conserva¬ 
tion Its advice should be acted upon by every good American .— Editor 
S AVING coal is nearing the goal. If you would 
speak like Walt Mason, and at the same time 
keep in mind that all goals are now one—win¬ 
ning the war. 
It is said by light-minded people that the Govern¬ 
ment keeps a good inventor sitting in a swivel chair 
inventing ways for folks to save coal. The public is 
being asked to rescue unburned lumps of coal from 
the ashes, to turn out electric lights when not in 
use, and to use furnace and cook stove with frugality. 
The Fuel Administration is advocating the placing 
of a thermometer in every home. A thermometer is 
a clock for heat. It has no alarm bell, but the way 
Americans let a thermometer’s aspirations rise and 
perspiration develop simultaneously is alarm enough. 
Quite platitudinously, a maximum of health is 
preserved by a minimum of temperature of not more 
than 68 degrees, and in rooms where people are ac¬ 
tively employed several degrees less. Do you know 
the reason all good English mimics tweak their noses 
when impersonating a Yankee? The doctors say 
that it is because we grow up catarrhal, are inclined 
toward asthma and are subject to the energetic germs 
of pneumonia. 
Few people have thought of the relation of the 
coal problem to a disease that is definitely fixed in 
statistics as being a wider road to death than the 
white plague. What average person of your ac¬ 
quaintance knows that one man in eight dies of 
pneumonia? The Fuel Administration in its Coal 
Conservation campaign is calling the attention of the 
American people to the fact that doctors have veri¬ 
fied—that our susceptibility as a nation to pneumonia 
lies in our overheated houses. We do not care a rap 
about a thermometer except to hang on the porch 
on a cold day to see how cold it is on the shady 
side of the house, and then discuss it with our next 
door neighbor. 
Getting the Habit 
Developing the habit of the thermometer is quite 
possible. And seeing that the stern little figure 
mounts to only 65 or 68 would mean better health 
for the grownups and for the children playing about 
the grate or the steaming radiator. 
“Even a baby is warm enough in a temperature 
of 68 degrees,” according to the Chief of the Bureau 
of Hygiene in New York City, Dr. Josephine Baker. 
“Keep the baby out of any possible draft and it will 
thrive in this temperature.” 
Someone has said that man is a marine animal, 
meaning, as afterwards explained when some curi¬ 
ous person thought the remark applied to aquatic 
performances, that he was seven-eighths water. This 
authority added that man needed cool air and mois¬ 
ture about him. 
A majority of our doctors say that even Americans 
who can almost achieve the impossible cannot exist 
healthfully in a temperature of more than 68 degrees. 
Fresh, cool, moist air is the foe of pneumonia. 
But whether you fear pneumonia or not, it does not 
take legal advice to realize that a thermometer is 
a good thing. Rules for using a thermometer sound 
school-teachery, but now the thermometer has a 
new significance. Its use is a war measure. 
Getting the thermometer habit at home will save 
one of the most precious things in the United States 
just now—coal. Getting the habit in your factory or 
office will save yourself money and will give Uncle 
Sam just that much help in winning the war for 
America. For it will remind the person who ac¬ 
quires the thermometer habit that heat must be low¬ 
ered, and that a uniformity of temperature is a great 
help toward healthful living. Dr. Eugene Lyman 
Fisk, Medical Director of the Life Extension Insti¬ 
tute, maintains that “The American public is not yet 
educated to the fact that air is a stimulant to the 
body and promotes normal evaporation and heat loss. 
Experiments made throughout the country have 
proven that 68 degrees provides the most healthful 
temperature, and that in a room heated to 70 or 80 
degrees the body temperature rises to an unhealthful 
point.” 
Let the thermometer take its place with the coal 
shovel as a household weapon for fighting this war. 
Not only will it help you to keep down the fuel 
consumption; it will stimulate the seeking out of 
heat loss such as leaky windows and poor radiators. 
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Black enameled wood, gold 
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$30. 4" bronze trays with 
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