A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson (learn to read books .txt) 📖

very vigorous muscular exercise, so as to make them perspire freely. But while a thermometer placed in that chamber showed that the men were giving off enormous amounts of heat to the air around them, another thermometer placed under their tongues showed that they were raising the temperature of their own bodies only about half a degree. One man, however, happened to try this test one morning when he was not feeling very well, and didn't perspire properly, and the thermometer under his tongue went up nearly four degrees. THE NERVES IN THE SKIN

How We Tell Things from Touch, and Feel Heat and Cold and Pain. Last of all, the skin is the principal organ of the sense of touch, and also of the "temperature sense"—the sense of heat and cold—and of the sense that feels pain. All these feelings are attended to by little bulbs lying in the deeper part of the skin and forming the tips of tiny nerve twigs,[20] which run inward to join larger nerve branches and finally reach the spinal cord. There are millions of these little bulbs scattered all over the surface of the skin, but they are very much thicker and more numerous in some parts than in others; and that is why, as you have often noticed, certain parts of the skin are more sensitive than others. They are thickest, for instance, on the tips of our fingers and on our lips, and fewest over the back of the neck and shoulders, and across the lower part of the hips.[21]

For a long time, it was supposed that all these little nerve-bulbs in the skin did the same kind of work, because they looked, under the microscope, exactly alike; but it was found that they divide the work up among them, so that some of them give their entire attention to heat, and others to cold, others to touch, and others again to pain. So carefully has the work been mapped out among them that they report to different centres in the brain and spinal cord, so that we now understand why, in diseases which happen to attack one or other of these centres, we may lose our sense of heat and cold, as in that terrible disease, leprosy; or our sense of touch, as in paralysis; or we may even, in some very rare cases, lose our sense of pain, and yet have all our other senses perfect.

CHAPTER XVI HOW TO KEEP THE SKIN HEALTHY CLOTHING

Clothes should be Loose and Comfortable. Man is the only animal that has no natural suit of clothing. Birds have feathers, and animals have fur, or hair, which they shed in summer and thicken up in winter without even thinking about it, so that they do not have to bother with either overcoats or flannels. The wise men say that man originally had a full suit of hair like other animals, and that he gradually got rid of it, as he became human. Whether this be true or not, the fact remains that he has none now; and consequently he must invent and manufacture something to take its place.

Originally, in the time of our savage ancestors, clothing was worn chiefly as protection from cold at night, so that all the earlier forms of clothing were of a more or less blanket-or cloak-like form, and wrapped, or swathed, the whole body without fitting closely to the limbs. It is interesting to remember this fact, because even our most highly civilized forms of clothing still show this same tendency. The skirt, for instance, is simply a survival of the lower end of the blanket, which has never been cut down to fit the limbs.

The principles upon which garments should be built are two: First, they should fit closely enough to the body and limbs to protect them from either injury or cold, even while free activity of every sort is allowed—you could not wrestle in a blanket or run very far in a sack. Second, they should be thick enough to protect us from cold, and yet at the same time porous enough not to interfere with the natural breathing and ventilating of the skin. A garment should be as loose as possible without interfering with our movements, and as free and as light as can be worn with reasonable warmth and protection. The less clothing you can wear and be comfortable, the better.

We should particularly avoid binding or cramping the chest and the hips and waist. If clothing is too tight about the chest, it interferes both with free movement of the arms and, what is even more important, with the breathing movements of the chest. If too tight about the waist and hips, it badly cripples the lower limbs and interferes with the proper movements of the diaphragm in breathing, and with the passage of the food and the blood through the bowels.

Your instincts are perfectly right that make you dislike to be squeezed or pinched or cramped in any way, or at any point, by your clothing; and if you will only follow these instincts all through your lives, you will be far healthier and happier.

The Texture of Clothing. Just as for ages we have experimented with different kinds of food, so we have with different kinds of material for clothing. We have used the skins of animals; mats woven out of leaves and grasses; the feathers of birds; the skins of fishes; cloths made of wool and of cotton; and even the cocoon spun by certain caterpillars, which we call silk. But of all these materials, practically only two have stood the test of the ages and proved themselves the most suitable and best all-round clothing materials—wool and cotton.

Woolen cloth, woven from the fleece of sheep or goats or camels or llamas or alpacas, has three great advantages, which make it the outside clothing of the human species. First, it is sufficiently tough and lasting to withstand rips and tugs and ordinary wear and tear; second, it is warm—that is, it retains well the body heat; and third, it is porous, so that it will allow gases and perspiration from the surface of the body to pass through it in one direction, and air for the skin to breathe, in the other.