Readings : The Skin, Part 4

Hygienic Physiology: with Special Reference to the Use of Alcoholic Drinks and Narcotics
By Joel Dorman Steele, Ph.D.

(Page 19 of 26)

Whether he be provided with paw or hoof, the beast swims with perfect ease and buoyancy. So, too, can the human being, if he will, with the further immense advantage of having a paddle-formed hand, and of being able, when tired, to rest himself by floating, an act of which the animal has no conception. The printed direction should be pasted up in all boathouses, on every boat, at every bathing place, and in every school: Tread water when you find yourself out of your depth. This is all that need be said, unless, indeed, we add: Float when you are tired. To float, one needs only to turn upon his back, keeping - as always when in the water - the mouth and chin well up and the lungs full of air. - Every one of us, of whatever age and however encumbered with clothing, may tread water, even in a breaking sea, with as much facility as a four-footed animal. The position of the water trader is, really, very much safer and better than the sprawling attitude of the ordinary swimmer. But the chief advantage lies in the fact that we can tread water without preliminary teaching, whereas, though we recommend all to learn how to swim, it involves time and pains, entails considerable fatigue, and is, after all, very seldom adequately acquired.

Hints On Clothing.

Advantages of Woolen Fabrics. - Wool is more irritating than cotton, on account of the stiffness of the hairs with which it bristles; but the excitation it produces becomes a therapeutic means whenever the skin needs a stimulant.

The use of wool is particularly desirable in some countries and under some conditions of life. Professor Brocchi, a writer well known for his investigations in malaria, attributes the good health and vigor of the ancient Romans to their habit of wearing coarse woolen clothes; when they began to disuse them, and to wear lighter goods and silks, they became less vigorous and less able to resist the morbid influence of bad air. It was at about the time the women began to dress in notably fine tissues that the insalubrity of the Roman air began first to be complained of. "In the English army and navy," says Dr. Balestra, "the soldiers of garrisons in unhealthy places are obliged constantly to wear wool next to the skin, and to cover themselves with sufficient clothing, for protection against paludine fevers, dysentery, cholera, and other diseases." According to Patissier, similar measures have been found effectual in preserving the health of workmen employed on dikes, canals, and ditches, in marshy lands; while, previous to the employment of these precautions, mortality from fevers was considerable among them.

Dr. Balestra has proved by direct experiments in marshy regions that thick and hairy woolen garments arrest in their down a portion of the germs borne in by the air, whic. Therefore reaches the skin filtered and purified. The ancient Romans wore ample over-garments over their tunics, and never put them away. It is no less important to be well covered during the night; and precautions of this kind should be recommended to all who live in a swampy country. We are sometimes astonished when we see the natives of particularly warm countries enveloped in woolen, as the Arab in his burnoose, or the Spanish peasant in his tobacco-colored cloak. Such materials protect both against the rays of the sun and against the coolness of the night, and are excellent regulators of heat. It is dangerously imprudent to travel in southern countries without provision of warm clothing. - Revue des Deux Mondes.

Weight is not Warmth. - While speaking of the warmth of clothing for inclement weather, it would be incorrect not to spoke of weight in relation to warmth. Many persons mistake weight for warmth, an. Therefore feeble people are actually borne down and weakened by the excess of heavy clothing which is piled on them. Good woolen or fur fabrics retain the heat, and yet are light. When fabrics intended for sustaining warmth are made up of cotton, the mistake of accepting weight for warmth is made. The same errors are often made in respect to bed coverings, and with the same results.

Poisonously Dyed Clothing. - The introduction of wearing apparel, socks, stockings, and flannels which have been made, by new processes of dyeing, to assume a rich red or yellow color, has led to a local disease of the skin, attended, in rare cases, with slight constitutional symptoms. This disease is due to the dyestuffs. The chief poisonous dyes are the red and yellow coralline, substances derived from that series of chemical bodies which have been obtained of late years from coal tar, and commonly known as the aniline series.

The coloring principle is extremely active as a local poison. It induces on the skin a reddish, slightly raised eruption of minute round pimples which stud the reddened surface, and which, if the irritation be severe and long-continued, pass into vesicles discharging a thin watery ichors and producing a superficial sore. The disease is readily curable if the cause of it be removed, and, as a general rule, it is purely local in character. I have, however, once seen it pass beyond the local stage. A young gentleman consulted me for what he considered was a rapidly developed attack of erysipelas on the chest and back. He was, indeed, covered with an intensely red rash, and he was affected with nervous symptoms, with faintness and depression of pulse, of a singular and severe kind. I traced both the local eruption and the general malady to the effect of the organic dye in a red woolen chest and back "comforter." On removing the "comforter" all the symptoms ceased. Similar and even fatal cases have been known from the wearing of highly colored hose.

Uncleanliness of Dress. - Uncleanly attire creates conditions favorable to disease. Clothing worn too long at a time becomes saturated with the excretions and exhalations of the body, and, by preventing the free transpiration from the surface of the skin, induces oppression of the physical powers and mental inactivity. This observation will be accepted by most persons as true in respect to underclothing; it is equally true in regard to those outer garments which are often worn, unremittingly, until the linings, torn and soiled, are unfit altogether for contact with the cleaner garments beneath them. Health will not be clothed in dirty raiment. They who wear such raiment suffer from trains of minor complaints; from oppression, dullness, headache, nausea, which, though trifling in themselves, taken one by one, when put together greatly reduce that standard of perfect health by which the value of life is correctly and effectively maintained. - Richardson.