Hot-Weather Hygiene by DAVID PAULSON, M. D.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 4, 1910

Hot-Weather Hygiene

By DAVID PAULSON, M. D.

DAVID PAULSON, M. D.

DURING the heated season one can hardly pick up a daily paper without reading a list of heat prostrations. In nine cases out of ten these could have been avoided by giving heed to a few simple principles.

A Cooling Diet

Avoid mustard, pepper, and highly spiced foods that taste hot when they are cold. Such continue hot after they are swallowed, and even after they are absorbed into the blood. Mustard plasters may properly be applied externally, but they should not be used internally.

The department of health of the city of Chicago gives the following advice as to hot-weather dietetics: “Be temperate in all things. Drink plenty of water. Far more important than anything else, eat lightly; cut your usual winter rations in half. Eat soups, vegetables, and buttermilk. Avoid particularly meats, butter, and heavy foods of all sorts. Keep your bowels open, your stomach empty, your skin clear, and you will avoid sunstroke.”

Move Outdoors

Many a housewife sweats her life away hovering over a red-hot stove in a stuffy kitchen, never dreaming that she might just as well move her kitchen out under the trees, or out on the shady side of the house. It would be a little more inconvenient, but a thousand times more comfortable. Try it, and you will wonder why you did not make the move before.

This is also the time of year to form the outdoor-sleeping habit. Move your bed out on the veranda. Screen the bed with netting, or, better yet, screen the whole porch with wire, to exclude flies, mosquitoes, etc. After you have slept outdoors a few nights, you will wonder how you ever existed in the close, sultry bedroom; and when you discover how beneficial and restful such sleep is, you may possibly venture to stay out all winter, or at least until the holidays. And that will mean deliverance from your annual crop of colds.

Cool Bathing

Some years ago on a hot July day a patient said to me, “O, I wish I was at home to-day! I am afraid I am going

to have a spell.” I inquired if she thought it was any cooler at home. “O, no; but you know if one is to have something awful happen to her, she prefers to be at home.” I asked if she would not enjoy some delightful May weather, and she assured me she certainly would. So I told the nurse to take her down and give her a prolonged dose of May weather. The patient looked at me, half wondering whether I was in earnest, but the nurse understood.

She took her to the bath-room, put her in a bath that was just the temperature to feel as comfortable as a May morning. Her dinner was served on a tray put on a board placed across the bath-tub. In the middle of the afternoon a cool breeze came up, and she was taken back to her room. I saw her later: she was all smiles, and said that it was the best day she had had since coming to the institution. She said the provoking part of it all was that she had a bath-tub in her own home, and it had never occurred to her to get into a bath-tub and cool off when suffering from these spells that came when she was overheated.

Do not be afraid to take a bath that is comfortable. The skin is wet on the inside all the time: it will not do it any harm to get wet on the outside. Very hot baths are relaxing, very cold baths are depressing; but a bath that is near the temperature of the skin is restful and refreshing. Be sensible, and you will enjoy the summer just as much as the winter.

Hinsdale, Ill.