How to Keep Cool When the Weather Is Hot
By David Paulson, M. D.
THE cold season affords a favorable opportunity to tone up the system and to develop physical stamina, and at the same time, owing to its chilly rains and more or less sudden changes of temperature, the chances to contract acute colds, influenza, pleurisy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis are increased tenfold. The summer time is nature’s opportunity to burn up the various cinders and clinkers, and other waste products that are lodged in the system, and to inaugurate a general cleansing and renovation of all the tissues. At the same time the debilitating effect of the heat often lays the foundation for nervous prostration, and tempts many a weak mortal to resort to various artificial stimulants, which soon prove to be both a snare and a delusion to him. The temperature created within by the food we eat, has more to do with our bodily comfort or discomfort than has the surrounding atmosphere. Careful observations have shown that nine tenths of the prostrations from heat are among those who are trying to subsist upon an unnatural and an unwholesome dietary, and who are indulging in liquor and tobacco; while those who are eating thoroughly ‘dextrinized’ grain preparations, luscious fruits, and the nourishing nut preparations, are discovering that such food is conducive not only to coolness of blood, but also to calmness of spirit. Another means of being comfortable when others are uncomfortable is to take liberal installments of winter during the summer. This can easily be done by frequent cool bathing. It is impossible to conceive of a person being overcome by heat while camping in a tub of cold water, or even while wrapped snugly in a sheet which had been wrung out of cool water. On the hottest day of last summer a patient in our Chicago Branch Sanitarium began to have symptoms which indicated that she was being prostrated by heat. She was immediately placed in a bath at a temperature a few degrees below that of the body, and cloths wrung out of ice-cold water were put around her neck and upon her head; in a few minutes she was perfectly comfortable. Her dinner was served to her under these unique circumstances. She remained in the bath several hours, and by that time the cool evening breezes had made the atmosphere so comfortable that she returned to her room. While others had been sweltering from the extreme heat, she had been enjoying the equivalent of a spring climate; as a result, she felt refreshed and invigorated. During the hot season all should, as far as possible, take some form of cold bath in the morning and evening; if the heat is very oppressive, and prostration is threatened, one or more may be taken during the day. It is a little inconvenient to carry out this suggestion, but it is more inconvenient to have thousands of funerals in summer which never would have taken place if those whose lives were thus uselessly sacrificed had only been willing to use the same amount of good sense and judgment in reference to caring for themselves that they exercised in the management of even their ordinary business affairs.