BEST MATERIAL FOR DRESS.
In all seasons of the year, and in all climates, the best material for dress, for old and young, for strong and weak, is woollen. It is the poorest conductor of heat, and therefore secures the most equable temperature. This is the principal object of dress. The superiority of woollen clothing for babes is even greater in July than in January. In the warmest days a single thickness of soft flannel will suffice. But if linen or cotton be worn, the garment is soon moistened by perspiration, and two or three additional thicknesses are needed to protect the child against the ill-effects of a draught.
In warm weather we find it necessary to wear woollen garments in the gymnasium, as a protection against a chill from draughts while perspiring. Our soldiers in the South find flannel their best friend, securing them against the extremes and exposures of their camp and field life. Blacksmiths, glass-blowers, furnace-men, and others exposed to the highest temperatures, find woollen indispensable.
Few practices will do so much to secure the comfort and protect the health of young children as dressing them in flannel night and day, the year round. It may be objected that flannel irritates a delicate skin. This is often so, as the skin is now treated. But there is no baby's skin so thin and delicate that daily bathing and faithful friction may not remove this extreme susceptibility. And as the skin is the organ upon which the outer world makes its impressions, nothing is more important than that all morbid susceptibility should be removed.
An additional advantage in the use of flannel is, that it serves by its mechanical effect to keep up a healthy surface circulation, which is one of the vital conditions of health. The skin and the lungs act and react upon each other more directly, if possible, than any other two organs of the body. Children born with a predisposition to consumption especially need a vigorous treatment of the skin.
Professor Dunglison says,—"The best clothing to protect us from external heat or cold is one that is a bad conductor of calorie, or one that does not permit heat to pass readily through it." This is the case with woollen. The Spaniard and the Oriental throw woollen mantles over them when they expose themselves to the sun.
Londe asserts that "the use of woollen next the skin is one of the most precious means possessed by therapeutics. Its use on children does much to prevent bowel-affections, and with it we can bear with impunity the vicissitudes of weather."
Brocchi ascribes the immunity of sheep which feed night and day in the Campagna di Roma "to the protection afforded them by their wool."
Patissier affirms that woollen clothing has been found effectual in preserving the health of laborers working in marshy grounds, canals, and drains.
Captain Murray, of the English service, after two years spent among the icebergs on the coast of Labrador, sailed, immediately upon his return to England, for the West Indies, where he remained some months, and while other officers lost many men, he returned to England without the loss of a man, which he ascribed in considerable part to the use of flannel. So important did he regard this hygienic measure that he had every man examined daily to ascertain that he had not thrown off his flannels.
A distinguished author writes that the aged, infirm, rheumatic, and those liable to pulmonary disease, are greatly benefited by the use of flannel.
Dr. Willich says,—"Wool recommends itself to us, because it is the covering of those animals most resembling man in structure."
Count Rumford says he is convinced of the utility of flannel in all seasons, that he was relieved by its use from a pain in the breast, to which he was much subject, and had never since known an hour's illness.
The celebrated Hufeland says it is a desirable dress for the nervous, those subject to colds, catarrhs, influenzas, and, in fact, for all invalids.
Another writer says that desperate diseases would be prevented, and many valuable lives saved, by its more universal use.
A distinguished American physician says that flannel next the skin is of service to the consumptive by the irritation it produces, as well as the defence it affords against the cold.
An English authority says,—"Experience has so fully evinced the utility of covering the skin with flannel, that no person habituated to its use, in our damp climate, can be persuaded to dispense with it at any season of the year."