Fig. 53 —Showing how to prevent the shoe from pressing on corns caused by wearing tight shoes or socks roughly darned.
Shoes.—Badly fitting shoes cause sore feet and much pain. A shoe that is tight across the toes is sure to cause corns. A corn is a thickened part of the top skin which presses on the more tender part beneath. Soaking the feet in hot water and filing off the top of the corn or using a corn plaster will help it. Shoes should always be a half inch longer than the foot. Waterproof shoes or rubbers should be worn in wet weather. Rubbers should not be worn in the house.
Alcohol and Clothing.—Many persons think that a drink of whisky will make them warm when taken on a cold day. For this reason whisky is sometimes used when clothing is really needed. The use of whisky or any other alcoholic drink will not make the body warm. It may make one feel warm because it loosens the muscles in the blood tubes of the skin and so lets more blood come to the surface. In this way the body becomes colder because too much blood gets into the skin and is then chilled by the cold air. As alcohol deadens the feeling it may prevent one from feeling cold when the body is really very cold. Too little clothing and too much alcohol have been known to cause men to freeze to death.
Experience in using Alcohol to keep the Body Warm.—Doctor Hayes, who went as physician with Doctor Kane to explore in the Arctic regions, said that he would never again take alcoholic drink with him on such a trip. He declared alcohol was of no use in helping men to keep warm. He found from actual experience that those who use alcohol cannot endure cold so well as other people.
Doctor Carpenter, a well-known physician, tells of a crew of sixty-six men who tried to stay in Hudson Bay all winter. They used some alcoholic drink. Only two of the party lived through the winter. Later another party of twenty-two men passed the winter in the same place. They used no strong drink at any time and as a consequence all but two of them were reported well and strong in the following spring.
CHAPTER XIV
BREATHING
The Lungs.—The lungs are two light spongy bodies filling up the greater part of the chest. The heart lies between the lungs. The lungs are formed largely of thousands of thin-walled sacs and two sets of tubes. One set of tubes carries air into and out of the lungs, and the other set is filled with blood. These sacs and tubes are held in place by a loose meshwork of tissue.