Does this mean that I suggest reverting to primitive conditions and giving up heat? No, indeed. I suffered enough last winter. I do not advocate giving up heat—suddenly. But letting up gradually on artificial heat, I do most earnestly advocate. Most of us live an over-heated existence—to the depletion of our health. The steam pipe, like a huge python, is closing its coils about us, and gradually stifling our native vital resources.
On the coldest days of winter a white-haired man, nearly seventy years of age, may be seen walking New York streets, without a hat, clad only in light “Palm Beach” trousers, and a silk negligée shirt, open at the throat. “He is crazy,” you say. “Perhaps,” I answer, “but at any rate he is healthy—and immune from cold.” Heatless days mean nothing to him. On a raw, drizzling day in November last a slender man was playing golf in a light woolen suit. A companion player, weighing over 200 pounds, full blooded and hearty in appearance, and bundled up in two heavy sweaters, asked the lightly clad player if he was not afraid of catching a fatal cold. “No,” he answered, “you are the one that gives me concern. If I had your clothing on I would be a sick man. I am not healthy enough to wear all those things.”
Which means that we would be better off in health if we could accustom ourselves to less heat; if we could live as the people of some other nations do—comfortable and content with heat enough to take the chill off the air, and not demanding that we shall be “kept going” by means of artificial heat outside of our own natural heat-giving apparatus. We make caloric cripples of ourselves by giving crutches to nature in the form of roaring furnaces and hissing steam pipes. Fresh cold air is better for us than hot air—in winter as well as in summer. Would it not be worth while to form a national Fresh Air Fraternity, based on the principle of foregoing artificial heat and developing the original body caloric? We would then leave artificial heat largely to infants, weaklings and invalids; we would abolish several diseases altogether, improve the mortality rate, and be healthy, happy and vigorous. Incidentally, too, we would have more coal for cooking and other really necessary purposes.
W. D. Moffat
Editor