“If we were to go naked, like certain savage tribes; or if in hunting or fishing, we were exposed to the same degree of cold as the Samoyedes, we should be able with ease to consume ten pounds of flesh, and perhaps a dozen of tallow candles into the bargain, daily; as warm-clad travellers have related with astonishment of those people.”
“The Englishman, in Jamaica, feels with regret the disappearance of his appetite, previously a source of frequently recurring enjoyment. And he succeeds by the use of cayenne pepper and the most powerful stimulants, in enabling himself to take as much food as he was accustomed to eat at home. But the whole of the carbon thus introduced into the system is not consumed; the temperature of the air is too high, and the oppressive heat does not allow him to increase the number of respirations by active exercise, and thus to proportion the waste to the amount of food taken; disease of some kind, therefore, ensues.”
“The cooling of the body, by whatever cause it may be produced, increases the amount of food necessary, the mere exposure to the open air, in a carriage or on the deck of a ship, by increasing radiation and evaporation, increases the loss of heat and compels us to eat more than usual. The same is true of those who are accustomed to drink large quantities of water, which is given off at a temperature of the body 98°. It increases the appetite; and persons of weak constitution find it necessary, by continued exercise, to supply to the system the oxygen required to restore the heat abstracted by the cold water. Loud and long continued speaking, the crying of infants, and moist air, all exert a decided and appreciable influence on the amount of food which is taken.”—Liebig.
“No isolated fact,” says Dr. Johnson, “can contravene the law that the quantity of food is regulated by the number of respirations, by the temperature of the air, and by the amount of heat given off to the surrounding medium, as for instance by frequent bathing. Of course it is a matter of indifference whether that medium be cold air or cold water.”
As a healthy naked body generates by heightened perspiration of the skin, the same warmth as is produced by one which is covered, by means of retaining the perspiration; so every one who is quite well, might by use become so hardened, that during the coldest season he might feel, when naked, as comfortable as any one covered with wool. The truth of this was verified by two English gentlemen, the winter I spent at Gräfenberg. One day in December, when the thermometer was at 6°, of Reaumur, below zero, they proceeded to a mountain, took off all their clothes, except their drawers, and proceeded to the top, where, though the wind was blowing strong at the time, they remained two hours. They stated that after they had walked briskly, or got up the steam for ten minutes, a glow of heat came on, which counteracting the cold, produced the most agreeable sensation. Neither of these gentlemen caught cold or suffered in any way from this experiment.
The Scotch Highlander with his naked legs, does not feel colder, surrounded by mountains of ice, than we do who are clothed. We prove this by our bare faces in the coldest winter.
As the skin performs the double function, of drawing nourishment from the air, and exhaling the phlogisticised air of the diseased matter and worn-out atoms of the body, it follows that the true art of curing, must be to endeavour to restore these two functions. Hydropathy causes the ejection of diseased matter and revives the activity of the skin.
Dr. Johnson observes, “Discomforts are the necessary whips and spurs which keep the living energies awake; whilst comforts operate upon us like opiates: since to acquire a ‘comfort’ is only to remove a discomfort; and to remove what keeps us awake, is the same thing as to administer what will send us to sleep. The indulgences, therefore, wherewith even young and healthy men indulge themselves; the ‘comforts,’ as they call them, of flannel, warm clothing, closed doors, carpeted rooms, soft beds, hot food, are infinitely worse than absurd; because the opposites of all these luxuries, so far from being injurious to health, are absolutely necessary to it. We actually kill ourselves with comforts.”
XXVIII.—Drugs.
“Thus with our hellish drugs, Death’s ceaseless fountains
In these bright vales, o’er these green mountains
Worse than the very plague we raged.
I have myself to thousands poison given,
And hear their murderer praised as blest by heaven,
Because with Nature strife he waged.”
Göethe’s Faust.