It is safe to say that hundreds in this country are at present alive and enjoy excellent health who, but for the use of flannel and such like fabrics next the skin, would have been, ere this, numbered with the dead; and it is not too much to say that thousands are at this moment in perfect health through the kindly action of the same clothing, whose lives were threatened with constant coughs, periodical colds, quinseys, rheumatisms, and incipient disease of lungs, and other organs of the chest, before this efficient guardian of health was adopted.
Flannel and fabrics of the same or like nature go far to preserve an equable temperature at the surface of the body, promote the perspiration of the skin, which they readily absorb when copiously secreted, and are specially useful in preserving the balance of the secretions on the surface and in the interior of the body. Now all these most important conditions, which the use of flannel goes so far to maintain, are ever liable to be subverted and disturbed, whenever the body is thinly or inadequately covered, by changes in the ever varying temperature of the atmosphere, and by the prevalence of winds and currents.
Most of the important constitutional diseases which occur in this country, begin with a sensation of coldness with shivering and trembling; now it is the usual property of flannel, and such fabrics, when worn next the skin, and indeed of warm and general good clothing, to obviate and prevent these conditions of the body, and thus disease may be met at its very onset, and perhaps baffled ere it has time to establish its dominion.
“In some situations my personal experience enables me to vouch for the utility of flannel. Of this we had a very striking proof in the second battalion of the Royals, while suffering from a most aggravated form of dysentery in India. General Conran, the late Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, who at that time commanded the Royals, was so fully persuaded of the benefits likely to accrue from the general use of flannel, that he went down from Wallajahabbad, where the regiment was then stationed, to Madras, on purpose to represent to the government the distress of his men, and to suggest the expediency of a supply of flannel shirts. This he did with so much effect, backed by the late Dr Anderson, the Physician-General, that the flannels were immediately ordered, and, in my opinion, contributed much to check the alarming progress of the disease.”[[11]]
[11]. Ballingall’s Military Surgery.
It is usual with many individuals to wear flannel only over the chest, but it is wise to envelope the whole body in that most useful article of clothing.
The poor or labouring man should endeavour to procure thick soled shoes, in good repair, and substantial worsted stockings.
The latter are generally esteemed stronger and more durable when made at home, and will form excellent work for his wife or daughter in the winter nights.
The working man will find, that though clothing substantially, as has been above recommended, takes a considerable proportion of his money immediately out of his pocket, he will be a certain gainer in the end, aye, probably in the course of a few years or months, by consequent immunity from disease, and from continued capacity for labour.