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KEEPING WELL |
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kets also clean, and everything well aired and ventilated; these will produce sleep and promote health.
Our Clothing
Of course the first requisite of clothing is that it must be adapted to the purpose for which it is to be used: the mechanic must have coarse clothing, or overalls; the house servant must have an apron or a wrapper; children must be equipped for the various mishaps to which they are liable, and the idle butterflies, male and female, must be so robed as to attract attention and excite remark, if possible. It must also be remembered that the primary object of clothing is not to communicate heat to the body, but to furnish a barrier between the temperature of the atmosphere and the temperature of the body. The latter in health is nearly constant (98.40 F.), ihe former is constantly varying.
Savages, except in very cold climates, do not require clothing, the skin being toughened by exposure and becoming an efficient non-conductor of heat and cold. We wear light clothing in summer, because this prevents the passage of heat rays through it to the body. We wear dark clothes in winter, because they absorb heat rays and exclude rays of light. Furs and woolens are agreeable and suitable in cold weather, because they are excellent non-conductors. Whether one should wear cotton, woolen, silk, or linen next the skin must be settled by choice, by experience, and not infrequently by the stern conditions imposed by limited financial means. Each of these different materials has its advocates, who claim its superiority to the others.
Personal experience inclines the writer to prefer woolen undergarments, but never very heavy, for all weather except the heated months of summer. They absorb the perspiration readily, do not, when moist, give to the body the unpleasant, chilly sensation given by damp cotton undergarments, and have seemed the most efficient non-conductors, especially for great variations in the temperature.
It seems hardly necessary to say that loose clothing in sum- |
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