through. When the vessels are full, occasioned by a course of full living, they labor in carrying on the circulation; their spring or power of contraction and compressing the fluids they contain, being overstrained, is weakened, the circulation proceeds more slowly, the fluids thicken and become more gluey, both for want of due churning and because less heat is produced in the body. Such a body requires more aid of clothing and fire to preserve its warmth. If a person in that state of body walks a mile or two, or uses any other exercise that warms him, the fluids are rarefied by the heat, distend the vessels still more, and the thinner parts of the fluids in tender places force out through the pores of the vessels in form of a gluey water, viz. at the eyes, within the nose, and within the lungs. This in moderate exercise. If the exercise is increased it comes through every pore in the skin, and is called sweat. The more volatile parts of this extravasated fluid evaporate, and fly off in the air; the gluey part remains, thickens and hardens more or less, as it becomes more or less dry; in the nose and on the lungs, where air is continually coming and going, it soon becomes a mucus, but can hardly grow drier because surrounded with moist parts and supplied with more moisture. What oozes out of the corner of the eye when shut, as in sleep, hardens into what is called a kind of gum, being in fact dry glue. This in a morning almost sticks the eyelids together. With such mucous matter the nose is sometimes almost stopped, and must be cleared by strong blowing. In the windpipe and on the lungs it gathers and is impacted, so as sometimes to induce a continual coughing and hawking to discharge it. If not easily discharged, but remaining long adhering to the lungs, it corrupts and inflames the parts it is in contact with; even behind the ears and between the parts of the body so constantly in contact, that the perspirable matter, sweat, &c. cannot easily escape from between them; the skin is inflamed by it, and a partial putrefaction begins to take place, they corrupt and ulcerate. The vessels being thus wounded, discharge greater and continual quantities. Hence consumption. Part of the corrupted matter, absorbed again by the vessels and mixed with the blood, occasions hectic fevers. When the body has sweated, not from a dissolution of fluids, but from the force above mentioned, as the sweat dries off, some clammy substance remains in the pores, which closes many of them, wholly or in part. The subsequent perspiration is hereby lessened. The perspirable matter consists of parts approaching to putrefaction, and therefore destined by nature to be thrown off, that living bodies might not putrefy, which otherwise, from their warmth and moisture, they would be apt to do. These corrupting particles, if continually thrown off, the remainder of the body continues uncorrupt, or approaches no nearer to a state of putrefaction. Just as in boiling water, no greater degree of heat than the boiling heat can be acquired, because the particles that grow hotter, as fast as they become so, fly off in vapor. But if the vapor could be retained, water might be made much hotter, perhaps red-hot, as oil may, which is not so subject to evaporation. So if the perspirable matter is retained it remixes with blood, and produces first, a slight putrid fever, attending always what we call a cold, and when retained in a great degree, more mischievous putrid diseases. In hot countries, exercise of body with the heat of the climate create much of this putrid perspirable matter, which ought to be discharged. A check is in those countries very pernicious; putrid malignant violent fevers, and speedy death, the consequence. Its discharge is also checked another way besides that of closing the pores, viz. by being in an air already full of it, as in close rooms containing great numbers of people, playhouses, ballrooms, &c. For air containing a quantity of any kind of vapor, becomes thereby less capable of imbibing more of that vapor, and finally will take no more of it. If the air will not take it off from the body, it must remain in the body; and the perspiration is as effectually stopped, and the perspirable matter as certainly retained, as if the pores were all stopped. A lock of wet wool contained in a nutmeg-grater, may dry, parting with its moisture through the holes of the grater. But if you stop all those holes with wax it will never dry. Nor, if exposed to the open air, will it dry when the air is as moist as itself. On the contrary, if already dry, and exposed to moist air, it would acquire moisture. Thus people in rooms heated by a multitude of people, find their own bodies heated; thence the quantity of perspirable matter is increased that should be discharged, but the air, not being changed, grows so full of the same matter, that it will receive no more. So the body must retain it. The consequence is, that next day, perhaps sooner, a slight putrid fever comes on, with all the marks of what we call a cold, and the disorder is supposed to be got by coming out of a warm room, whereas it was really taken while in that room. Putrid ferments beget their like. - Small-pox. Wet rotten paper, containing corrupt glue. The cold fever communicable by the breath to others, &c. Urine retained, occasions sneezing, &c. Coughing and spitting continually, marks of intemperance. People eat much more than is necessary. Proportionable nourishment and strength is not drawn from great eating. The succeeding meals force the preceding through half-undigested. Small meals continue longer in the body, and are more thoroughly digested. The vessels being roomy can bear and receive without hurt, an accidental excess. They can concrete more easily. There is less quantity of corrupting particles produced. Putrid fish very bad. Black Hole in the Indies. TO SAMUEL COOPER." * Stoves for Public Buildings. London, 7 July, 1773. I congratulate you on the finishing of your new meetinghouse. I have considered, as well as I can, without being on the spot, the intention of warming it It must by some machine in the cold damp seasons. be a matter of difficulty to warm sensibly all the air in so large and so lofty a room, especially if the fire is * Dr. Samuel Cooper, an eminent clergyman of Boston, with whom Dr. Franklin held a correspondence for many years. - EDITOR not kept up in it constantly on the week days as well as Sundays. For, though the machine is very large and made very hot, yet the space of air and quantity of wall to be warmed is so great, that it must be long before any considerable effect will be produced. Then it will descend by the walls and windows, which being very cold by the preceding week's absence of fire, will cool that descending air so much in so long a descent, that it will fall very heavily and uncomfortably upon the heads of all that happened to sit under it, and will proceed in cold currents along the floor to the warming machine wherever it is situated. This must continue till the walls are warmed, for which I think one day is by no means sufficient, and that therefore a fire kindled in the morning of the Sabbath will afford no comfort to the congregation that day, except to a few that sit near it, and some inconvenience to the rest from the currents above mentioned. The If, however, your people, as they are rich, can afford it, and may be willing to indulge themselves, should choose to keep up a constant fire in the winter months, you may have from this country a machine for the purpose, cast from the same patterns with those now used at the Bank, or that in Lincoln's Inn Hall, which are placed in the middle of the respective rooms. smoke of these descends, and passing under ground, rises in some chimney at a distance. Yours must be a chimney built, I suppose, without the house; and, as it ought to draw well to prevent your being troubled with smoke (as they often are at the Bank), it should be on the south side; but this I fear would disfigure your front. That at Lincoln's Inn Hall draws better. They are in the form of temples, cast in iron, with columns, cornices, and every member of elegant archi tecture. |