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disorder we call a cold from cold air, and therefore never at meeting, I should think it rather advisable to those who cannot well bear it, to guard against the short inconvenience of cold feet, (which only takes place towards the end of the service,) by basses or bear-skin cases to put the legs in, or by small stoves with a few coals under foot, more majorum.

PREPARATORY NOTES AND HINTS FOR WRITING A PAPER CONCERNING WHAT IS CALLED, CATCHING OF COLD.

DEFINITION OF A COLD.

Ir is a siziness and thickness of the blood, whereby the smaller vessels are obstructed, and the perspirable matter retained, which being retained offends both by its quantity and quality; by quantity, as it outfills the vessels, and by its quality, as part of it is acrid, and being retained, produces coughs and sneezing by irritation.

HOW THIS SIZINESS IS PRODUCED.

1. By being long exposed in a cold air, without exercise: cold thickens glue.

2. By a diminished perspiration, either (1) from breathing and living in moist air, or (2) from the clogging of the pores by clammy sweat dried on and fastening down the scales of the skin; or (3) by cold constringing the pores partially or totally, sleeping or waking; or (4) by having eat foods of too gross particles for free perspiration, as oysters, pork, ducks, &c. People are found frequently costive after much bathing.

3. By repletion, as when more is thrown into the habit by eating and drinking than common perspiration is capable of discharging in due time; whence the vessels are distended beyond their spring, and the quantity of contained fluid, that should be briskly moved to preserve or acquire a due thinness, is too weighty for their force, whence a slow motion,-thence viscidity. This repletion is increased by a constipation of the belly happening at the same time. In an approaching cold, more water is made than usual.

4. By cooling suddenly in the air after exercise. Exercise quickening the circulation, produces more perspirable matter in a given time, than is produced

in rest. And though more is likewise usually discharged during exercise, yet on sudden quitting of exercise, and standing in the air, the circulation and production of perspirable matter still continuing some time, the over quantity is retained. It is safer not to go into water too cold.

5. By particular effluvia in the air, from some unknown cause. General colds throughout a country. By being in a coach close, or small room with a person having a cold.

6. By relaxation of the solids, from a warm and moist air, so that they are too weak to give due motion to the fluids.

Of partial colds affecting parts only of the body.

Causes of feverishness attending colds.

Ill consequences often attending colds, as pleurisies, consumptions, &c. Some never taking cold, some frequently; cause of the difference.

Present remedies for a cold, should be warming, diluting, bracing.

Means of preventing cold; temperance, choice of meats and drinks, warm rooms, and lodging and clothing in winter; dry air, care to keep the belly open, and frequent discharge of water, warm bathing to cleanse the skin: rubbing after sweat, especially in the spring.

Difficulties that first put me on thinking on this subject. People get cold by less, and not by more, viz.

By putting on a damp shirt, on a dry body-Yes.

By putting on a dry shirt on a wet body, though this wets the shirt ten times more-No.

By sitting in a room, where the floor has been newly washed-Yes.

By going into a river, and staying there an hour (no sheets so wet)-No.

By wetting the feet only-Yes.

By wetting all the clothes through to the body, and wearing them a whole day-No.

By sitting in a room against a crevice-Yes.

By sitting as long in the open air-No.

Few of these effects take place, if the vessels are kept empty.

REAPERS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Drinking cold water when they are hot.

If it makes them sweat, they are safe,

If not they fall ill, and some die.

People hot, should drink by spoonfuls: the reason.

Taking cold. The disorder only called so in English and in no other language. American Indians, in the woods, and the whites in imitation of them, lie with their feet to the fire in frosty nights, and take no cold while they can keep their

feet warm.

Feet and hands apt to be cold in that disorder, and why. Is it the siziness, or the greater evaporation?

Hottentots grease themselves,-occasions other evacuations more plentiful. Greasing keeps the body warm. Bad to hold the water too long. Parts colder when first unclothed than afterwards, why?

It was a disgrace among the ancient Persians to cough or spit.
Probably as it argued intemperance.

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Vessels when too full leak. Quicksilver through leather. Thin fluid leaked evaporates. Corners of eyes, &c. Sizy will not all evaporate. What is left corrupts. Hence consumptions. Hectic fevers, from absorption of putrid pus. It ferments the blood like yeast.

People seldom get cold at sea, though they sleep in wet clothes. Constant exercise, moderate living. Bad cooks. Yet air is very moist. Wet floors. Sea surrounding, &c.

Exercise cures a cold. Bishop Williams riding several times from London or Exeter, to Salisbury.

Bark good for a cold taken early.

Particular parts more accustomed to discharge the irritating perspirable matter, as under the arms in some, feet in others, &c.

Experiment of two razors.

Every pain or disorder now ascribed to a cold.

It is the covering excuse of all intemperance.

Numbers of people in a close room, and exercising there, fill the air with putrid particles.

People killed by House of Commons, breathing the air through holes in ceiling.

Think they get cold by coming out of such hot rooms; they get them by being in.

Those who live in hotter rooms (stoves) get no colds;

Germans and all the northern people.

Alderman and turtle.

People remark they were very well before a cold and eat hearty. Wonder how they catched it.

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Advice for mode of general temperance without appearing too singular.

Supper not bad after preparatory light dinner.

May be rectified by slight breakfast next morning.

He must be too full that one excess will much disorder.

Time of great meal mended of late.

One hour variation of compass in twenty years.

After dinner not fit for business.

People from the country get cold when they come to London, and why? Full living with moist air. London air generally moist, why? Much putrid air in London. Silver, &c.

Cooks and doctors should change maxims.

Common sense more common among the common Scotch.

Those who do not compare, cannot conceive the difference between themselves and themselves in full or spare living.

Wet newspapers, why give colds.

Old libraries, and damp old books.
Putrid animal matter in paper size.
Courts should not sit after dinner.

Juries fast, a good institution.

Chess--Impatience of deliberation because more difficult. Writing, &c. Most follies arise from full feeding. Reasons pro and con not all present. Temperate nations wisest.

Dining entertainments bad.

Remains of barbarism-expensive.

Full feeding of children stupifies.

Fasting strengthens reason rather than subdues passion.

People often do not get cold when they think they do, and do when they

think they do not.

Causes of colds are primary and secondary.

Colds are of different kinds, putrid and plethoric.

Scarce any air abroad so unwholesome as air in a close room often breathed. Warm air dissolves more moisture than cold.

In hot countries men wrap themselves in wet sheets to sleep.

A general service to redeem people from the slavish fear of getting cold, by showing them where the danger is not, and that where it is, 'tis in their power

to avoid it.

Surfeit, an expression formerly used, now laid aside.

Costiveness occasioning colds, how to be prevented.

Colds formerly called rheums and catarrhs.

Particular foods said to engender rheums.

Quere. Is Mr. Wood more or less subject to catch cold since he betook himself to his low diet?

Answer (by Mr. Wood). He now finds himself much more healthy, and much less liable to catch cold. What few colds he now catches are so very slight that he is not sensible of them, but from the urine, which is then not so clear.

I caused the above question to be asked Mr. Wood, and obtained the answer. It is the Mr. Wood who lives upon a pound of flour in a pudding. B. FRANKLIN.

Dampier, speaking of the customs of the people at Mindanoo, p. 330, says, You see abundance of people in the river from morning to night washing their bodies or clothes: they strip and stand naked till they have done; then put them on and march out again."

Dr. Gregory says,

All that class of diseases which arise from catching cold, is found only among the civilised part of mankind. An old Roman or an Indian, in the pursuit of war or hunting, would plunge into a river whilst in a profuse sweat, without fear, and without danger. The greater care we take to prevent catching cold,

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