A manual of clinical medicine and physical diagnosis / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner.

  • Tanner, Thomas Hawkes, 1824-1871.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of clinical medicine and physical diagnosis / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    90/346 (page 72)
    / 72 CIRCUMSTANCES „ WHICH MODIFY DISEASE. In some instances tlie influence of liabit is salutary, as we see in persons who become acclimated in malarious or otherwise unhealthy districts, and in those whose sensi- bility to cold and wet is blunted by habitual exposure. In the same way many systems become reconciled to the .habitual use of certain classes of poisons—probably those only which are derived from the vegetable kingdom—as tobacco, opium, and alcohol, which even become sources of enjoyment, and apparently, to a certain extent, of health. 7- Climate and Temperature.—The influence of cli- mate and temperature over disease, either in promoting, modifying, or alleviating it, is now generally admitted by all practitioners of medicine. Climate is of course made up of the elements of temperature, moisture, varying pressure of the atmosphere, soil and physical conformation of a country. The range of atmospheric temperature compatible with life is very extensive. Gibbon—after stating that the Boman soldiers, from their excellent discipline, maintained health and vigour in all climates—adds, that man is the only animal which can live and multiply in every country, from the equator to the poles. Man is much indebted to the ingenuity of lorn mind in raising up numerous barriers to protect his constitution from the deleterious efiects of extreme heat or cold. This fact is at least certain, that a mode of living essential to health in the northern regions, will prove rapidly destructive at the equator, and vice versa; though it is worthy of notice that greater care is necessary to preserve life under very great cold than under intense heat. Extremes of heat or cold are better borne than any sudden change in temperature, though such changes are by no means so destructive to health as is commonly imagined. Some interesting remarks are made in reference to the cold against which man can become proof by Dr. Hartwig,* in his work on the Polar Eegions. Dr. Hartwig remarks that, in very cold places, after a few days the body developes an increasing warmth; for the air being condensed by the cold, the lungs inhale at every breath a greater quantity of oxygen, which of course accelerates the internal process of combustion, whilst at * See The Polar World. By Dr. G. Hartwig. Longmans. 1866,