Thermal comfort

“ So, when we are clothed sufficiently for comfort and decency, more clothing is simply a burden; and we wish only for so much fire as will keep our thermometer within certain limits; a heat above or below would mean death either by burning or by freezing. Our ultimate aim, therefore, in regard to desires of this class, is not to increase the stimulus indefinitely, but to preserve a certain balance or equilibrium. ”

“ Do not huddle together in a little room around a red-hot stove, with every window fastened down. Do not live in this poisoned atmosphere, and then, when one of your children dies, put a piece in the papers commencing with, "Whereas, it has pleased divine Providence to remove from our midst—." Have plenty of air, and plenty of warmth. Comfort is health. Do not imagine anything is unhealthy simply because it is pleasant. ”

“ We have no air-tight houses. But in our latitude, comfort requires that rooms which are to be occupied by children in the [94] winter season, be made very close. The dimensions of rooms are, moreover, frequently narrowed, that the warm breath may lessen the amount of fuel necessary to preserve a comfortable temperature. ”

“ In a great many forms of illness the same principle holds good. It is safer, where there is any doubt, to try heat first, but not in a very strong manner. If this gentle heating makes matters worse, gentle cooling may be tried. If the heat does good, it may be continued and increased, but never beyond the point of comfort. If the cold does good, it also may be continued on the same principle. What the patient feels relieving and comforting, is almost sure to be the cure for his trouble, if persisted in. See Changing Treatment. ”

“ In sitting-rooms and in bedrooms it is equally essential to maintain an equable temperature; a fire in a bedroom is of first value at this season. The fire sustains the external warmth, encourages ventilation, and gives health not less than comfort. ”

“ In cold weather the air must be warmed to secure comfort; it must be changed to secure ventilation. The changing of the air carries off heat, the loss of which must be supplied by fuel, which fuel costs money. The greater the ventilation, the more rapid the change and the more heat required. ”

“ Air and Comfort.—Next to food, the most important adjuvant is fresh air. Often patients find many objections to this. It is too cold for them; they are shivery and become depressed. Most patients need to be dressed much more warmly than is the custom at present, and hands and feet should be covered with woolen gloves and socks and even a woolen hood worn around the head if necessary. ”

“ Our own sensations not always to be trusted. Thermometer. Why infants require more external heat than adults. Means of warmth. Air heated in other apartments. Clothes taking fire. Stove—railing around it. Excess of heat—its dangers.
There is one general principle, on this subject, which is alike applicable to all persons and circumstances. It is, to keep a little too cool, rather than in the slightest degree too warm. In other words, the lowest temperature which is compatible with comfort, is, in all cases, best adapted to health ”

“ The health, comfort and convenience of the civilized world are so intimately interwoven with results directly dependent upon the command, at will, of low temperature, that it is now of paramount importance to everyone. ”

“ When an out-of-door occupation was pursued a large part of the time or when the temperature indoors was hardly above freezing, then heavy clothing was essential; but now that much time is spent in a well-heated house or office, heavy clothing is as objectionable as overheated rooms, and the comfort and health of the body will be much better preserved by not increasing the weight of clothing except when exposed to the outer air. ”

“ The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness. ”

“ Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections. ”

“ 'Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness. ”

“ I saw four manner of dryings: the first was bloodlessness; the second was pain following after; the third, hanging up in the air, as men hang a cloth to dry; the fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and there was no manner of comfort ministered to Him in all His woe and distress. Ah! hard and grievous was his pain, but much more hard and grievous it was when the moisture failed and began to dry thus, shrivelling.
These were the pains that shewed in the blessed head: the first wrought to the dying, while it had moisture; and that other, slow, with shrinking drying, [and] ”

“ The stage of mental comfort to which they had arrived at this hour was one wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and spread their personalities warmly through the room. ”

“ Warming.—The subjects of warmth and ventilation are so closely related that they will necessarily overlap in their treatment. In point of importance probably no two subjects have a larger bearing upon health. No scheme has yet been devised by which satisfactory means of heating and ventilation are combined with money-saving. For purposes of ventilation, the old-time open hearth was without a rival. But while the faces of our grandparents were roasted, successive chills chased up their backs. In these days of scarcity of fuel, the open hearth is the rich man’s luxury. ”

“ However much you may augment the fire, the cold air becoming heated will rise, and fresh cold air will at once take its place; and therefore no equal distribution of warmth in the house will be attained. ”

“ You long for a shawl or a cloak; you draw yourself within yourself; you consult the thermometer, and are vexed to find that there is nothing there to be complained of,—it is standing most provokingly at the exact temperature that all the good books and good doctors pronounce to be the proper thing,—the golden mean of health; and yet perversely you shiver, and feel as if the face of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an angel. ”

“ It may well be supposed that, in this climate, the principal desideratum which art is called upon to furnish for the promotion of health, is warmth, as well in the external air as in the inhabited apartments. Exposure to a cold atmosphere, when the body is well clothed, produces no bad effect whatever beyond a frostbitten cheek, nose, or finger. ”

“ The crest of the heat-wave is always littered with suggestions as to what one should wear and eat and drink—especially what one shouldn't—how much one should rest, and how peaceful and serene one's mind, or what one uses in its place, should always remain. ”

“ The first object that claims the attention of persons in this state, is warmth; the external application of which ought to be proportioned to the temperature of the body, and gradually augmented, accordingly as the natural warmth of the individual increases. If duly applied, gentle heat possess both stimulating and strengthening properties, by which the activity of the vital principle is excited and supported. ”

“ And this is the history of your body being warm exactly like a dining-room stove, where the oxygen in the air forms an alliance with the hydrogen and carbon of the wood. Nature warms little girls inside, on precisely the same plan by which men warm their houses in winter. ”

“ They have listened to and satisfied the first imperative demands of nature—shelter from the elements and warmth,—and in doing this they have not brought into use that much higher order of intellect which can alone teach them how to supply, in connection with an agreeable warmth, an abundance of pure air in their otherwise air-tight houses. ”

“ Furnaces, whether of hot water, steam, or hot air, are all healthy and admirable provisions for warming our houses during the eight or nine months of our year that we must have artificial heat, if only, as I have said, fireplaces keep up a current of ventilation. ”

“ We, ourselves, perspire freely, and therefore use only the hot air, but as Sir Erasmus says: “The great purpose to be arrived at, so far as temperature is concerned, is to obtain one which shall be agreeable to the sensations.” ”

“ Plenty of Heat Needed. Any method of heating—open fireplace, stove, hot air, furnace, hot water, or steam—which will keep a room with the windows open comfortably warm in cold weather is satisfactory and healthful. ”

“ Light and pure air stimulate a healthful development, induce cheerfulness, hope, and recovery, while darkness begets gloom, sadness, despondency, disease, and ultimately death.
Warmth is essential to the well-being of the patient, and it is necessary that a proper temperature be maintained in the room. Except in very warm weather, a little fire should be kept in the room, and at the same time fresh air should be admitted from without, and a uniform temperature thus preserved. ”

“ And therefore every man should take care to not heat up his house too much in winter, as the ignorant do, for by excess heat many illnesses come; the Merciful One spare us. Rather, he should heat it so that he feels no chill, not heating it excessively. ”

“ Our vital powers should be trained to generate a good deal of heat; and what they have been trained to do, they should continue to perform. All the heat, I say, therefore, which the body will manufacture for itself, readily, it should be permitted to do. But the moment we depend, unnecessarily, on external means of warmth—as too much or too soft and warm bed clothing, and too warm an atmosphere—that moment our internal organs begin to be enervated, in a greater or less degree, whether we are sensible of it or not.
We should not sleep in the clothes we have worn during the day. ”

“ I hope no one will understand me as advocating heat alone as a life preserver, for I do not. It is heat alone that renders the systems of many children so susceptible to colds. It is uniformity and moderation in their whole management that I am trying to impress upon the minds of all who may desire to profit thereby. ”

“ But the most common mode of warming is by heated air introduced from a furnace. The chief objection to this is the loss of all radiated heat, and the consequent necessity of breathing air which is debilitating both from its heat and also from being usually deprived of the requisite moisture provided by the Creator in all out-door air. Another objection is the fact that it is important to health to preserve an equal circulation of the blood, and the greatest impediment to this is a mode of heating which keeps the head in warmer air than the feet. ”

“ Take a single room, and suppose on one side a current of outdoor air which has been warmed by passing through the air chamber of a modern furnace. Its temperature need not be above sixty-five,—it answers breathing purposes better at that. On the other side of the room let there be an open wood or coal fire. One cannot conceive the purposes of warmth and ventilation more perfectly combined. ”

“ It is now being more generally recognised in this country that the ventilation and the heating of a building should be kept separate and distinct, and that the fresh air warming arrangements should be independent of those employed for heating. ”

“ In health too great care in protecting the body from cold is the most potent cause of its impairment. Staying in rooms heated above a temperature of 70° F., wearing clothing unnecessarily heavy, and sleeping under an excess of bed clothes, all diminish the power of the body to produce heat. ”

“ The warmth is necessarily derived from the body, so that what is required of the underclothing is that it shall confine the warmth in its meshes; atmospheric air being one of the poorest conductors of heat, the material should be so constructed as to imprison a considerable quantity of air in its meshes. ”

“ It should be added that, though the latter class of actions also produce heat—as we all know when we walk about on a cold day to warm ourselves—yet the temperature induced by the automatic activities of the body alone is generally sufficient under normal circumstances to keep us comfortably warm. Thus, while we are asleep, only the actions of breathing and the beating of the heart continue; but the union of oxygen with the food-stuffs to produce these movements suffices as a rule to make bed quite hot enough for all healthy persons ”

“ The power to resist cold means the power to resist disease, and to be 53proof against intense cold, one must not only be well fed, and warmly clad, but thoroughly warm before exposure to the cold atmosphere out of doors. Protected by sufficient clothing, the body acts as a sort of store-house of heat, and a sufficiently large stock of warmth absorbed in the morning will last all day, and fresh supplies will be drawn from the heat-producing food consumed. ”

“ What physiological changes are induced by the high temperature and low humidity of ordinary school-room air? Is it true, as recent experiments suggest, that the goal for which the mechanical engineer strives in the ventilation and heating of a school building, that is, the maintenance of an absolutely even temperature and the avoidance of perceptible draft, is the worst possible condition that could be secured? ”

“ Yet, preserving the temperature of a warm room, it is an excellent precaution, and can easily be assumed when the shawl or cloak is put on. The atmosphere of a city is destructive where there is any pulmonary delicacy, and who shall say, where there is not pulmonary delicacy? In this climate, there is a tendency to it, more or less, in almost every family,—at all events, it is too easily induced in our predisposed constitutions, by cold, aided by the debilitating effect of heated rooms and an artificial mode of existence, and accelerated also, most decidedly, by bared shoulders. ”

“ By providing tight, warm sleeping-quarters, we save some of the food which would be used for warmth in a cold house. Plenty of fresh air I do believe in, but everything likes to be warm during the still, dark hours. ”