The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions ; to which is now added, an essay on morbid sensibility of the stomach and bowels, as the proximate cause, or characteristic condition of indigestion, nervous irritability, mental despondency, hypochondriasis, &c. &c. preceded by observations on the diseases and regimen of invalids, on their return from hot and unhealthy climates / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson, James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions ; to which is now added, an essay on morbid sensibility of the stomach and bowels, as the proximate cause, or characteristic condition of indigestion, nervous irritability, mental despondency, hypochondriasis, &c. &c. preceded by observations on the diseases and regimen of invalids, on their return from hot and unhealthy climates / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    lions from health, by early arresting their growth, or at least re- tarding, as much as possible, their progress, that we can at all expect to evade those dangerous diseases* to which they inevita- bly, though often imperceptibly, tend. I.—The transition from a climate, the medium heat of which is 52°. of Fahrenheit, to one where the thermometer ranges from 80°. to 100°. and sometimes higher, might be supposed, a priori, to occasion the most serious consequences. Indeed, the celebrated Boerhaave, from some experiments on animals, concluded that the blood would coagulate in our veins, at a temperature very little exceeding 100°. More modern trials, however, have proved that the human frame can bear, for a short time at least, more than double the above degree of atmospherical heat, and that too with- out greatly increasing the natural, temperature of the body. The benevolent author of our existence has endowed man, as well as other animals, with the power, not only of generating heat, and preserving their temperature, in the coldest regions of the earth; but has also provided an apparatus for carrying off any superabundance of it that might accumulate where the tempera- ture of the atmosphere approaches to or exceeds that of the body. With the former process, which is supposed to be carried on in the lungs, we have, at present, nothing to do ; the latter is one which deserves great attention, and which will meet with ample consideration in various parts of this Essay. We are no sooner beneath a vertical sun, than we begin, as may naturally be supposed, to experience the disagreeable sensation of unaccustomed warmth; and as the temperature of the atmos- phere, even in the shade, now advances to within ten or twelve degrees of that of the blood, and in the sun very generally exceeds it, the heat, perpetually generated in the body, cannot be so ra- pidly abstracted, as hitherto, by the surrounding air, and would, of course, soon accumulate so as to destroy the functions of life Itself, did not Nature immediately open the sluices of the skin, and by a flow of perspiration, reduce the temperature of the body to its original standard. Whether the superabundant animal heat combines with the perspirable fluid, and thus escapes; or whether the refrigeration takes place on the principle of evaporation, is more a matter of speculation than practical importance to ascertain. We know the fact, that perspiration is a cooling process. The modus operandi —let our Chemical Philosophers settle if they can. When we contemplate this admirable provision of nature, against what might appear to us an unforeseen event;—when we survey the resources and expedients which she can command on all emergencies—her power of supplying every waste, and re- straining every aberration of the constitution, wc would be almost