The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1916-10-19
AUTUMN HEALTH TIPS
By FREDERICK HASKIN

lC J. HASKlN
today. mans way of living is often
estimated as much by the size of his
wooQpile as anything else. Generous,
roaring fires, creating luxurious, re.
laXlng heat have become ore of the
American ideals of comfort. The great
fires have been forced out to some ex-
tent by modern heating appliances; but
the craving for high temperatures has
survived them.
: This self-indulgence of baking in an
excessive heat does little harm to a
hardy man, who leads an outdoor life
all day, but when the high temperatures
are@brought into apartment houses, and
other city homes where many people
spend most of their time indoors, and
into office buildings and school rooms,
the effect is really serious. For these
temperatures are enervating. They
lack stimulus, they coddle the skin.
making one more liable to take cold,
while the breathing of overheated air is
especially harmful.
In regulating the temperature of your
house, you should not take comfort as
the standard. What will feel comfor-
table to you, depends entirely upon what
temperatures you have been accustom-
ed to. A person who has always kept
his room at eighty or higher will feel
uncomfortable at seventy; while robust
men who live a great deal out doors
would ind that temperature oppressive
and sixty degrees quite comfortable.
Anyone should be able to accustom
/ himself to an indoor temperature of
seventy degrees. The braclng weather
of this time of the year, the temperature
of sunny mid-autumn day, is what we
should try to reproduce in our houses,
and not the enervatlng heat of summer.
High indoor temperatures are es-
peclally injurious to children. "a
temperature higher than seventy de-
grees in school room is worse than
illiteracy, >, is the way Surgeon j. M.
Eager of the Public Health Service
puts it. And vet, because the teacher
feels chilly, children in American schools
are often subjected to temperatures of
eighty or even eighty-fve degrees. 1t
is not always the teacher or the school
authorities that are primarily to blame
either. Frequently, children coming
from oyerheated homes complain of the
cold school rooms. and are Indignantly
supported by their parents. who imagine
that the atmosphere Of seventy degrees
means danger of pneumonia,
/ The subject can not be better summed
up than in the following words written
by Surgeon Eager:
/ Moderate temperatures slightly in
clined to GOODNESS, promotes mental and
bodily activity, and increase resistance
to infectious disease. High tempera-
lures induce bodily lasitude and mental
dullness, with corresponding depression
of health and resultant loss Of appetite
and low spirits. The antidote Is some
times sought in stimulating food and
drink, with sad train of troubles.
such as dyspepsia and alcoholism. So
one sort of intemperance is added to
another-eXcess IN drink to excess IN
| heat. "
The way to learn to like healthfu-
temperatures is to cultivate their ac-
quaintance outdoors. Vacation in
crisp fall weather are much better than
summer hammock loafng. Learn the
pleasure and stimulus of tramping
against singing winds, and you will
not crave high indoor temperatures.
There is one other tip worth taking
about the regulation of temperature.
Moist air feels warmer, and is more
congenial, than cold air. You should
regulate the humidity as we'll as the
temperature in which you live. An
open dish of water will supply the
moisture which artifcially warmed air
often lacks.