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Show A y Keeping Cool j TO AVOID sunstroke, keep in a breeze. This advice is from the medical editor of the London Times. He says that heat stroke is rare in well ventilated or- windy places, no matter how hot. The old idea was that "gettin' overcome over-come by heat" was due to temperature of the air. European physicians are swinging to the belief that heat prostrations and most hot weather discomfort are due more to stuffy air than to actual heat. People instinctively know this. Unconsciously, Un-consciously, on a hot day, you seek a position in a breeze or draft. Mechanically, this is the, same as the fan which cools an auto engine. Circulating air is the antidote for heat, though too powerful a breeze is apt to cause stiff necks or colds. The principle, that ventilation counteracts heat, applies also to clothing. That's why women suffer less th a n me n in hot weather. Air circu-lates circu-lates under their dresses, cooling the skin by evaporating warm perspiration. In the Malay jungles natives get this same effect by wearing an undervest made of bamboo the thickness of a pencil lead. The bamboo is cut into half-inch lengths and strung on cord in the formation of a fish net. The meshes or holes make cooling air pockets under the outer clothes.' Why do you wear heavy garments in winter? Your answer probably' is, "To keep out the cold." But the real effect of woolen underwear or a sealskin coat is to prevent the heat generated in our bodies from escaping into the cold air. Put a hot substance with a cold substance and the heat flows into the cold until the temperature of the two is nearly equalized. This happens in 'your refrigerator, heat flows out of worm food and melts the ice. That's how food cools bv losing a lot of its stored up heat. The same principle works in summer when porous clothing permits the escape of the body's heat into the air. The body's heat flows into the air or into a cold bath, like water through a pipe or electricity over a wire. When the atmosphere atmos-phere is saturated with water, the evaporation of perspiration is checked, there being no dry air to absorb it like water into a wet sponge. Hence the saying, "I wouldn't mind the heat if it wasn't for, the humidity." Misery also comes when escape of the body's heat is prevented by the atmosphere being still hotter. |