FOOTNOTES:

[44] Body or matter of any sort, is said to be specifically heavier or lighter than other matter, when it has more or less substance or weight in the same dimensions.

[45] As the writer is neither physician nor philosopher, the reader may expect he should justify these his opinions by the authority of some that are so. M. Clare, F. R. S. in his treatise of The Motion of Fluids, says, page 246, &c. "And here it may be remarked, that it is more prejudicial to health to sit near a window or door, in a room where there are many candles and a fire, than in a room without; for the consumption of air thereby occasioned, will always be very considerable, and this must necessarily be replaced by cold air from without. Down the chimney can enter none, the stream of warm air always arising therein absolutely forbids it, the supply must therefore come in wherever other openings shall be found. If these happen to be small, let those who sit near them beware; the smaller the floodgate, the smarter will be the stream. Was a man, even in a sweat, to leap into a cold bath, or jump from his warm bed, in the intensest cold, even in a frost, provided he do not continue over-long therein, and be in health when he does this, we see by experience that he gets no harm. If he sits a little while against a window, into which a successive current of cold air comes, his pores are closed, and he gets a fever. In the first case, the shock the body endures, is general, uniform, and therefore less fierce; in the other, a single part, a neck, or ear perchance, is attacked, and that with the greater violence probably, as it is done by a successive stream of cold air. And the cannon of a battery, pointed against a single part of a bastion, will easier make a breach than were they directed to play singly upon the whole face, and will admit the enemy much sooner into the town."

That warm rooms, and keeping the body warm in winter, are means of preventing such diseases, take the opinion of that learned Italian physician Antonino Parcio, in the preface to his tract de Militis Sanitate tuenda, where, speaking of a particular wet and cold winter, remarkable at Venice for its sickliness, he says, "Popularis autem pleuritis quæ Venetiis sæviit mensibus Dec. Jan. Feb. ex cæli, aërisque inclementia facta est, quod non habeant hypocausta [stove-rooms] & quod non soliciti sunt Itali omnes de auribus, temporibus, collo, totoque corpore defendendis ab injuriis aëris; et tegmina domorum Veneti disponant parum inclinata, ut nives diutius permaneant super tegmina. E contra, Germani, qui experiuntur cæli inclementiam, perdidicere sese defendere ab aëris injuria. Tecta construunt multum inclinata, ut decidant nives. Germani abundant lignis, domusque hypocaustis; foris autem incedunt pannis pellibus, gossipio, bene mehercule loricati atque muniti. In Bavaria interrogabam (curiositate motus videndi Germaniam) quot nam elapsis mensibus pleuritide vel peripneumonia fuissent absumti: dicebant vix unus aut alter illis temporibus pleuritide fuit correptus."

The great Dr. Boerhaave, whose authority alone might be sufficient, in his Aphorisms, mentions, as one antecedent cause of pleurisies, "A cold air, driven violently through some narrow passage upon the body, overheated by labour or fire."

The eastern physicians agree with the Europeans in this point; witness the Chinese treatise entitled, Tschang seng; i.e. The Art of procuring Health and long Life, as translated in Pere Du Halde's account of China, which has this passage. "As, of all the passions which ruffle us, anger does the most mischief, so of all the malignant affections of the air, a wind that comes through any narrow passage, which is cold and piercing, is most dangerous; and coming upon us unawares insinuates itself into the body, often causing grievous diseases. It should therefore be avoided, according to the advice of the ancient proverb, as carefully as the point of an arrow." These mischiefs are avoided by the use of the new-invented fire-places, as will be shown hereafter.

[46] The shutter is slid up and down in this manner, only in those fire-places which are so made as that the distance between the top of the arched opening, and the bottom plate, is the same as the distance between it and the top plate. Where the arch is higher, as it is in the draught annexed (which is agreeable to the last improvements) the shutter is set by, and applied occasionally; because if it were made deep enough to close the whole opening when slid down, it would hide part of it when up.

[47] My Lord Molesworth, in his account of Denmark, says, "That few or none of the people there are troubled with coughs, catarrhs, consumptions, or such like diseases of the lungs; so that in the midst of winter in the churches, which are very much frequented, there is no noise to interrupt the attention due to the preacher. I am persuaded (says he) their warm stoves contribute to their freedom from these kind of maladies." page 91.

[48] People who have used these fire-places, differ much in their accounts of the wood saved by them. Some say five-sixths, others three-fourths, and others much less. This is owing to the great difference there was in their former fires; some (according to the different circumstances of their rooms and chimneys) having been used to make very large, others middling, and others, of a more sparing temper, very small ones: while in these fire-places (their size and draught being nearly the same), the consumption is more equal. I suppose, taking a number of families together, that two-thirds, or half the wood, at least, is saved. My common room, I know, is made thrice as warm as it used to be, with a quarter of the wood I formerly consumed there.

[49] Mr. Boyle, in his experiments and observations upon cold, Shaw's Abridgement, Vol. I. p. 684, says, "It is remarkable, that while the cold has strange and tragical effects at Moscow, and elsewhere, the Russians and Livonians should be exempt from them, who accustom themselves to pass immediately from a great degree of heat, to as great an one of cold, without receiving any visible prejudice thereby. I remember being told by a person of unquestionable credit, that it was a common practice among them, to go from a hot stove, into cold water; the same was also affirmed to me by another who resided at Moscow. This tradition is likewise abundantly confirmed by Olearius."—"It is a surprising thing, says he, to see how far the Russians can endure heat; and how, when it makes them ready to faint, they can go out of their stoves, stark naked, both men and women, and throw themselves into cold water; and even in winter wallow in the snow."

[50] See page 240, where the trap-door is described that ought to be in this closing.

TO DR. INGENHAUSZ, PHYSICIAN TO THE EMPEROR, AT VIENNA[51].