to
cold, but I believe that there never was a well attested instance
where cold alone, without being either followed by heat or some other
stimulus, produced a real sthenic, or inflammatory disease. This is
not merely a distinction, it is a circumstance of the utmost
importance, because it influences the mode of practice to be pursued.
Heat is one of the exciting or stimulant powers which support life,
and one of the most powerful of these stimulants; but cold is only a
diminution of it: how then can this produce a sthenic state, or a
state of too high excitement? The blood is one of the exciting
powers, which, by its continual circulation supports life; but surely
if we abstracted a quantity of this fluid from the body, no person
will be bold enough to say, that we by that means should produce an
inflammatory disease. Cold renders the body more liable to be
affected by heat, or any other stimulus applied, but does not of
itself produce any stimulant or inflammatory effects.
To see more clearly the manner in which cold acts, let us inquire how
it produces or contributes towards the production of catarrh. When we
go into the cold air, at every respiration we take a quantity of it
into the lungs, which brushes over the surface of the mucous membrane
that lines the nostrils and trachea, and thus, robbing them of their
heat, allows the excitability to accumulate. But we feel no fever, no
sense of tightness or stuffing, nor any other symptom of catarrh, so
long as we continue in the cold. If however we afterwards go into a
warm room, and particularly near a fire, we receive by the act of
respiration the warm air into those very parts which have been
previously exposed to cold, and whose excitability is consequently
accumulated. The first effect we perceive is a glow of the parts,
which is by no means unpleasant, this however increases; and, in the
course of half an hour or an hour, a sense of dryness and huskiness
comes on, with a sensation of stuffing in the nostrils, and a
tendency to a short dry cough: often likewise, if the exposure to
cold has been considerable, and the heat afterwards applied great and
sudden, we experience a shivering, and other symptoms of fever. These
symptoms are all increased by taking into the stomach any liquid that
is either of warm temperature or stimulating quality, or particularly
both; we spend a restless night, and awake with all the symptoms of a
catarrh, or cold, as it is improperly ca
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