STRANGE TEMPERATURES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIII, Issue XLIII, 6 April 1909, Page 2

STRANGE TEMPERATURES.

The experience of the Nimrod adventurers give interest just now to a highly physiological paper in the "Technical World" on "The Mystery of Temperature." That a man 's normal bodily heat can remain precisely the same in the frigid zone and in the tropics is the first great mystery. That it may vary, under abnormal conditions, to extreme oppositcs of height or lowness, while the man still remains alive, may seem a wonder as great to persons not qualified to joiu an Association of Physicians. There is a comment upon temperatures, however, which reads grimly in connection with Lieutenaut Shackleton's Antarctic records. "The lowe«t recorded during life that .may be regarded as reliable is one reported by Duffy, in which the thermometer registered S4 degrees Fahrenheit. Death ensued the following day." It was towards such a death-point that the party must have ; „..„.l :t „-:!. >.....«(..« JVIUIIVJtX. iX, Mill IViUIjJVIIIVII.V I*.*t«uj down to 93 degrees, it had still pushed on. With reasonable food and shelter, the body can resist cold rather better than it deals with exremes of heat. "Freezing to death is nota as common in cold climates as sunstroke is in warm." Still, by its capacity for self-adjustment, excessively high measures of heat may be borne without raising the internal temperature in any unusual or painful fashion.. There is always a chance, too, of discovering yourself to be a "human salamander, ' ' such as the baker Martinez, who, having exposed himself to high temperatures from boyhood, rejoiced at last in spending a quarter of an hour or so in his own" oven, when the oven thermometer stood at 338 Fahrenheit. Then there was Chamoni, the Russian salamander, known proudly as "The Incombustible." He would enter an oven and remain thtero while a leg of mutton was being roasted, not retiring until the joint was well done. Only he did this too often, and died over his last performance. Somo persons, for much slighter cause, have devcloped-abnor 1 .'." mal temperatures enough to frighten a doctor. In 1895, an hysterical fireman injured by a fall was reported by his very careful and accurate physician to have reached tbe almost incredible figure of 148 degrees. A patient in Guy's Hospital once ran up so high that the everyday clinical thermometer could not register her degrees of fever. When tested by one with a larger scale, she was 128 degrees Fahrenheit, but she only complained about the change of instrument, sayiug that she did not like them to use a "horse thermometer." Animals, by tho way, have some need for a different test. The cow is normal, not feverish, when she is 102.5 degrees, and the sheep, warm inside her fleece at a common temperature of 106 degrees, can afford to .disregard wind and weather. Yet the wolf howls his way through the world at only 95 degrees. No wonder that he is rather a cold-hearted beast.