100° Fahr., while that of the room in which the baby spends most of its time should not exceed 65° Fahr., and the little one is often in much lower temperatures than that; but my critic apparently believes that warmth gets into the body from the outside, ignoring the above fact, and missing the whole object of my contention, that children should be clad in woollen to prevent the loss of their natural heat. In point of fact, a shivering baby put into thick woollen clothes would very soon become warm and comfortable, simply because it would thus be allowed to retain the heat it was making for itself. Again, "A Lover of Babies" speaks of fur jackets as "producing undue heat," and thus only restates the popular fallacy.
Heat has been made the subject of so many thousand books, lectures, and articles by scientific men, that it is really time every one should know that it is the body which makes animal heat, not the clothes. We may find a homely but convincing proof of this fact any cold night when we get into bed. We are at first chilled by the contact with the sheets, but the chill wears off, and, when we rise, the housemaid finds the bed quite warm. It has become so from the heat of our bodies, which, leaving it, was kept from passing into the outer air by the non-conduction of the blankets, and of the feathers or hair with which the bed or mattress was stuffed.
Since clothes are only a supplement to the skin, being to man what wool, fur, and feathers are to other creatures, the most natural substances for
