THE MENTAL PHASE OF “COLDCATCHING.”

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2722, 9 December 1881, Page 2

THE MENTAL PHASE OF “COLDCATCHING.”

It is noteworthy, the “ Lancet remarks, as a curious yet easily ex plicable fact, that few persons take cold who are not either self consciously careful, or fearful of the consequences of exposure. If the attention be diverted from the existence of danger by Some supreme concentration of thought—as, for example when escaping from ahouse on fire or plunging into cold water to save life—the effects of “ chill ” are seldom experienced. This alone should serve to suggest that the influence exerted by cold falls on the nervous system. The immediate effects of a displacement of blood from the surface, and its determination to the internal organs, are not, as was once supposed, sufficient to produce the sort _of congestion that issues in inflammation. If it were so, an inflammatory condition would be the common characteristic of our bodily state. When the vascular system is healthy, and that part of the nervous apparatus by which the calibre of the vessels is controlled performs its proper functions normally, any disturbance of equilibrium in the circulatory system which may hare been produced by external cold will be quickly adjusted. It is therefore, on the state of the nervous system that everything depends, and it is as we have said, on the nervous system the stress of a “ chill” falls. This is one reason why the habit of wrapping-up tends to create a mordid susceptibility. The mind by its fear-begettiag precaution keeps the nervous system on the alert for impressions of cold, and the centres are, so to say, panic-striken when even a slight sensation occurs.