Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/230

March 10, 1773,

I ſhall not attempt to explain why damp clothes occaſion colds, rather than wet ones, becauſe I doubt the fact; I imagine that neither the one nor the other contribute to this effect, and that the cauſes of colds are totally independent of wet and even of cold. I propoſe writing a ſhort paper on this ſubject, the firſt moment of leiſure I have at my diſpoſal.—In the mean time I can only ſay, that having ſome ſuſpicions that the common notion, which attributes to cold the property of ſtopping the pores and obſtructing perſpiration, was ill founded, I engaged a young phyſician, who is making ſome experiments with Sanctorius's balance, to eſtimate the different proportions of his perſpiration, when remaining one hour quite naked, and another warmly clothed. He purſued the experiment in this alternate manner for eight hours ſucceſſively, and found his perſpiration almoſt double during thoſe hours in which he was naked.