warmer than
the other. If you handle some snow with one hand, while you keep the
other in your bosom, that it may be of the same heat as the body,
and then bring both within the same distance of the fire, the heat
will affect the cold hand infinitely more than the warm one. This is
a circumstance of the utmost importance, and ought always to be
carefully attended to. When a person has been exposed to a severe
degree of cold for some time, he ought to be cautious how he comes
near a fire, for his excitability will be so much accumulated, that
the heat will act violently; often producing a great degree of
inflammation, and even sometimes mortification. We may by the way
observe, that this is a very common cause of chilblains, and other
inflammations. When the hands, or any other parts of the body have
been exposed to violent cold, they ought first to be put into cold
water, or even rubbed with the snow, and exposed to warmth in the
gentlest manner possible.

Exactly the same takes place with respect to food, if a person have
for some time been deprived of food, or have taken it in small
quantity, whether it be meat or drink; or if he have taken it of a
less stimulating quality, he will find, that when he returns to his
ordinary mode of living, it will have more effect upon him than
before he lived abstemiously.

Persons who have been shut up in a coal-work from the falling in of
the pit, and have had nothing to eat for two or three days, have
been as much intoxicated by a bason of broth, as a person in common
circumstances with two or three bottles of wine; and we all know
that spirituous, or vinous liquors affect the head more in the
morning, than after dinner.

This circumstance was particularly evident among the poor sailors
who were in the boat with Captain Bligh after the mutiny. The
captain was sent by government to convey some plants of the
bread-fruit tree from Otaheite, to the West-Indies; soon after he
left Otaheite, the crew mutinied, and put the captain and most of
the officers, with some of the men, on board the ship's boat, with a
very short allowance of provisions, and particularly of liquors, for
they had only six quarts of rum, and six bottles of wine, for
nineteen people, who were driven by storms about the south-sea,
exposed to wet and cold all the time, for nearly a month; each man
was allowed only a tea-spoon full of rum a-day, but this tea-spoon
full refreshed the poor men, benumbed as they wer