A group of Gaspé fishermen used to cold water immersion and control subjects from the same vicinity were studied to determine if the fishermen's hands were adapted to cold. With one hand immersed in cold water, the pressor response was greater in the control subjects; the fishermen maintained a higher finger temperature and complained less of pain; heat flow from the fishermen's hands was greater than in the control group; finger numbness as measured by a modification of Mackworth's V-test was variable and not significantly different in the two groups. Skin biopsies showed no difference in skin thickness or cell size but there was a significantly greater number of mast cells in the fishermen's skin. The differences between the fishermen and the control subjects may be related to repeated cold exposure. Submitted on June 7, 1960
In experiments in which two groups of animals of different mean body weight are compared, individual organ weights of the animals can be expressed as absolute weights, as fractional weights, or as absolute weights statistically regressed onto constant body weights. The second, and commonest, mode of expression involves the assumption that the part is directly proportional to the whole, and this is shown to be unlikely for all organs except the muscle mass. Practical as well as theoretical justifications for the use of regressed weights (which utilize the actual slope of the line relating the organ weight to the whole) are given.The experimental data are from white rats kept for 4 weeks in a warm (30 °C.) or a cold (6 °C.) environment. It is shown that cold adaptation had no effect on brain, genitals, and lung weights, but that it reduced the growth of muscle, pelt, fat, skeleton, spleen, and thymus, and that it hypertrophied the liver, intestine, kidney, heart, and adrenals. Apparently cold acclimated rats are smaller than the controls mainly because they have a smaller muscle mass.
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