Children should have woolen rain-garments – made of coarse serge, for instance, — to be changed the moment they return from a walk and then there is no risk of catching cold. This is the common-sense of the matter. Wet cloths are put upon the head of a fever patient; by-and-by the cloths dry, and are dipped again: what has become of the water? It has evaporated, and, in evaporating, has carried off much heat from the fevered head. Now, that which eases the hot skin of fever is just the one thing to be avoided in ordinary circumstances. To be wet to the skin may do a child no more harm than a bath would do him, if the wet clothes do not dry upon him – that is, if the water does not evaporate, carrying off much heat from his body in the process. It is the loss of animal heat which is followed by ‘colds,’ and not the ‘wetting,’ which mothers are ready to deplore. Keep a child active and happy in the rain, and he gets nothing but good from his walk. The case is altered if the child has a cold already; then active exercise might increase any inflammation already set up.
I do not know whether it is more than a pretty fancy of Richter’s, that a spring shower is a sort of electric bath, and a very potent means of health; certainly rain clears the atmosphere – a fact of considerable importance in and about large towns. But it is enough for our purpose to prove that the rain need do no harm; for abundant daily exercise in the fresh air is of such vital importance to the children, that really nothing but sickness should keep them within doors. A mere time and distance tramp is sufficiently joyous for a wet day, for taken good-humouredly, the beating rain itself is exhilarating. The ‘long run’ of the schoolboy, that is, a steady trot, breaking now and then into a run, is capital exercise; but regard must be had to the powers of the children, who must not be overdone.