The Temperature of the Human Body

Abstract

MR. CUMMING'S second or “physical” query will, I think, require no answer if his first or “physiological” question is replied to. If an isolated muscle from which evaporation was prevented could go on working in a heat enclosure, and always remain at a lower temperature than the enclosure (which it could only do by transferring heat from itself to its surroundings), we should have to ask in good earnest how this was consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We are quite certain, however, that the temperature of the working muscle would always, when a steady state of things had been reached, be above that of the enclosure.