THE QUANTITATIVE MECHANISM AND THE SENSORY RECEPTOR ORGAN OF HUMAN TEMPERATURE CONTROL IN WARM ENVIRONMENT

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Abstract
In widely varied warm environments and at widely varied levels of metabolic activity responses and stimuli of human "physical" heat regulation were measured with methods different from those of classical physiology: (a) Gradient Calorimetry permitted the continuous and undistorted measurement of the sudomotor and vasomotor responses, (b) Cranial thermometry replaced the rectal measurement of the thermostatically controlled internal temperature, moreover (c) coincidental correlations between internal and cutaneous temperatures were deliberately disrupted by experimental measures. By these methods it was found that thermo-regulatory sweating was uniquely determined by internal cranial temperature. It follows that the central origin of heat loss responses has the essential properties of a terminal receptor organ for temperature comparable to the retina, a terminal receptor for light. Warm impulses from skin thermo-receptors did not participate in the central neural temperature regulation by sweating and most likely not in such control by vasodilation, but rather function as protection against local burns, as assistance in conscious sensations when it is necessary to move from too warm an environment into another, etc. These additional Pavlovian mechanisms of human temperature regulation are briefly dealt with, the potential of cranial thermometry in clinical situations is shortly discussed, and forthcoming findings with "chemical" heat regulation are mentioned. In cold environment the "human thermostat" exerts its control of metabolic heat production by warm responses counteracting peripheral cold-impulses.

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