Arthur C. Custance, Ph.D.

In the Sweat of Thy Brow

2. The Sweating of Fallen Man

It is customary to associate the sweating of man with the Fall.   Yet it must be apparent from the very brief survey already made that it seems to be performing a vital, albeit natural, function for him.   The question is, To what extent can we say that man sweats only because he is a fallen creature?   Can we say this at all, in fact? The answer, I think, is undoubtedly Yes.   Moreover, the affirmative applies especially to that type of sweating which is most copious, namely, thermal sweating.   But it also applies to emotional and mental sweating and, as we shall see, in one particular area of the body uniquely so.   This one area we consider in the final chapter. Let us here examine the situation in its other aspects.

1. Animal Human Sweating

2. Sweating of Fallen Man

3. Uniqueness of the Brow

Appendix: A Guide to Scientific Literature


First published in 1962 under the title The Meaning of Sweat as Part of the Curse

Included in
The Flood: Local or Global? published in 1977 by Zondervan Publishing Company

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First of all, it should be said that, while we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made with a fantastic number of self-regulating physiological feedback mechanisms to ensure the maintenance of health, our bodies are not particularly efficient.   Nor, for that matter, are engines of human design. A steam engine has an efficiency of about 9 percent, the rest of the available power in the fuel that is consumed being "wasted".   A highly refined aircraft engine may go up to 40 percent or a little better, which still leaves much to be desired.   The human body has an efficiency of about 20 percent; the other 80 percent of the energy available in the "fuel" we consume is lost from the body in the form of heat.   To be more exact, it is not all lost, for a certain percentage is used to accelerate chemical reactions and thus render the body slightly more efficient in times of stress.   However, it remains that something like 75 percent of the energy which would presumably be available to a body that was perfect is not available to us.   The efficiency of animals, on the other hand, is remarkable.   On a few seeds and some stored resources a bird may make an unbroken flight of several thousand miles.   A fish weighing several hundred pounds may swim the ocean on about ten pounds of food.   Domesticated animals suffer in the process of domestication because of the artificial foods and an artificial environment.

One might ask whether, if man uses only one-fifth of the energy in the food he eats, could he not perhaps eat only one fifth of the normal intake and be just as well off?   There are two problems with this. The first is that the body can extract only this small percentage of available energy whether he eats much or little.   This is not strictly true, but it is nearly so and suffices for the present discussion.   Some people's bodies are more efficient than others and they seem to have enormous energy reserves accompanied by a small appetite.   Others stuff themselves endlessly yet continue without energy.   All of which means only that the figure of 20 percent applies to that non-existent individual, the "average man".

The second point is that if we only ate one-fifth of what is normal for us, we should be everlastingly hungry.   Only man has a hunger which regularly exceeds the absolute requirement of his body.   Animals seem to know not merely when they have had enough but exactly how much and of what foods to eat.   This has been remarkably demonstrated in certain studies, referred to in another Doorway Paper, Nature as Part of the Kingdom of God, which the reader may wish to pursue for himself.   What has been said of hunger applies equally to thirst.   Man is the only creature that drinks when it is not thirsty.   Conversely, when he becomes dehydrated for any reason, he will not drink more than about one-third of what he needs.   The sense of thirst is then satisfied, and the impulse to drink more is lost.   On the other hand, animals such as the dog or burro will drink until they have all the water they require, thirst being regulated by water lost.   It is evident that man's thirst and appetite have somehow gotten badly out of kilter with his physiological needs. But not so the animals.

This line of reasoning seems to me to imply that a perfect man would either need less to eat or would have the same appetite but an enormously increased vitality.   Is it possible that the patriarchs who lived to such great ages not merely had more energy in the sense that this is reflected in longevity, but also had more energy in the simple sense that they were stronger?   Were their bodies more efficient, it is also possible that they had a lower metabolic rate, for experiments with animals show that a reduced metabolic rate results in longer life.   Although the life span declined after the Flood, nevertheless those people may have retained a physical vigour far in excess of our own, and the vast monuments of antiquity with enormous stones cast about as though by veritable giants may just possibly be accounted for in some such way.   It was not that these men were necessarily taller, but rather that the same muscle fibers had greatly increased contractile strength. While it is perfectly true that this strength seems now to be dependent upon the level of blood supply rather than the actual volume of muscle, this may not be the whole story; for them, nearer to Adam, the muscle fibers themselves may have had greater strength.

Following along this line of thought, there is evidence -- quite apart from Scripture -- that man may have changed his diet at one time, having originally been herbivorous rather than omnivorous as he now is.   His now-troublesome appendix, according to George A. Dorsey, may have at one time aided him in the management of a more fibrous diet.   The eating of meat does not seem to have been a part of the habit of antediluvian man.   If man was able to do in those days what he is now able to do in the way of sustained activity with his mixed diet, then he must have had a more efficient body.   It is well known to those acquainted with the ways of such animals as horses and deer, whose diet is entirely herbivorous, that they must be eating a large part of the time since such "fuels" are low in energy value relative to meats.   It is because of this that Indians were able to run down horses, merely by keeping the horse moving so that he could not stop to eat but ultimately tired out and surrendered.   Perhaps it is because man's life span dropped so seriously and his possibilities of achievement were thereby so drastically reduced that God, in His wisdom, saw fit to appoint him flesh for meat with its more highly concentrated energy sources. But this was to accommodate a fallen creature. Quite apart from the fact that his appendix troubles him because of the change, he pays another penalty as a direct result, which is nearer to our present subject.   A vegetable diet normally provided less concentrated energy and fewer calories than a diet containing meat, so that the tempo of his life was slower; but the higher metabolic rate resulting from his now-mixed diet, while it allowed a higher sustained tempo of activity, also necessitated the elimination of more heat and consequently a higher sweating rate.   The original diet may have elicited very little sweating indeed.

Bearing in mind that, for every 100 calories of potential energy ingested, man must somehow rid himself of about 75 in the form of heat, as long as the environmental conditions permit him to rid himself of this heat load he maintains the proper deep body temperature and gets along fairly well.   He may possibly make some adjustments to a perpetually higher or lower temperature by a slight reduction or increase in his metabolic rate.   But the rest of this excess heat must be removed by one of four avenues: convection, conduction, radiation, and evaporative cooling. He gets convective cooling in a cool breeze or where the heat from his body is allowed to rise and there is no heat gain from the surrounding air.   Conductive cooling results more directly through such agencies as cold water or standing on a cold floor or getting wet in the cold so that the clothing becomes waterlogged.   Heat loss by radiation occurs whenever the objects in the environment directly in line with the body are at a lower temperature than the skin surface. An example of this might be an underground tunnel, even though the air in the tunnel is artificially heated above skin temperature.   These are merely examples to show the kind of avenues that may present themselves.   But for most of the time for probably most people in the world, it is the evaporation of sweat that provides men with the best protection against a temperature rise in the body.   Sweating, therefore, is a critical requirement for man as he now is, and especially if he is to be active.   This is an important qualifying factor, for in very hot weather most animals in nature keep cool by reducing their activities. Of course, they have other means as we have seen, but these other means are contributory rather than dominant.   Man is such a restless creature, so filled with ambitions and aspirations when he is in normal health, that being human and having the capacity for a high level of sweating are almost synonymous terms.

In summary, then, the tempo of life of unfallen man would probably have been much slower, metabolism greatly reduced, and the need for thermal sweating very much less than it now is.

The Uniqueness of the Brow (continued) - Emotional Sweating