Traditional Chinese medicine is based on the belief that an imbalance of hot and cold leads to illness. To stay healthy, the body must remain at a comfortable room temperature. Herbs and other treatments are often prescribed to ensure that excessive heat does not lead to the diseases that our own culture once diagnosed as hysteria.
For those of you not up-to-date on your 19th century medicine, physicians often treated a female patient for hysteria if she exhibited "emotional outbursts." Though we now call this being human or PMS-ing, doctors of the bygone era used vibrator-like instruments to "cure" women. It was believed that hitting the big O treated the affliction by cooling body temperature and slowing down metabolic rates.
Indeed, heat has always been linked to sexuality, even in language. A quick Google search will turn up scores of Cosmopolitan magazine articles about how to "heat up" your sex life or put the "heat back into a relationship." Animals, just like humans, are said to be "in heat" during mating season and I can't help but think that our own mating season is in full swing during the summer term. With the raging hormones of over a thousand 20-year-olds, violent heat waves and appropriately inappropriate outfits that bare it all, sophomore summer is reduced to one heat of the moment situation after another.
Sure enough, summer brings about changes in the way we interact with each other and our environment. We've all heard the men of Dartmouth talk about their excitement when the sundresses finally emerge and women are no longer covered in layers of unflattering clothing. Walking down to the river, or even past Psi U, dozens of shirtless men provide eye candy because it is apparently, "just too hot to put a shirt on."
My recommendation is to remember that Dartmouth is as small as we think it is even smaller now that three-fourths of its students are away. It would be wise to stop and think before you let the heat take control and give in to those bizarre impulses that emerge from within while you're sun bathing by the river.
According to an article in Wired Magazine, our heart rates, which are linked to our fight or flight responses, pick up speed in hot weather. Heat also revs up testosterone production, which is responsible for all things manly, such as grilling, fighting and generally acting like a barbarian.
Add alcohol and the fact that we've been cooped up year round, and you've got yourself a deadly combination. Violent crime at Dartmouth is typically limited to the wee hours of the night when we decide to get ballsy and trash the dorm of the poor, unsuspecting freshman who lives in the room we once inhabited. But the summer sun beckons students outside and increases day drinking and day debauchery, creating many more opportunities to stir up trouble.
For all you hotheads out there, myself included, take a moment to cool down and step back from the situation before flying off the handle. I know the heat makes us lazy, our sticky clothes make us uncomfortable and being lied to about not having any work makes us annoyed, but slip into the library for some much needed air conditioning and KAF iced tea, and I'm sure the desire to break SAE's pong tables will wither.
While the heat can make us madder than a San Antonio Spurs fan, it's important to remember that urges and impulses, though almost impossible to ignore, are fleeting. If there is a silver lining to the rainy, humid and sweltering days of summer, it is that unlike the Miami Heat's all-star trio, Dartmouth's weather will soon return to the cold we all know and secretly love.
