This chapter considers the deployment of radical Orientalism as a mode of political critique in the popular fiction of the bestselling Chartist leader and author George W. M. Reynolds. It focuses on the structural congruences between the depictions of aristocratic debauchery in his two Mysteries series (1844–8; 1848–56) and the figuration of Old Corruption as in league with the Jewish sweater in ‘The Seamstress’ in Reynolds’s Miscellany (1850). Examination of this alignment permits a discussion of the mutable hierarchies within the category of the People at mid-nineteenth century, focused specifically on those groups excluded from full political rights: the working-class man, women, and Jews. It considers how Reynolds’s use of radical literary-political tropes positions Jews as Occidental in matters of parliamentary democracy, but designates them Oriental when the sweating system that they are understood to represent is figured as an atavistic, foreign, and unchristian form of economics.

Thermolytic responses are required in either high ambient temperatures, when conductive heat loss is low, or during states of increased heat production such as during exercise. Most of the thermolytic responses involve fluid loss, including panting (i.e., tachypnea) and evaporative cooling from skin moistened by sweating or saliva spreading. The relative contribution of these mechanisms is species dependent. In all cases, the principal systemic change produced by the fluid loss is hyperosmolarity, although hypovolemia can also be considerable. Humans and animals usually do not drink sufficient water to replace the lost fluid, resulting in a state of hypohydration. This can be partially mitigated by repeated exposure (i.e., adapation) or by providing electrolytes to drink. Sustained hypohydration and/or elevated core temperature produces loss of physical performance and, in the extreme, can be lethal. Available evidence siuggests that the OVLT and/or MnPO play important roles in detection of heat stress and execution of the thermolytic responses.