I saw this mentioned in connection with the finding that normal human body temperature in the US has dropped.
I remember when I was a kid, by grandparents would keep their house at 68-70 degrees in the winter and we were miserable when we visited (though we adored them).
No way I can find it, but the article was saying that the average interrior temperature in the winter in a house in the US in the late 1800s was 55 degrees.
One sixteenth-century French traveler (I believe it was Montaigne) was surprised when he went to what would now be eastern Germany and when people entered a home in the winter, they took their coats off. In France, they kept coats hanging by the door to put them *on* when you entered, because the home was only slightly warmer than outdoors, but you were less active. In eastern Germany, they still had so much forest that people could burn not just a single small fire to boil a pot, but a nice, roaring, heating fire to make it warm inside. Wastrels!
French settlers in Canada made similar statements. They said that though Quebec was much colder than northern France, because there was wood available, they were much warmer inside.
Now I know people who won't even wear a sweater in winter because they find it uncomfortable and, though this is changing, people who wear coats and ties all summer. Their houses are rarely colder than 70 or warmer than 75 (and when warmer than 75, that's because the heat is set high, not because the A/C is set low)
