THE WAY TO WITHSTAND THE HEAT.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 230, 5 March 1875, Page 3

THE WAY TO WITHSTAND THE HEAT.

(From the Lancet.)

About this season of the year we commonly receive various communications, some asking for and others tendering advice to the public as to the best methods of avoiding sunstroke. The necessary precautions are, after all, such as common sense would dictate. Temperate living, light and loose clothing, proper 'protection for the head, a cold bath in the morning, and the avoidance of that excitable fussiness as to the heat of the weather which so many persons exhibit to the increase of their own and other peo pie's discomfort. Veritable cases of sunstroke do occur in this country of course, but the majority of such attacks, especially when fatal, are probably attributable to the combined effects of heat and langour and some pre-existing affection of the circulatory or respiratory organs—a condition which is

more allied to fainting than sunstroke, which may overtake those who encounter heat and fatigue, with long intervals of abstinence from food ; and the same thing is very apt to follow in those persons who have deranged their digestion and overloaded their systems by a course of dinners. Young and healthy men do not require any stimulants ; they can refresh and cool themselves with any iced nonalcoholic drinks, or with iced claret and water. A great desideratum is a really palatable and cool beverage, free from alcohol. After dry and hot seasons, when choleraic and febrile complaints are likely to occur, many people begin to manifest a hydrophobia without any antecedent bite of a rabid dog, for they are not all confident as to the quality of any drinking water, even if it were procurable in a fresh pleasant state at refreshment rooms. In the case of middleaged and elder men, who, from being occupied in town, are very apt to abstain from taking anything during the day, and to forget, perhaps, that their appetite for breakfast in hot weather is small, we think a very light mid-day meal of a sandwich, with some iced claret and water, or, in cases of feeble health, or where extra fatigue is undertaken, some stimulant in the shape of sherry or even brandy and sodawater, advisable. Of one thing, howeves we are sure—that the frequent recourse to very small doses of alcohol in a variety of shapes is bad.