WINTER WEATHER.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5320, 31 August 1928, Page 2

WINTER WEATHER.

CONDITIONS MAKE FOB HEALTH. DON’S COMPLAIN OF RAIN. It seems that the wetter, the weather the healthier, it is. The’probable explanation is that the rain keeps the roads and streets clean and prevents the germs of diro’ase drifting about in the air. One thing is quite certain —that dry windy weather causes bad thro.ats and increases causes of chest trouble. People .who work in the dry, dusty atmosphere are much more apt to cqntract diseases than those 'exposedto cqld and damp. In where. . dust is a plague, the: death-rate from lung trouble is terribly high. The pathologist to Lqndon’s. Zoo has kept weather records for years, and and compared them with the death rate of the animals and with that of human beings in the Bor.qugh of Marylebqne. His conclusions are that a cold, dry atmosphere is n(ot harmful ; nor isi a moist warm one. What does do harm is cold and damp combined. Ako, he. says that deaths increase when the wind is in the north or east. Mo,st people believe that cold weather. gives them colds. It does nothing of the sort. When Nansen took that terrible jqunney across the Arctic Sea he was spaked a-iM frozen alternately for weeks, but he never, once caught cold. Yet just as spon as he reached Jacksion’s Camp he and his companion both went doiwn with violent colds. The common cold i s caught by inifection. The reasqn why Cold weather seems to give: you a cold is because; it has it lowering effect on your vitality. Damp is Supposed to give yqu rheumatism. It does not. If you were peiifectly healthy no amount of damp (says Pearson’s Weekly) wquld give you rheumatism : but most of uS have got it in our systems, and then a chill starts it up. The influence of weather on qur health if, with the Exception of ohie on two cases, only indirect.