A CYCLE OF THE SUN.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2667, 7 October 1881, Page 2

A CYCLE OF THE SUN.

Once in twenty-eight years (except at the end of a century) the days of the week and the month come back in the same order. The period is termed the “ Cycle of the Sun.” This heated term reminds us of just such a term in 1853, a cycle ago. In that summer we opened the Crystal Palace in Reservoir square. We voted upon and adopted important amendments to the city charter. We had several fatal steamboat explosions, and a furious hail storm that tore down a building in Forty-second street, and also a collision on the Camden and Amboy railroad. New Orleans was desolated by yellow fever, and much money was subscribed here to aid the sufferers. But the chief feature of that remarkable summer was the excessive heat, which led to a surprising mortality from sunstroke. The “ Herald ’’ of the time had on some days several columns about the heat and its effects. June was generally cool enough, though at the close of the month the deaths suddenly sprung up from 329 to 561 per week, the latter number including 20 cases of sunstroke. Up to this period sunstroke was hardly known in the bills of mortality, and never excited any special attention. July was very hot, and the weather was the universal theme of comment and complaint, particularly among strangers who had coma to attend our World’s Fair. In the first week of that month there were 406 deaths, six only being from sunstroke. Five weeks of generally hot weather followed with 548,564,521, 523 and 571 deaths, none from sunstroke. The second week in August was dreadfully hot, and 15 out of 585 died from the effect of the sun. Then came the “hot week,” and many columns and even pages of the newspapers were taken up in vain efforts to describe the weather. It seemed as if our city was on fire. There was not a ripple of a breeze in the air ; the sun glowed with fearful intensity, and the atmosphere was of that muggy character which seems to increase the heat of the sun. This was after the first week of our great fair. On the day of opening the mercury stood at 94deg. in the shade, and it was over 90deg. for five of the seven days of the hot week. People fell dead in the streets, and were even stricken down in their houses. The deaths in the previous week were 585, of which fifteen were from sunstroke. In the hot week they reached 969, of which 214 were from the heat. In one day there were more than a hundred deaths from sunstroke alone. The sum total in that one week largely exceeded the number of deaths from heat reported from the beginning of the century. If the same proportions were to be carried off now we should have at least 500 deaths from sunstroke in a single week, as the population has considerably more than doubled.—New York “ Herald.”