SUNSTROKE.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 89, 22 January 1872, Page 3

SUNSTROKE.

We copy the following from a letter to the Editor of the Pall Mall Ga~clle “ I notice that several correspondents in the daily papers have recommended straw hats, or a cabbage-leaf, as a protection against sunstroke. The theory involved in this suggestion is diametrically opposed to the prevailing practice throughout the East, where the natives generally wear a thick turban, especially when travelling in the sun. In like manner the roving Bedouin, in addition to his Ring hair, covers his head, lace, and neck with a thick doubled keflinh, bound round the head with several coils of rope made of camel’s hair. Our countrymen in India, civil and military, have learnt to imitate this custom by investing their ordinary tops with a padded covering of white cloth, to which a flap is attached protecting tlie nape of the neck. But docs sunstroke result ‘ directly’ from the sun falling on the head ? My impression is that it does not, but that it is rather, in the first place, a consequence of physical exhaustion induced by fatigue or otherwise, in very hot weather, thereby leaving the system powerless to resist the direct action of the sun. If this view is correct, then the best precaution against sunstroke would be to guard against exhaustion. Labourers anil others, when exposed to the sun, should not be overworked, and when at work should be provided with plenty af water to drink, which is one of the best preventatives against exhaustion under such circumstances. Allow me to illustrate this by a striking instance in point. The town of Mosul is about ten miles distant from the village of Telkeif. Year after year numerous casualties from sunstroke occurred among the wayfarers between the two places. There was not a drop of water to be found on the road, and the villagers generally were too lazy or indifferent to carry it with them. At the suggestion of a medical man the Pasha of the district ordered a supply of water to be provided midway between the town and villiage from a convent at some distance off the highway. I can testify from personal knowledge that for several years after cases of sunstroke on the road were of rare occurrence. Among other benefits conferred by our public drinking fountains, I am firmly convinced that, by preventing exhaustion from thirst they are eminently useful in warding off sunstroke from thousands of wayfarers in this great metropolis.