THE HEAT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 187, 27 October 1876, Page 8

THE HEAT.

The remarkably high temperature of late has been the subject, of course, of no little conversation and comment. The ordinary Britisher is not accustomed to anything of the kind — his fears lie in an exactly opposite direction ; he is not afraid of being baked but is commonly on his guard against cold, draughts, and treacherous changes. If the cold of winter and spring upsets the balance of his physical functions and endangers his life, it is the heat of the hot weather we have just been having that specially tends to disturb his moral equanimity and irritate his temper. It is a curious evidence of our utter unpreparedness for any sudden accession of heat that Anglo-Indians are wont to declare that they feel the high temperature in this country almost as much as they did the heat of India. Our streets, theatres, houses, rooms, and railway carriages are no doubt fearfully hot and stuffy, and if the heat of our hottest days were maintained for any time life would soon become insufferable ; but, happily for us, it is otherwise — a breeze no Booner springs up than life is enjoyable enough. At Aldershot Camp a higher reading of the thermometer was reached lately than had been the case for the last nineteen years, and at other places also the temperature was recorded as unusually high. Several cases of sunstroke have occurred. Two soldiers of the force encamped on Blackheath, near Guildf ord, were stated to have died of it on the fourteenth, and other fatal cases were reported about the. same time from Bristol and elsewhere. The first important thing to be observed in great heat is temperance — temperance in all things. Heat gives rise to feelings of exhaustion ; this leads to the drinking repeated doses of alcohol in some shape or other, than which nothing can be worse. We do not say that a strictly temperate man never gets sunstroke ; but we do aver that a man who keeps his house and his person, if we may so express it, well ventilated by opening the windows of the former, and clothing himself rationally, who attends to the functions oi his skin by " tubbing " regularly, and who lives temperately is a very unlikely subject indeed for sunstroke. A manifest want at this season is some nonalcoholic beverage that is cold and pleasant without being at all sweeb or mawkish. Perhaps there are few people deserving of more pity than infants and little children this very hot weather. They are hot and thirsty, to begin with, although this does not seem to be generally credited by parenta and nurses, who are always consuming ice or iced drinks ; they require to be suitably clad for the season ; and they need all the fresh air possible in their nurseries and bedrooms — points too often neglected. — ' The Lancet.'