Mother, Nurse and Infant / A Manual Especially Adapted for the Guidance of Mothers and Monthly Nurses, Comprising Full Instruction in Regard To Pregnancy, Preparation for Child-birth, and the Care of Mother and Child, and Designed to Impart so Much Knowledge of Anatomy, Physiology, Midwifery, and the Proper Use of Medicines as Will Serve Intelligently to Direct the Wife, Mother and Nurse in All Emergencies.

by S. P. Sackett

OF HEAT AND COLD AS EXTERNAL AGENCIES CAUSING DISEASE.

The range of temperature compatible with human life is very great; men live in the hottest and the coldest climates, where the earth produces any sustenance for them. It requires more care to preserve life under intense cold than under intense heat. Tropical climates are thickly peopled where the thermometer ranges from 80° to 100° for a long time together. In arctic countries on the other hand where the thermometer sinks to 40° or 50° below zero, we still find inhabitants, but they are few and thinly scattered. It is probable that at a degree of temperature a little greater than that of the equator or a little less than that of the poles men would perish.

Man is capable of existing under certain circumstances for a short time, and enduring a much higher degree of heat than the general atmosphere attains in the hottest portions of the earth, but there are generally some deleterious effects from hot climates or continued hot weather.

The effect of HEAT is to stimulate the organic functions of the body, but when considerable heat is applied for some time together its effect is to cause languor and lassitude, want of energy, a disinclination for exertion both bodily and mental; it has a depressing effect generally upon the animal functions or the nervous system, and there are some forms of disease that are distinctly traceable to heat as a cause.

We all know the effect of hot weather in causing perspiration, and when the operation of high temperature is continued for some time it has a marked influence upon the liver, increasing the quantity of bile that is secreted, and altering its sensible qualities; this is sometimes followed by inflammation of the liver.

In this country those attacks of vomiting and diarrhœa which are so common towards the latter end of summer or in autumn are the effects of a succession of hot days. In tropical climates the morbific effects of external heat are still more conspicuous, tending to violent disorders of the stomach and intestines, and also to acute inflammation of the liver and to acute abscesses in that organ.

In these cases the heated atmosphere unduly stimulating the secreting function of the liver creates the predisposition to the disease, while the exciting cause of the inflammation may be exposure to cold.

There may be deleterious effects from exposure to cold where the climate is quite hot. For instance a man may after the heat occasioned by the employments of the day, undress and lie opposite a window, his shirt wet with perspiration, to enjoy the sea breeze at night, and though the thermometer may be as high as 80° he may have a sensation of cold. If there is real chilliness it may be deleterious.

Heat sometimes acts as an exciting cause of disease—it produces sunstroke, or it may produce an eruptive disease such as prickly heat, &c.

The effect of extreme COLD (I use the term cold in the popular acceptation), when its application is continued, is that of a sedative upon the organic functions. Though at first causing pain in the extremities, if continued it causes sleep or overpowering drowsiness. Before this complete stupor comes on there may be a blunting of the sensations and confusing of the intellect, giving to the person exposed to it, the appearance of one intoxicated. When persons in this state are suffered to sleep, and the operation of the cold continues, they become less and less sensible to external impressions until death closes the scene.