The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-05-03 00:00:00

THE EFFECT OF WATHER ON
HEALTH.

The Times ktas a leader on the recent cold weather, from
which we make the following extracts :-
- - - - -

Although frosts in May are by no means unknown
to us, and although they sometimes occur with
sufficient rigour to destriy unprotected wall-fruit, it
may fairly be hoped that with the recent return of
sunshine we have seen the end of a winter of unusual
severity and &ration. There have been many others
in which the thermometer has at times been lower, or in
which the effects of frost have at some time been more
remarkable; but there have been very few in which
the duration of low temperature has been so pro-
longed, or so frequently recurrent after brief intervals
of comparative warmth. We have not, indeed, been
able to anticipate any return of the festival which was
once held upon the frozen Thames; but Loch Lomond
has been available for skaters over its whole extent,
and is said to have suz,tained twenty thousand people'
on a single day. The hypothesis that modern winters
have been steadily diminishing in severity rests in
some degree upon the testimony of those old people
who tell of the many occasions upon which, in their
boyhood, the teams of adjacent farmers were put
In requisition to drag mail coaches out of snowdrifts;
but, Curing the past season, especially in the northern
parts of the island, trains have been imprisoned hope-
lessly in cuttings, and important lines of railway have
been rendered impassable for long periods. Even now,
when the worst may be thought to be over, the smiles
of opening spring are rendered treacherous by the
nipping winds, which, tempered by the warmth of the
sun at midday, re assert their powers as soon as that
warmth begins to decline. The ordinary vegetation
of the season is greatly retarded; and, while snow is
still to be seen upon many of the higher ranges, the
aAions of birds and animals are such as the natural-
ist's calendar would associate with March, rather
than with the approach of May. We must leave it
to meteorologists to explain, if they can, the causes
which have produced the inclemency of the season,
but may occupy ourselves with some of the more
obvious consequences which this inclemency has pro-
duced.

The Registrar-General has not yet issued his
account of the deaths which have occurred in England
during the first quarter of the present year, and we
cannot, therefore, compare them with those of the
same period in milder seasons; but it needs no
prophet to predict what the results of such a com-
parison must be. Cold is always dangerous, and often
fatal, to the aged, the feeble, and the badly fed; and
three or four days of suddenly increased inclemency
of weather produce an effect almost analogous to
the outbreak of an epidemic. Of this effect, there
can be no doubt .that the past winter will furnish
many signal examples; and, besides these, it is a
matter of familiar knowledge to everybody that
catarrhal and bronchial affections have been unusually
prevalent and severe. On the other hand, there must
be some foundation for the venerable traditions
which call cold weather " seasonable ; " and it
is probably true that it affords a stimulus to
brisk movement, which is beneficial to the healthy,
the vigorous, and the young. Regarded in this
light, the impetus which the past few months have
given to the practice of skating must be considered
as a redeeming feature of the cold, as it has ob-
viously been one incidental to its severity. Thou-
sands of people who, if the frost had been less severe,
would have lingered by their firesides deploring the
state of the weather have been inißelled to take active
exercise of the most salutary kind, and have been
thus enabled to set the cold and its effects at defiance.
The increased muscular exertion has entailed an in-
creased demand tor food, the fuel by which the tem-
perature of the body is maintained; and the whole
of the powers subservient to the vital operations have
been upheld, for a time at least, in the state of ex-
ceptional vigour and efficiency. . . .