The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1872-07-10
About SunstrOke.

! the cerebro- spinal variety-after more
or less distinct warning, in the shape
of such premonitory symptoms as
headache, disordered vision, intense
weariness, etc, the subject become
unconscious, sometimes sud d Y,
sometimes more gradually. The la
borer will fall senseless in the street I;
in the hospital the comrades of q sick
man will have their attention attracted
by his heav~ breathing, only to find
that natural sleep has passed by insen
sible degrees into fatal coma Or stupor.
With this insensibility there is always
associated intense heat of the skim
To the hand the surface feels intensely
| hot; nor is the sensation q deceptive
onc-the heat of the body exceeds that
attained in almost any other affection.
A thermometer placed in the armpit,
insteed of indicating SO degrees Fab
renheit, the temperature of health,
rises generally'to 100 degrees. in some
cases even to lib degrees. From the
peculiar pungcncy of this heat the
technical term calor moytlar, or biting
heat, has been applied to it.
The surface may or may not be
pale; very often it is dusky, with a
livid, blush purple hue. The eyes are
sometimes wild and restless, sometimes
fixed and glaring, sometimes dull with
the leaden hue of approaching death.
The pupils at first are generally con-
| tracted; in the later stages they are
often widely dilated.s With these
symptoms of intense fever are others
betokening nervous disturbance. In
some cases these are of the nature of
paralysis, the patient lying apparently
i'll the deepest sleep, not muscle
moving, not an eyelid quivering. In
other cases this peaceful though dead
ly calm is replaced by a wild tempest,
raging delirium, wild screa ms as
though Ofintense agony or uncontrolla-
BILE passion, furious commissions fol-
lowing one another like the rapid dis
charges of galvanic battery, throwing
the body in all directions, twisting it
into every conceivable shape, the
countenance knocking TIL e derisive
laughter of the maniac, or knotted into
an expression of agony. In another
and perhaps more common class of
cases the unconscious patient is SIM
ply restless, muttering incoherent
words, tossing about on the bed,
showing, perhaps, also signs of local
paralysis. There appears to be a
curious connection between this varie-
ty of symptoms and the difference of
races. The Angio-Saxon rarely be-
comes wildly dclirious, whilst this is
the most common symptom amongst
the Latin nations. Frenchmen thus
attacked often becomes melancholic,
and develop an irresistible tendency
to suicide, so that soldiers on the
march will suddenly shoot themselves.
Whatever be the form of the attack,
generally, as the minutes pass the
symptoms are intensified; the qnict,
pulse of the first onset becomes more
and more feeble, the labored breathing
noisy and stentorious, the surface
darker and darker as respiration fails,
and death at last is brought about By
asphyxia, or sometimes by the almost
consentaneous fading away of respira-
ton and circulation.
The one great symptom, the center
of the group in all forms of the disease
is the high temperature. If the skin
be cool, the case is not sunstroke.-
After death the high temperature con.
tinues, and is said sometimes even tc
rise higher. Decomposition follows
with exceeding rapidity. On post
mortem examination the only ap.
pearance of striking Importance are
q condition of blood similar to thai
seen in low fevers, rigid, contracted
state of the heart, in which it feels al
most like wood, and a great tendency
toward the rapid but transient de-
velopment of that peculiar stiffenins
which at some time after death take:
possession of the muscular tissue.
Now that the true nature of the
disease is known, and method of treat.
ment becomes most obvious, and we
learn not merely what to do, but also
what not to do. AS heat is the cause
of the symptoms, common sense points
to the abstraction of the heat in some
way as the mode of cure. And here
again vivisection comes into play. ]
have taken an animal, comatose, para.
lyzed by heat, apparently dying, and
plunged it into bucket of cold water
The temperature of the sufferer al
once rapidlyfell until it reached the
normal point, and just in proportion
that of the water in the bucket rose.-
AS the animal cooled, its respirations
became more regular, the unsteady
whir of the heart was stilled, by-and.
by the eyelids were lifted, and Out
from the CLASSY eye came the beams
of new life. If the period of uncon
seriousness had been short, the animal
was in few hours apparently as well