Arizona citizen., 1877-08-04
Effects Of Heat at Yuma.

Following is from The Sentinel. II applies with about equal force to much .of Arizona, especially the Salt and Gila valleys and Southern Arizona in general, and therefore we give it to our readers:
 Of late it has become the custom to
 attribute the death of every man on
 the Colorado river 10 the intense heat
 This habit is fostered by a trick of Correspondents who, by queer men tai process, expect to elicit sympathy
 for their own sutferings by telegraph Ing deaths from the intense heat here
 A friend of ours contracted smallpox at Tucson and died of it-another case
 of intense heat" \ man was found dead near Hardyville the other morning
 with his skull fraciured-another case
 of "heat;n and 50 on through the list The facts are that no healthy man was ever killed anywhere by any known
 natural heat The thermometer here is never claimed to go above 120 and
 we have never, in eight years residence here, seen it above 114 Men work
 hard here, out in the sun, and at all the avOcatiOns followed anywhere else. and
 are proverbially healthy. Every one of the deaths ascribed to intense heat"
 has been caused by accident, by organ ic or other disease or by intemperance. Alchohol is the one thing which this climate will not tolerate in the human system. A worthy old gentleman died upon the cars here the other night and | his death was telegraphed as caused by ' heat The facts are that, thinking to |counteract the bad effects of great |draughts of water, he persisted m drinking spirits. In spite of friendly warnings, he took eight or ten drinks within an hour or two previous to hIs death. Just what the effect of alcohol ! is at a temperature of no we leave to | the doctors the result we have seen too often to have any doubt about This very season the thermometer has stood higher at Los Angeles that it has here {; and It does so every season in many parts of San Diego, Los Angeles, San
 BernardinO, Kern and Tularc counties | over the Sacramento valley. This state Iment Is made upon record and proof
 Yet few deaths are in those places as criUed to " intense heat" Those coun- ties are too well known, and these sym ipathy-craving drOnes would be laugh ed at for spinning there the yarns they string out so glibly from this lesser known and much-lied-abOut Arizona. Hot? Of course it Is hot. The ther- |mOmeter ranges during three or four months from 92 to l0S, and rarely crawls up to III; but so it does all over the interior of California, and in New York, Philadelphia and Wash ingtOn Yet people there follow the ordinary pursuits of life without belly aching about their sutierings; and when a man is run over by a wagon, or kicked to death by a mule, they don't send maudlin teleCrams all over the country about deaths from intense
 heat" IL Is a notable fact that me
 Chanics, farmers, teamsters, and others
 hard at work in the sun, are not the ones who complain of heat-the walls
 invariably come from the idlcrs and
 shadc-hunting bummers, and from the
 drones who gladly turn 10 the heat, as
 they would to any other preteXt, for
 shirking performance of duty. All the
 effects of heat at Yuma a'e beneficial.
 The air is dry and pure; no malaria is
 absorbed. The temperature is uniform and free precipitation is exposed to no sudden cheeks. The climate in- .duces living and sleeping out of doors;
 lungs have a chance. Water is grate-
 fully and benefcially taken in copious draughts; it's passage through the sys-
 tem and free eXudatIon from the pores,
 wash out of the frame all etiete and diseased matter. Here the skin throws
 off pus that would elsewhere clog tu-
 bercUlar lungs, and gives them a chance
 Ito heal up. The same friendly office
 1t here performs for diseased kidneys
 and other organs. These are the effects
 of heat here; death enters not among
 them Our healthiest men are those
 most exposed to the heat-if they ab-
 srafY, from, drfp1-