The Arizona sentinel., 1877-07-28
Effects of Heat at Yuma.

effects Of intense heat. This habit is fostered by a trick of cOrres- pondents who, by queer mental process, expect to elicit sympathy
 for their own sufferings by tele- graphing deaths from the intense heat here. A friend of ours con- tracted small pox at Tucson and died of it;another case of "intense heat" A man was found dead near Hardyville the other morn ing with his skull fractured; an- other case of Cheat ;" and so 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 III. Every man who goes into the steam baths or the dry hot air baths of San Francisco undergoes a much higher degree of heat, with the disadvantage of lower temperature before and after :; many of the bathers there try a heat of 1SO to 22O degrees, and to many of them the effect is benefi- cial. 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 acci- dent, by organic or other disease or by INTEMPERANCE. Alcohol 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 telegraph ed as caused by heat. The facts are that, thinking to counteract the bad effects of great draughts of water, he persisted in drinking spirits. In spite of friendly warn ings he took eight or ten drinks within an hour or two previous to his sudden 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 than it has here; and it does so every season in many parts of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Kern and Tulare counties of California. It stands as high all over the Sac ramento valley. This statement is made upon record and proof. Yet few deaths are in those places ascribed to "intense heat" Those countries are too well known, and these sympathy-craving drones would be laughed 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 10S, and rarely crawls up to 114; but So it does all over the interior of Cali fornia, and in New York, Phila- delphia and Washington. Yet people there follow the ordinary pursuits of life without belly aching about their sufferings; and when man is run over by a wag- on, or kicked to death by a mule, they don't send maudlin tele- grams all over the country about deaths from "intense heat" It is a notable fact that mechanics, farmers, teamsters, and others hard at work in the sun, are not the ones who complain of heat the walls invariably come from the idlers and shade-hunting bum- mers, and from the drones who gladly turn to the heat, as they would to any other pretext, fol shirking performance of duty. All the effects of heat at Yuma are beneficial. The air is dry and nI1ra. no yoolar rio ara abcOphod