The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1878-07-17

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perience for single city, and a very start
ling one when that city is in the temperate
zone and in a northern climate. In the
torrid zones this murderous result of the
heat is not experienced. even by persons not
habituated to the extreme temperatures of
a tropical climate, because it is known what
must occur if all preventive care is not
taken, and the provisions made show what
may be done in the protection OF life
from solar heat. Houses that are
caves abstinence from exertion when
the sun is high, drinks that supply
the waste by the skin but do not lead to
any perturbation of the nervous system and
lighter diet than is common with MS, pro-
tect the people Of hot countries against the
accidents that the heat causes in their
climate. But in the extremely hot coun-
tries-countries where a fierce temperature
is experienced over wide areas tor months
together-they are without the condition
that is always associated with fatal heat
here, an atmosphere highly charged with
moisture. But add to the unprovided con-
dition of northern people as to con-
trivances to protect themselves from heat,
the heat Of the tropics (; surprise them in
their gross feeding and their careless
habits generally with a temperature that is
common only on the Equator, and day like
Monday in st. Louis is an almost neccs-
sary consequence.
st. Louis is in any summer weather an
extremely hot city q city whose average
summer heats are intolerable to men from
the Atlantic slope. Against the blistering,
oppressive, overwhelming heat that assails
one on a bad day there is no resource and
no refuge. People from cities where
steamer may be taken that in half an hour
will carry you to where the sharp wind of
the sea lifts your hair are in despair for q
resource when they remember the river,
the great, mighty and magnificent Missis-
sippi of the legends. They hasten to it as
they may to find wide ditch
like gutter illed with muddy water.
In that stream they see also the
beverage Of all that part of the people not
addicted to the wholesale use of lager.
Perhaps the almost universal use of this
beer forced upon the community by the
want of good water-has an important
share in that reduction of vital force Of
many individuals which makes them the
victims of temperatures which their
neighbors Withstand. But though st.
Louis is subject to conditions which
may readily be understood as likely to
increase rather than mitigate the i'll effects
of great heat, it must not be forgotten that
such tragic days as that Of Monday are in
this climate not peculiar to'that city or to
the Mississippi Valley, or local in any
respect whatever
Nowhere have such days been more fatal
than here. ind we have had them in some
years for a week together. Sixty-eight have
been killed by the sun in single day in
this city. In seven days we have had two
hundred cases Of actual sunstroke, while
the indirect action OF the heat, in increas-
ing the rae of deaths due to other causes,
has been such as to give the whole death
rate a proportion that might be deemed
peculiar to times of pestilence Indeed, a
week of great heat in this city has often
been equivalent to week of pestilence,
and the cholera itself is rarely so fatal rs the
sun. 1t is not Tor us, therefore, to point our
fingers at city which some of its residents
like to regard as the great city of the future,
or to hold that local conditions give the de-
structive effects of the heat greater power
against the lives Of the people. If facts re-
lated to the advantageous site of city could
be of great consequence in this respect we
i go
as that of the famous first week in July,
1872. But with great rivers flowing on
either side Of us, with q position between
tile mountains and the sea, and the sea
almost at our doors, we have had as great
mortality from the heat on single day as
has ever been known in any great city of
the north temperate zone. But this year,
while the temperature has been very high
with us, we have been unusually free from
mortality due to heat, and sudden deaths
in the street from insulation have attracted
no attention; and our immunity is perhaps
due to the cause that saves people in hotter
countries the dryness OF the air.
Doubtless the agreement on any given
day of an extremely high temperature and
an atmosphere unduly charged with moist
ure will give the air an oppressive and de-
structive quality, and those are the condi-
tons, apparently, that make deadly day.
But the worst possible day does not over
whelm the whole population, and who are
they that it does overwhelm? What ex-
ceptional circumstance is it that designatcs
tho victim? What fact is it in the physical
condition Of any one man that units him for
the trial of such day? 1t has been held that
solar heat kills by its effect in reducing or
interrupting the excretion from the system
of carbonic acid gas, and that this gas thus
accumulated in the system destroys life by
its well known poisonous operation. If
this were true the next thing the world