The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-02-07

car Is 6nOO6an2 at race morse speed into
the teeth of a zero storm. -
1t must indeed be admitted that the
privilege of enjoying bracing climate
is Offset by considerable disadvantages.
cit will make you work, will develop
habits of industry that may pave your
way to fortune,'' etc.
mo, thanks, - the Peruvian Indian
would be apt to answer. 81 prefer the
chance of bare existence minus such
polar zephyrs The struggle in the di.
rection of fortune might just enable me
to buy fuel enough to keep your stimu-
Iating climate from killing me out
right. +"
It Blows Somebody Good.
Still it is certain that as a destroyer
of disease germs a good, hard frost is
worth shiploads of antiseptic drugs.
The first cold October nights put a stop
to the climatic fevers of our gulf states.
After the end of September the death
rate of city infants decreases 60 per cent
in less than six weeks A Spanish ply
stefan of Santiago de Cuba demonstrated
the possibility of curing desperate cases
of yellow fever in hospitals cooled by
means Of artificial refrigerators, and
only a month ago press dispatch from
Paris gave resume of lecture deliv-
cred before the Academy of Medicine by
Professor Charles Podet, who announced
his success in relieving digestive trou-
bles by dose of ice air.
Having noticed that dogs confined
for few minutes in the tank of an ice
factory become ravenously hungry, it
occurred to him to stimulate his own
70 civ Ton bo
found that after breathing air reduced
below the freezing point dyspeptics
could not only relish but digest meals
which under other circumstances would
have saddled them with a monstrous
surfeit Even the germs of lung diseases
yield to the same specific. Consumptives
who would have coughed their lives
away in the sultry air of tropical win
ter resort recovered in a winter camp
of the upper Adirondacks, and the unan-
imous testimony of arctic travellers has
established the astounding fact, utterly
incomprehensible from the standpoint
of the old time consumption theory,
that north Of the sixty fifth parallel pull
monary disorders are almost unknown.
''Say, Louis, the whole inside of
your classroom got burned out, " young
visitor informed a Tennessee boarding
house scholar of my acquainta lance. "Oh,
never mind,'' said Louis, 'as long as
my arithmetic books are burned up too. "
A blizzard victim might console himself
with a similar reflection, ''Never mind
a few frost bites as long as my microbes
are frozen out too.
After answering that purpose of sani-
tary disinfectiOn a polar wave is apt to
become an unmitigated nuisance, though
our calorifo articles have made con-
siderable progress since the time when
our Saxon ancestors huddIed around a
kettleful of smoldering charcoal, but
experiences like those of the last three
weeks do not disgrace the fact that our
winter climate is really getting milder.
The international ice tornadoes of Dec.
90 and Jan. IA are exceptions that mere
ly modify an unquestionable truth.
We might as well doubt the progress of
religious tolerance because the Russian
Hebrews and Armenian Christians ex-
perienced a relapse of medieval fanati-
cism.
Old Fashioned Weather.
There was a time when a winter like
the present would not have been consid-
OAOO all y Gu4uS uAuSua4. LILO AASO SOU
tiers of Pittsburg counted upon good
sleigh tracks from the middle of Deem
Der to the end of February. In Connect
icut four months of steady cold weather
excited no surprise, and the overland
road to the lakes was snow barred so
often that emigrants rarely started be-
fore the end of April. In parts of Ala
bama, where ice has formed only few
times in the course of the last quarter
of a century, ponds and brooks once
froze almost regularly year after year.
Since the disappearance of forests the
snow of the cotton districts melts about
three weeks earlier, and in sunny years
the open fields imbibe caloric enough to
protect the Indian summer till late in
November
On the other side of the Atlantic the
same cause has indisputably produced
the same results. Italy was not always
land of perpetual spring, the Grecian
philosophers could study the phenomena
of a snowstorm without leaving the low
lands, and some of the Cesars-e. e.,
Augustus after his quarrel with the
poet Ovid-maintained a sort of polit-
ical Siberia at Toni, on the shores of
the Euxine, some 400 miles southwest
of the seaside villa where the late czar
sought refuge from the rigors of north
ern winter. f. l.. OSWALD.
War Correspondence In Asia.
Ha1.d iradood IL tho Lot Of tho nor-