The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-07
HEArsTRoKE AND sUNsTRoKE.
French Naval Surgeon Discovers thu

French Naval Surgeon Discovers the
 Difference Between Them.
 In the Archives de Medicine Navale for January, Dr. Moussoir, French naval surgeon of the first class, claims to be the first observer to have estab- lished a Fundamental distinction be- tween heatstroke and sunstroke, and contends further that a correct apprecia- tion of his discovery would result in a large saving of human life Heatstroke, according to Dr. Moussoir Is a patholo- gical condition produced by the action on the whole surface of the body during a sufficiently prolonged period of tenn peratura exceeding 104 degrees F., whereas sunstroke is pathological con- dition produced by the action on the cranum during a period which need not necessarily be long, or sufficiently intense solar radiation The high tenn perature which gives rise to heatstroke may be either moist or dry and may emanate from any source. Moist heat, as in a stoke-hole on board ship, brings on heatstroke by preventing the evapo- ration of perspiration, while a dry heat, by shrivelling up the skin into a parch- ment-lke substance, prevents the exu- dation of perspiration and most pro- bably also produces an analogous condi- ton in the pulmonary alveoar tissue.
 Heatstroke causes it's ill effects through the superheated blood, which reacts on the nervous centres. It comes on gradually, but may simulate sudden ess when the will power by which the subject was sustained is abruptly with
 drawn. Stokers are able to endure a damp, hot atmosphere in narrow, ill- ventilated spaces because they work naked or nearly so, whereas soldiers on duty in the open air succumb to heat stroke because the caloric increases be- heath their thick clothing, which also flinders the evaporation of sweat, To prove this three thermometers should be placed--the first in the shade, the se- cond in the sun, and the third likewise in the sun but wrapped in a piece of cloth. An experiment repeated by Dr. Moussoir gave results as follow: first thermometer, SPA degrees, second, 1103 degrees, and third, 1274 degrees.
 Sunstroke, or insoation, is not in- duced by high temperature, but by the intense radiation which the sun alone, owing to it's enormous volume (1,200000 times that of the earth), can supply, the chemical rays, the vibra- tions of which are more rapid and there fore more penetrating than those of their calorifc and luminous congeners, being the exciting cause. The chemi- cal rays emitted by the sun can pierce through white clouds freely, but are al- most entirely arrested by black sub stances and partially so by red These facts explain the immunity from sum- stroke of negroes and people with swarthy complexions and the diminish ed liability to it of the ruddy. To pro- duce sunstroke the rays must impinge upon some part of the brain case. the effect being transmitted thence to the as yet unlocated heat centre by reflex action. Covering the head preserves from sunstroke, but just as it is the case with thick clothing a helmet can only assist in the development of heatstroke In heatStroke the disease begins by heating the blood, but in sunstroke this condition of the circulating fluid is sec ondary; the fact, however that in both affections the blood becomes super- heated serves to explain the resemblance of the symtoms. Sunstroke, or insola- ton, can only occur within the tropics because in that region alone the suns chemical rays are sufficiently intense to produce the necessary reaction. With regard to treatment Dr. Moussoirs pro- mises can scarcely be looked upon as fulfilled FXctation and antipvrin are insisted upon, together with ice cold effusion, and the rest of the stock re- medies as usually recommended Qui- nine, however is discarded utterly, the writer having no belief in its antither- mic properties, seeing that in smallpox, scarlet fever, etc, it's exhibition fails to reduce the temperature. In paludal levers the alkaloid acts as a parasiti- eide, and in sunstrolle painting with guaiacol is mentioned but the effects are said to be prohibitively uncertain. Under it's influence hyperthermia is apt to degenerate into hypothermia with cardiac collapse. Among the predis- posing causes of heat apoplexy Dr. Moussoir mentions the horizontal posi- tion, contending that the heat rays, both direct and refracted from the ground,