Remarks on the etiology of sunstroke (siriasis) : not heat fever, but an infectious disease / by L. Westenra Sambon.

  • Sambon, Louis Westenra, 1865-1931.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the etiology of sunstroke (siriasis) : not heat fever, but an infectious disease / by L. Westenra Sambon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The Chinese expose their olosely shaven[heads to the hottest sun with- out ill-effects (Maclean). , , , The Andamanese, with their black heads generally clean-shaved and no cloth on the head, with the whole cranial surface presented in the most suitable manner for absorbing all the heat that falls on it, remain under a noonday sun within 12 deg. N. lat. of the equator, and never notice the heat (Brander). „ . At the Gold Coast it is a very common thing to see children secured to their mother's backs with the head exposed to the fierce glare and heat of noonday without suffering in the slightest (Clarke). And not only natives, but also Europeans, work in many tropical countries almost without regard, and yet they enjoy robust health. In Arizona and South Colorado the ordinary avocations of farm and factory are pursued without inconvenience in temperatures of n8° to 128° F. (Greely). The tea planters of Assam furnish a remarkable illustration of the safety with which Europeans may expose themselves in the hottest sun Tea planters are a large class, and tlieir duties require them to be out in the hottest season and at the hottest time of day. Mr. Berry White, who for upwards of twenty years had a large pra itiee among Assam tea planters, never knew of a case of sunstroke in Upper Assam (De Renzy). It is, indeed, surprising what power the human frame possesses of re- sisting the effects of high temperature. Many of our workmen, such as metal casters, glass blowers, furnace men, and stokers, are exposed for hours together to far greater heat than ever emanated from a tropical sun, yet they never suffer from siriasis. In the United Consols mine at Gwennap in Cornwall, the temperature is 1250 F. Siriasis has never occurred among its miners; their special disease is tuberculosis. Stokers on large steam vessels work for as long as four hours at the time in ill-ventilated and dark stokeholes, at temperatures varying from 150° to 1800 F., and, although occasionally one may be brought up from the furnace unconscious from syncope, or “ stoker’s collapse” as it has been called, they never show symptoms of siriasis. Tillett states that the female assistants in the bakeries of Ua Roche- foucauld entered the oven at a temperature of 301.6° F. The workmen of Sir F. Chan trey were accustomed to enter a furnace in which his moulds were dried whilst the floor was red hot, amd a thermometer in the air stood at 3500 F.; and Chabert, the “ Fire King,” was in the habit of enter- ing an oven the temperature of which was from 4000 to 6oo° F. (Carpenter). There is doubtless a point of heat upon exposure to which all human life would instantly perish, but no climate is subject to such heat. Numberless experiments have been made on animals for the purpose of studying the effects of exposure to excessive heat, and we have learnt from them that the animal organism when exposed to intense heat, under special conditions, is liable to death, but the conditions to the action of which the animals experimented upon were subjected, and the results derived from them, differ greatly from those of siriasis. In several diseases, as in scarlatina, typhus fever, erysipe- las. variola, relapsing fever, etc., the heat of the body rises to 104° and 105° F., and often reaches 107° F. or even above this. The high temperature may remain constant for days and sometimes weeks, and yet the heat of the blood will not in- duce the symptoms characteristic of siriasis. Formerly the term “ fever ” was not used to indicate simply an increased bodily temperature, but included the various symptoms found concomitant with pyrexia. Now we know that such symptoms are not due to pyrexia, but to the toxins produced by micro-organisms. A temperature which in one disease would be accompanied by pronounced nervous sym- ptoms, may be found in another disease without any marked disturbance. Thus, while in certain cases of typhoid.fever a temperature of 103° is attended with marked delirium, in re- lapsing fever a temperature of 106° occurs with the mind clear. Fever is the symptom common to all infections, it is per- haps a means of defence of the constitution against its micro- parasitic assailants.