The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions / by James Johnson and James Ranald Martin.

Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions / by James Johnson and James Ranald Martin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    unhealthlnesa is consequently great. In the report of Dr. Marshall and Major Tullock on the West Indies, it is stated that though the months previous to the cold ones have the most sickness, yet, “ the principal mor- tality is during the cool dry -weather, which generally prevails at Christ- mas Here, from want of statistical information, we have no means of making a just comparison. From the 1st November to the end of February, the weather is settled and agreeable to persons in health, the monsoon keeps steadUy to north- east, the atmosphere during the day is dry, and a slight nse takes place m the barometer—the thermometer ranging from 45° to 75°. The nights are damp as well as cold during this season, the de-wing process being exces- sively productive; and the fogs which prevail occasionally are of a nature more dense than I have any where seen, except at Rangoon.^ On the con- trary, during the day, the cold north-east wind absorbs moisture mth ex- traordinary rapidity from every object, animate and inanimate, over which it passes. Furniture, although made of the most seasoned wood, foreign or native, warps and cracks audibly—plaster newly laid, falls from the wall through rapidity of evaporation; the old Indian becomes goose-skinned and shrivelled, with a sense of dryness in the palms of the hands, so un- comfortable as to give some persons of irritable habit, and in whom t e power of generating heat may be diminished by a long residence m India, a constant sense of nervous uneasiness of the whole sentient surface, not to be described. It results also from the cold season that the blood is more venaHzed, a larger quantity of oxygen being consumed m the maintenance of the temperature of the body. , . , Chronic eruptions, in an active state of development during t ® hot season and rains, now become suddenly repeUed, Accompanied by head- ache and vertigo. In old residents the appetite fails, accompanied by an oppressive sense of abdominal fulness; and when this state is not met by a suitable change of diet, clothing, and some medicme to act on the skm and bowels, visceral congestion, oedema of the lower extremities, or some more active disease may ensue. New-born infants suffer matenally from, ^d are sometimes destroyed by the impression of the cold on the unguarded surface. The most fatal forms of apoplexy that have come under my ob- servation in Bengal, have occurred at this season, and patnlytic affections are not imfrequent amongst the aged and infirm: indeed, it requires a e- gree of equilibrium, not commonly enjoyed by persons of long resi ence m Bengal, to take kindly to the alternation from copious and mcess^t dis- charge from the surface, to its total suppression, and consequent abdomm :^??ereb,«l engorgements. It is only to the sonnd are temperate in all ways, and thereby able to bear the cold bath, or to such as are recently arrived from Europe, that our cold season is either agreeable or healthy.