Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1910 — CLIMATIC IRRITABILITY. [ARTICLE]

CLIMATIC IRRITABILITY.

Why Certain Localities Are Brad ng and Others Are Enervating. Certain places are said to be “bracing," while others enjoy an unenviable reputation of being enervating, though the latter quality is sometimes described as “soothing,” according to the London Lancet. The very antithesis of soothing is the climate too often met with in many resorts on the Mediterranean littoral during winter, where a blend of hot and cold that is disagreeable to the healthy and very trying to the invalid may frequently be experienced. It is common in midwinter in these places for the landscape to be quivering in the hot sun while a piercing wind from the northeast seizes every opportunity—the shade of a palm tree or a wall —to grip the unwary traveler in its fierce embrace to the detriment of his comfort, possibly of his health. The Inexperienced laugh at the cautious resident who dons his overcoat in spite of what looks and feels like summer sunshine, but the wages of ignorance is often disease. There is one curious effect of these bitter-sweet climates —namely, a certain irritability of temper that attacks people after a few weeks spent in these surroundings. Ask any one who has passed three months at Helouan or Algiers, Nice or Menton, and although he may not admit it as regards himself he will readily concede the truth of this observation on behalf of his friends. Now, this irritability is no doubt an outward and visible manifestation of a disturbance of nervous equilibrium consequent on nervous exhaustion. The effect of these rapidly recurring alternations of heat and cold on the nervous system is strictly comparable with'that of quick alterations of light and dark on the eye. The" bewildered vaso-motor system does its best to respond to the kaleidoscopic indications, but fails and ultimately reacts on the nervous system as a whole. When this symptom deciares itself it ' Is time to ipove on, either further south, where the variations of temperature are less marked, or to a higher altitude, where the temperature, being low, is more uniform. . The latter is the better choice of the two, because no matter how/far south one goes, starting from the Mediterranean, much the same difference obtains between the temperature in the sun and that of the wind. The only advantage attending the desert air is that, being absolutely dry, the alternations are less trying than the near coast, where the relative humidity Is high- » ~AI