Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1875 — Effects of Heat Upon the Human System. [ARTICLE]

Effects of Heat Upon the Human System.

A very interesting paper by Dr. F. P. Harvey, United States army, on the effects of the continuous action of a high temperature on the natives of temperate climates appears in a recent number of the Medical Record. He was stationed at Ringgold Barracks, New Mexico, for a long time, and testifies from personal observation to the enervating effects of the terrible heat of those regions. He says: “It is doubtful if individual man is capable of adapting himself to every contingency of climate; it is certain that a protracted residence in hot and malarious regions exercises a persistent deleterious influence on most if not all Northern constitutions. The races of Northern Europe find Louisiana an extreme climate, and they and their descendants are no longer to be recognized after prolonged residence there. Acclimation to malaria is a myth; its pernicious effects upon the human frame are perceptible at once, and the longer the system is exposed to such action the more thorough its subjection. A European transplanted to the South complains bitterly of the heat and becomes tanned; his plump, plethoric frame becomes attenuated; his blood loses fibrine and red globules; his mind and body become sluggish; gray hairs and other marks show that age has come on prematurely—the man of forty looks fifty years of age; the average duration of life is shortened, as shown by insurance tables, and the race in time would be exterminated, if cut off from supplies of emigrants from the home country. The European in the Antilles struggles with existence. Morell tells us that the European inhabitants of Jamaica, of Cuba, of Hispaniola, etc., have made no progress since their establishment there. The mortality among the troops and officers of the English army is greatest among those who have remained longest in India. Such is the graphic and, no doubt, faithful picture of the effects produced by the combined and continuous action of malaria and a high temperature on the natives of , temperate climates, drawn by some of the best medical writers of the age. * * * From the nature of my experience the following conclusions appear to me to be valid: 1. That certain parts of our country are characterized by climatic conditions, to which, as a rule, the Northern native is incapable of adaptation. 2. That acclimation to malaria is an utter impossibility. 3. That the unaided heat of a hot climate, acting continuously upon the systems of the natives of temperate climates, exerts, as a rule, a pernicious effect, causing impairment of the functions of digestion, assimilation and sanguification, inducing moVe or less anaemia, diminution of the number of respirations, -'an increase of the action of the heart, loss of weight, premature blanching and loss of the hair, a decrease of mental and physical vigor and, to some extent, a shortening of life.”