makes no distinction of persons, where all classes and all temperaments are at one time or another of the year liable to the invasion of the particular diseases of the well-marked seasons? A nation that has a well-defined climate, with well-defined diseases dependent upon a certain train of meteorological causes, can never rise to so great a height in psychical development as those whose inhabitants have to contend with the vicissitudes of weather. We know that certain temperaments are more liable to take on one class of diseases than another: were the climate of the country to which any set of people hed migrated only inimical to a certain set of diseases, then should we find that those who remained would resemble each other, and give a certain character to their posterity, who would possess in the execution of their affairs a peculiar mental bias, which would characterise them as a nation, but never raise them to pre-eminence in the world's fame for a continuance. Whereas in a climate such as that which Greece enjoyed, there was every element for keeping up the balance of mind and body among the inhabitants, variable like our own, during one season the hopeful, the imaginative, the ardent, were assailed; at another, the thoughtful, grave, and phlegmatic; so that a balance was struck to a certain extent at the end of the year, and the next generation did not suffer, but rather improved, under the skilful pruning of death. Happy is it for England that she has the like advantages, only to a greater extent her inhabitants are variable as her climate, and it is this amalgamation of all shades of mental and bodily temperament that has made the Englishman so far superior to the other citizens of the world.-But to return to our subject. We have now to consider the effect of temperature in raising or depressing the mortality in diarrhoea; and we shall find that while bronchitis and pneumonia descend in the scale of mortality as the year rises in temperature, diarrhoea goes and retires with the wave-tide of heat. The Tables III. and IV. will more fully show what I shall now endeavour to explain by a reference to the numbers of the Registrar-General. Although, as we have said before, diarrhoea has been observed to rise in the amount of its fatality as the temperature of the year increases, yet it must be remarked that, in taking the weekly averages for the last ten years, we find this disease pursuing a very steady and depressed course between the eleventh and twentieth weeks inclusive, although during that time the mean temperature ranged in an almost gradual ascent from 40° to 52°; after this, until the thirty-second week, about the middle of August, it gradually increased until the weekly average of deaths arrived at 130 in number, the mean temperature for the same period being 620,-the highest point to which the mean temperature of the year arrived, if we except the twenty-eighth week, when it was 63°: after this period, both the thermometer and the disease, as a general rule, seemed to decline. With regard, however, to the present year, 1854, in which diarrhoea and cholera have been so fearfully fatal, it will be necessary to make a few remarks before we dismiss this subject. The temperature of the weeks of this year in which diarrhoea raged so much above the average, was far from being higher than usual; in fact, from the seventeenth to the thirty-sixth week the weekly mean of the thermometer, with but five exceptions, was considerably below the mean of the last ten years: immediately before the seventeenth week, and at the commencement of the year, however, the temperature was rather higher than the mean of the corresponding time had been for ten years, and the number of deaths from diarrhoea was proportionally high. When the fatality from diarrhoea was at its height, in the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth, and thirty-seventh weeks, during which 965 died from this disease alone in London, the thermometer stood considerably higher than the mean: thus, 1854, 61°, 65°, 59°, 60°; mean, 60°, 59°, 59°, 57°. Weekly average number of Deaths from Diarrhoea at different degrees of The above tables are only calculated up to the forty-fifth week, and probably, were the figures of the returns for the few remaining weeks of this year appended, some slight difference might be observed; they would not, however, disturb two facts that are self-evident to anyone who glances over the above statistics: 1st, that diarrhoea is materially influenced by heat; and 2ndly, that during this year, 1854, the number of deaths from this disease has been considerably above the average. It will appear from the tables that the effect of the rise in temperature was not immediate, for the number of deaths did not swell considerably above the average of the winter quarter until between the 55° and 58° in this year, and not until the 60° in the average for ten years; neither did the disease decline synchronously with the temperature, for we find it at its acme, viz. 276 per week, when the mean temperature was 6o below the mean average for year; and the average maximum height, 130, was at the the thirty-second week, when the thermometer indicated a gradual decline. These facts seem to point out to us the means by which diarrhoea is affected by heat; its effect is not immediate, as we have seen those of the easterly and south-westerly winds were in pulmonary complaints; heat seems to act upon the living by means of the dead in the spring and early summer it clothes the world with verdure, prodigious quantities of vegetables are brought into cities for man's use, all are not consumed, what remains dies, is acted upon by heat, and putrefies, sending forth its pestilential exhalations. The waters teem with vegetation; it takes some time, however, to raise their temperature, but when it has once reached a certain degree, the putrefactive process goes on; and can man expect to escape, who drinks this poison? Besides decayed vegetables, there is ever a large mass of dead animal matter for heat and moisture to act upon and corrupt; and in proportion as the emanations from these sources are concentrated in the water we drink and the air we breathe, so will the number of victims be. The reader has only to turn to the faithful record of death published by the Registrar-General, to see what tremendous havoc water can produce in a locality when containing the germ of fermentation. Modern authorities-for instance, Crampton and Forbes*-give as one of the causes of diarrhoea an atmosphere simply cold and wet, as impregnated with putrid exhalations. With some persons, they say, exposure to warm and damp air is productive of the same consequences; and alternations of temperature are often equally effective, as in the case of a hot day being succeeded by a chilly evening: therefore they recommend as a remedial agent removal to a mild and dry climate. Chronic diarrhoea, for instance, is one of those diseases in which a change to a warmer and drier climate than ours is found most beneficial. With regard to the diarrhoea that prevailed at Thasos under this constitution, many of the cases might have been brought on by eating fruit, which, from the con * Enc. Pract. Med. vol. i. pp. 556 and 566. THIRD CONSTITUTION. (Κατάστασις τρίτη.)-Observations made at Thasos. (Εν Θάσῳ.) Rain. Much rain. Wind. Northerly. Temperature. Cloud. Snow, etc. Name of Diseases. About the equi- νότια ύσματα τάδος. |