COMPENSATION CLAIM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 286, 14 September 1933, Page 8

COMPENSATION CLAIM

VICTIM OF SUNSTROKE. MEDICAL WITNESSES' VIEWS. (Per Press Association). AUCKLAND, September 13. The assertion that while working as a quarryman in a confined space exposed to, the sun he contracted sunstroke or. heat apoplexy, was the basis of a claim for compensation made,' in the Arbitration Court by Robert Hunter Dowie, 56, of Te Kuiti, against the Waitomo Lime Company, Ltd. He contended this was an accident within the meaning of the Act. The company denied that plaintiff worked in an enclosed or exposed place. Dr. A. Eisdell Moore said he had had considerable experience in the tropics and in Mesopotamia of heat stroke and sunstroke. A heat stroke such as might occur in a stoke-room was different from a tropical sunstroke. This man's case was not typical of either; but it was a case of the effects of heat. Plaintiff, was in a condition of profound neurasthenia, and he would suffer from a permanent disability on account of a definite heart weakness and of the grave risk he would run if he had to work in the heat again. He would probably have a 15 per cent, permanent disability on account of his heart. Sunstroke was a very rare thing here. Dr. P. P. Carrick said he had had 34 years' tropical experience in India, Burma and Persia. He considered that plaintiff's case was one of heat stroke; but he would not particularise it as heat exhaustion. It was sun traumatism, which was the result of direct exposture to the sun. Anything more than 85 degrees of atmospheric temperature was considered dangerous in temperate and anything more than 110 degrees in the tropics. He had found the plaintiff in a state of marked neurasthenia. His heart was somewhat disorganised and he had a pleuritic lung.

The witness recalled a wartime incident in which 25 men died from heat stroke in a troop train going from Karachi to Peshawar, although there had been no direct exposure to the sun. The case was adjourned.