A STRICKEN CITY.

Bush Advocate, Volume XX, Issue 937, 3 February 1908, Page 2

A STRICKEN CITY.

Probably no workers sullVred mine in the. heat wave in Victoria ihan tli" blacksmiths in the Government workshops. They withstood ;i temperature of 1 2-jdeg one day, hut when the mercury rose to l-"sodeg in ilie wellventilated brick building in which they worked they wore obliged to cease working. Almost as bad was ibe lot of the lumpers on tho vessels in port. The ironwork of the vessels became too hot to touch, the chains used in handling cargo could not be picked up with uncovered bands, and the temperature, in the holds, under iron decks, must have been dreadful. The men, however, i,tuek to their work doggedly. The death-rate during the heat wave was appalling. On tho last day of the wave the. Argus stated thai 100 deaths from heat apoplexy had been reported, and many more died who might have lived had the- weather been normal. Tlie mortality of Melbourne roso so liipb that lbo staff of the, \.»C\U l Yal C'eiHClcry could noi k<.-<p up with the. applications, for graves. The soeues at Ilie hospital were harrowing. Men smitten with sunstroke, waiting their turn to be treated, would suddenly become demented, and violently attack the constables watching them, and, when overpowered, burst into a paroxysm of weeping. "Hit the patient on the nose, hard." was one doctor's advice to an Argus representative, who asked what should be done in a case of sunstroke pending a doctor's arrival. Hut this advice is not to be followed when there is no respiratory trouble. In high-temperature cases the. chief thing to be done is to gel the patient as cool as po-sible. Kvcn packing in ice, sometimes fails io reduce the temperature. A patient was admitted to the hospital with a temperature of 10b' degrees, and after an hour's treatment his tempera turn was 107. On the- other hand, a pai ient whose temperature had reached ihe extraordinary height of 100 degrees, was reduced in a couple, of hviitrs to W.) degrees. "Ice, or failing that, wet clothes and baths seem to be about the only aid that a layman can render pending medical treatment of a sun-stroke patient, nor does tho medical treatment itself amount, in most cases, to a great deal more than reducing the temperature to normal."