QUARRYMAN CLAIMS DAMAGES

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 357, 14 September 1933, Page 5

QUARRYMAN CLAIMS DAMAGES

Asserts He Contracted Sunstroke

WAR-TIME INCIDENTS RECALLED

i Press Association.- Copyright. ! Auckland, Sept. 13. i An assertion that while working as a

;' quarry man in a confined space exposed | to tha sun he contracted sunstroke or • heat apoplexy was the basis of a claim j for compensation made in the Arbitration j Court by Robert Hunter Dowie, aged 56, jTe Kuiti, against the Waitomo Lime | Company, Ltd. He contended this was j an accident within the meaning of the : Act. The company denied that Dowie 1 worked in an enclosed or exposed place. j The hearing was adjourned. ! Dr. A. Eisdell Moore said he had con- ! siderable experience in the tropics and I in Mesopotamia of heat stroke and sun- ! stroke. Heat stroke such as might occur !in a stoke room was different from | tropical sunstroke. This man's case was j not typical of either but it was a case of i the effects of heat. Dowie was in a I condition of profound neurasthenia and j he would suffer from a permanent dis- ! :.bility on account cf definite heart wcakI ness and of the grave risk he wculd run | if he had to work in the heat again- He j would probably have a 15 per cent, per- | manent disability on account of his heart. ! Sunstroke was a very rare thing here. i Dr. P. R. Carrick said he had had 34 I years' tropical experience in India, Burma j and Persia. He considered Dowie's case | was one of heat stroke but he would not particularise it as heat exhaustion. It j Was sun traumatism, which was the rei suit of direct exposure to sun. Anything | over 85 degrees of atmospheric temperai ture was considered dangerous in tem- ! perate climates and anything over 110 degrees in the tropics. He had found i Dowie in a state of marked neurasthenia. | His heart was somewhat disorganised and j he had a pleuritic lung. Dr. Carrick recalled a war-time inI cident in which 25 men died from heat I stroke in a troop train going from Kara- | chi to Peshawar, although there had been no direct exposure to the sun.