SOLAR INFLUENCE.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17533, 15 October 1928, Page 2

SOLAR INFLUENCE.

SUN SPOTS AND SUICIDE. ASTRONOMER'S THEORY. The influence of solar storms on the human race was referred lo by Dr C. Conyers Morrell, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, of London, in a paper read at the congress of the Institute of Public Health in Dublin. In his investigations, he said, he had found that there appeared to exist a very close correspondence between the incidence of solar storms and the incidence of deaths from suicide. A somewhat similar though less welldefloed relationship had been disclosed with regard to deaths from epilepsy and homicide. Until we are able, Dr Morrell continued, to ascertain the precise manner in which electro-magnetic frequencies emitted during solar storms influence human vital processes, there was no little difficulty in accounting for such anomalies as present themselves.

He made the suggestion that in some way as yet wholly unexplained—and possibly quite apart from climatic conditions—rays are emitted by solar spots and their allied phenomena of such a nature that factors controlling human vitality and stability are definitely influenced, either directly or indirectly by them.