DEATH BY COLD IN THE HUMAN SUBJECT. 335 



have elsewhere pointed out are very common during 

 hard winters, and in blizzards, all over the great plains 

 of North America. During the severe winter of 1872 

 and '73, for instance, over 200 men in the vicinity of 

 Fort Dodge are reported to have lost hands or feet, 

 or part of them, and in one instance a poor fellow 

 lost both hands and both feet. * In these cases of 

 congelation no doubt gangrene had set in, necessitat- 

 ing amputation of the parts, for Colonel Dodge 

 mentions that at least seventy operations were 

 performed by the post surgeon on persons suffering 

 from the results of frost-bite. The sufferings following 

 cases of severe frost-bite, as related to us by 

 persons who have undergone them, almost exceed 

 belief. The numbers of persons frozen to death 

 on the American prairies is also considerable, and "in 

 the Russian Empire" it is calculated that "on an 

 average 694 deaths occur annually from this cause; "f 

 and extraordinary, but not the less true, is it to say 

 that even to the very last in these cases, the analogy 

 between the apparent effects of great heat and great 

 cold does not cease. And though we have referred 

 to this view of the case before, it can do no harm to 

 briefly advert to it again here. Mr. Abercromby, with 

 reference to this matter, remarks that before death 

 by congelation " the singular delusion of oppressive 

 heat supervenes," and "under the influence of this 

 fancy the victim begins to strip off his clothes, and 

 so hastens the fatal end." 



* The Hunting Grounds of the Great West, by Colonel Richd J. 

 Dodge, U.S.A., 1877, p. 39. 



j Medical Dictionary, by Richd. Quain, Vol. i, p. 271. 



Seas and Skies in Manv Latitudes, by the Hon.Ralph Abercromby, 

 F.R.M.S., 1888, p. 7. 



