806 DISEASES OF HOT CLIMATES. 



hours of each day, for several weeks, and even 

 months, to a temperature varying from 1 20 to 130 

 in the sun, and from 95 to 100, and sometimes 

 10 or 12 higher in the shade, the powers of life 

 are so far diminished, that when the atmosphere 

 is suddenly reduced to 70, as during the hurri- 

 canes of the rainy season ; or to 50, and some- 

 times to 42 just before sun-rise, as in tropical 

 Africa and India, chilliness comes on, with a 

 general torpor of all the organs, obstructed cir- 

 culation, a livid hue of the surface and extremi- 

 ties, and a deranged condition of the blood, which 

 being no longer duly renovated by respiration, is 

 unfit to combine with the solids and maintain the 

 several functions of life.* In some cases, the cold 

 stage is ushered in with stupor, apoplexy, and all 

 the symptoms of cerebral congestion, followed 

 by malignant fever, dysentery, cholera, hepatitis, 

 dropsy, apoplexy, or paralysis. 



Corresponding with the general fact that all 

 maladies belonging to the febrile genus, are far 

 more prevalent in tropical and warm climates 

 than in the middle and higher latitudes, they 



* Hence the prevalence of liver disease in hot climates and 

 malarious districts ; for the venous blood of the bowels has to cir- 

 culate through the whole capillary system of the liver, before it gets 

 into the general circulation, to be renovated in the lungs. The con- 

 sequence of which is, that when respiration, and the power of the 

 general circulation, are very much diminished by the united in- 

 fluence of a high temperature and an impure atmosphere, the liver 

 is more liable to congestion than any other part of the body. 



