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AuthorTopic: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918  (Read 6486 times)

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Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #30 on: July 22, 2022, 06:47:40 PM »

  PART II

CHAPTER 6

THE PRICE OF ACTIVITY

Temperate-zone nations are leaders inworldaffairs.
Their peoples, activated by cool climates, have had the energy
to build great power plants, skyscrapers, dams, bridges, and a
legion of impressive monuments to human initiative. They
visit the tropics mainly for trade and war, and have long benefited
from tropical raw material wealth which the natives were too
sluggish to exploit. But it does not follow that we of the earth’s
favoured regions are less under the control of great outside
forces. While slow-maturing people in hot climates have diffi-
culty losing body heat, our ready ability to get rid of it is a mixed
blessing, since it drives us on to such activity that our bodies
often suffer as a result. A life full of activity and stress is temperate-
zone man’s unconscious response to climatic urging; he himself
has little choice in the matter.

It is this stress which is bringing the most alarming health
menaces to people of the earth’s middle latitudes. The body
seems unable to endure the severe strain thrown upon it by a
constantly increasing pace of activity. Longstanding lack of
proper rest and relaxation tends to leave the system broken and
prematurely old. Even the best of machines must be idle at
times for renovation and repair of worn parts if complete break-
down and early discard are to be avoided. It is in those human
body parts most intimately concerned with supplying the tissue
fires that evidences of breakdown are most frequent.

Oxygen must be carried from lungs to body cells, and it is the
circulatory system (heart and blood vessels) which eventually
suffers most from prolonged forced draft in the human fïrebox.
The red cells of the blood are the real carriers of the oxygen. In
those same regions where heart failure is most common we find
also most frequent exhaustion of the bone marrow which produces
the red cells. This exhaustion is known as pernicious anaemia,
a disease rare in the tropics, but quite severe in middle temperate
regions. Another disease also most prevalent in the stimulating

44
  latitudes is diabetes. It represents a breakdown in the body’s
ability to transform the food eaten into the special kind of
sugar which can be burned in the cells.

Proper ease of body heat loss, as made possible by an invigorat-
ing climate, thus works upon man by stimulating his internal
combustion in much the same way a forced-air draught speeds up
the burning of fuel in a steam engine. Stimulated combustion
and a liberal release of energy then drive him into ever-expand-
ing activities, throwing more and more stress on the body parts
which supply oxygen to the tissues. Every good engineer knows
the capacity of his engine, but people seem unable to estimate
properly their own limits. Although they may not be able to
avoid all dangers, a proper appreciation of the value of rest and
relaxation would reduce the risks. Ignorance of these safety
rules results in other forms of breakdown besides pernicious
anaemia and diabetes.

Within the past two years, six of my colleagucs on the Medical
College staff have died of coronary disease and sudden heart
failure—and only one of them was more than fifty-two years
old! Several others have suffered heart attacks, but still survive
with restricted activity. The rest of us up near the half-century
mark are beginning to fear this men ace which is striking down
the most active of our members while still in their prime of
usefulness. Heart failure to-day easily leads among the causes
of death in the northern United States. In 1940, two-thirds of
the deaths among American physicians were recorded as due
to failure in the heart or blood-vessel system! The only near
competitor here in the north is cancer. In the tropics the picture
is quite different, for coronary trouble and heart failure are rare
there except in advanced old age.

Additional emphasis was given to the problem of coronary
disease by an editorial in the April uth (1942) issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association:

Physicians always advise their patients how to live longer
and better; they themselves often die prematurely of pre-
ventable or at least postponable causes. The prevalcnce of
deaths from heart disease, particularly coronary disease,
among physicians at relatively early ages has in recent years
increased sharply. Coronary disease has come to be known
among physicians as “doctor’s disease.” . . . A new develop-
ment is the Committee of Longevity, Class of 1900, College
of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, which has organized
for the purpose of prolonging the lives and improving the

45
  health of one hundred surviving members of the class, which
originally numbered one hundred and seventy-five graduates.
Already the idea has received much pubiicity through editorial
comments in New York papers. Superficially amusing, but
basically significant, is this comment from an editorial in the
New York Sun (July 9, 1941): “Laymen whom middle age
prompts to think of such things are bound to be interested in
the work of the Longevity Gommittee. . . . These doctors
should be able, if anybody can, to propagate the art of col-
lective good health. Laymen will note with an understanding
smile, however,. . . that a good many doctors have this much
in common with a good many laymen: they neglect their
periodic examinations or delay in taking treatment.”

Medical men are much worried about the presence of this
killer among them—a killer which spares the weak and infirm,
but strikes down instead the most energetic and progressive
members of the race. Hardening of the arteries, high blood
pressure, coronary disease, apoplexy—these are the blood-vessel
troubles which incapacitate and kill an astonishing number of
people in the stimulating middle temperate latitudes of America.
Hardening or sclerosis in the vessel walls, often with patchy
roughening of the lining, is the tissue change found at autopsy,
but no one knows yet just what factors of life bring it on. Only
in the last few years have medical scientists been able to repro-
duce and then relieve these conditions in laboratory animals.
Two decades ago the hardening process in the vessels seemed
to take a slower course and resulted more often than to-day in
kidney failure. Rupture of a hardened artery in the brain—
apoplexy or stroke—is about as common as formerly. But the
sclerotic disease now seems to affect the coronary arteries supply-
ing blood to the heart muscle itself much earlier in life and with
much greater frequency than in former decades.

An engineer in his early forties, director of research in a large
Corporation, developed high blood pressure, spent a year and a
half trying to get it back under control, and is to-day assigned
to a minor post of lesser stress—practically finished with life
before he is fifty. A younger human dynamo has just taken his
place in the ceaseless, pushing struggle which cbaracterizes
American business. He too seems destined for the same end.
Keen competition and continuous pressure for results allow him
no rest during the day and keep him keyed up to such a pitch
that he cannot relax properly at night. One of my patients who
will soon migrate to Southern California for sinus trouble is of

46
  this same dynamic type. He is already afflicted with hypertension
and coronary trouble before forty-five years of age. One of the
most energetic of my medical colleagues developed a rapidly
Progressive hardening of the arteries and died of heart failure
at fifty. And so it goes, with business executives and professional
men the choice victims of this ruthless enemy.

All this has a very direct and personal interest for me, because
only by careful watch over my winter activities have I succeeded
in keeping sclerosis and high blood pressure at bay. I spent my
childhood and early youth on a farm near Kokomo, Indiana,
where climate acts as a dynamic force on life, and frequent
weather change is a most disturbing influence over the daily
functioning of the body. I had numerous colds and attacks of
sore throat during Indiana winters, and my heart is now quite
sensitive to stress or too much stimulation. No actual rheumatic
heart disease can be found, but the repeated throat infections
probably left some mark on my heart muscle. Palpitation occurs
readily after even moderate smoking or coffee drinking. In
addition, my inner dynamo seems geared for a fast pace of
action. It speeds up through winter cold and slows down in
summer warmth. With the winter acceleration comes a rise in
blood pressure and an inability to relax which several times in
the last twenty years has become really troublesome. Summer
heat brings me a welcome relief from this cold-weather stress,
with the blood pressure settling back to its proper level.

Although I may have particularly good reason to be interested
in weather stresses at present, my study of such matters actually
dates back to my senior year at the University of South Dakota
in 1917. My first bit of research dealt with the effects of high
and low temperatures on the thyroid gland in rabbits. A box
fitted with electric lights served as a hot room, and the outdoor *
Dakota winter supphed ample cold. My wife was pressed into
evening service as anaesthetist while I snipped out small bits of
the rabbit thyroids for microscopie study. We had been married
at the end of our second year in college and were both busy with
regular studies during the day, so these outside experiments
were relegated to evening hours. The next year they were con-
tinued at the University of Kansas, where I went as an instructor
in physiology.

That first piece of work showed the marked stimulating effect
of cold and the quieting influence of warmth upon body functions.
These findings have been expanded and given added emphasis
by later studies. Through the subsequent ten years at the Univer-
sity of Cincinnati, studies on blood clotting and the control of

47
  haemorrhage absorbed my energies, and it was not until the
Rockefeller Foundation engaged me at the Peking Union
Medical College in North China that I developed a deep interest
in climate as a major factor in human affairs. I had been bor-
rowed by the foundation from the University of Cincinnati to
work at the college and help introducé Western medical practice
into China. There I encountered my first personal experience
with really debilitating warmth as the Little Heat, Middle
Heat, and Great Heat of Chinese legend piled one on top of
another to make the summer of 1927 a rather terrifying time.

Our younger son was bom during the Great Heat of that
summer. The fight I made to overcome its effects upon him*
helped greatly in opening my eyes to the importance of climate
as a physiological factor in life. For five years it was a nip-and-
tuck battle for his survival, and to-day both he and his mother
bear as “scars” of that experience a troublesome sensitivity to
summer heat. It was during that summer that I began to see
how prolonged heat might cause the body to slow down its
activities and result in a fall in blood pressure, a drop in internal
combustion rate, and a more sluggish pace of living.

My son’s experiences, however, were not all that emphasized
the importance of such problems to me. The significance of
outside forces was brought home by contrast to my own child-
hood. After my farm life near Kokomo I went to South Dakota
with my parents at the age of seventeen to take up residence
under climatic conditions even more invigorating than those
of Indiana.

It was this sort of childhood and youth, brimming over with
energy and activity, which later made a fascinating contrast to
the severe effects of the prolonged heat in Peking. The tropical
lethargy and sluggish life encountered in India, the Malay
States, and South China on the way to Peking impressed me.
It was so ütterly different from the active existence to which I
had been accustomed in temperate-zone coolness. As a child I
always had a particularly strong urge to find out why things
happened as they did. Now I began a really scientific search for
the why of climatic effects.

In China I became my own first guinea-pig, although the
heat affected me less than it did my son. I had spent a most
active winter and spring teaching and doing research after
arriving at Peking late in September of 1926. All was well until
near the end of the next July, when both investigators and
laboratory animals wilted in the severe heat of the Oriental
monsoon season. Tropical lassitude captured me then for the
  first time in my life. I neither did nor wanted to do anything
through August and early September, but feit certain that
another good year of work would follow such a complete rest.
October came and went without any urge to work. I took care
of teaching and routine hospital duties, but that top-notch
feeling so necessary for first-rate investigative work was still
absent. Thanksgiving passed and the Christmas holidays came—
still with nothing accomplished. In May families of the foreign
professors were evacuated as the revolutionary forces from
Canton neared Peking, but still I had feit no real urge to work.

Something over which I had no control was slowing down my
accustomed pace of life. Fortunately I had the academie back-
ground to tackle the problem. My first medical faculty post had
been in physiology and I later taught biochemistry and medicine.

# The physiological viewpoint, however, dominated my twenty
years of research. It was particularly applicable to climatic
studies. In Gincinnati I had worked with diabetic patients and
the high blood pressure and heart failure cases which filled the
hospital wards. Consequently, I naturally becarrie interested in
the lack of these diseases among the Chinese people of Peking at
a latitude even slightly farther north than that of Cincinnati.

Why was there less evidence of stress-caused illness among
the Chinese people? The search broadened year by year after
my return to Cincinnati, and before long it began to yield an
insight into the factors at work. A fairly clear picture has finally
been obtained of climatic dominance over man, one which
explains why he is pushed forward impetuously in certain
regions and held back to sluggish pace in others.

It seemed to me that in climate lay one of the basic reasons
why the Chinese people have been so passive in accepting the
domination of more energetic races. The weakening effect of
their severe summer heat is not counterbalanced by vigorous
winter weather such as we have in the northern United States.
Sudden weather changes are much less common than in America
because of a lower level of cyclonic storminess, and autumn
coolness in Peking approaches almost unnoticed. Once the
ground is frozen, it seldom thaws out until spring. People keep
the even tenor of their ways throughout the year, adding more
padded gowns for each few degrees the temperature falls through
autumn and winter, and gradually disrobing again during the
spring rise. The winters are not disturbed by sudden warm spells
or the summers by days of refreshing coolness.

This difference in storminess between Peking and Cincinnati
is perhaps largely responsible for the marked difference in

• #   49
  vigour between the people of the two regions. The blood pressure
of Americans usually falls during a few years’ stay in Peking,
and that of Chinese rises when they come to the northern
United States, even without any definite change in dietary or
living habits. Two of my Peking faculty colleagues, both native
Britishers, experienced a 30 per cent. fall in pressure within a
year after returning to China from furloughs spent in England
or the United States. In Peking it was difficult to find enough
cases of hypertension—high blood pressure—for teaching
purposes, while in Cincinnati almost a third of our hospital beds
are occupied by this type of patiënt.

Regions with tropical climates, as well as those with relatively
little storminess, have a relaxing influence on the body and a
Iowering effect on the blood pressure. In 1935 I was sent to the
Philippines by the Leonard Wood Memorial for the Eradication
of Leprosy, now the American Leprosy Foundation, to study
the possible relationship between climatic stimulation and
leprosy. The results of this study will appear in a later chapter;
our immediate'concern is with blood pressure. A blizzard was
raging behind me as the ship left New York in late January, and
I watched my blood pressure drop from 140 systolic and 90
diastolic down to truly subnormal levels in the Philippine heat.

The ship was a 13-knot freighter. As we travelled down
through the soothing Caribbean warmth and up the western
coast of Central America and Mexico, I could feel my inner
machine slow down and the restless urge for action gradually
abate. Soon I was able to sit relaxed for hours on the deck, freed
from the feeling that I should be doing or planning some new
activity. Tropical lethargy is indeed a pleasant state when it has
finally and complctely enveloped one. I can readily see why its
victims would resent being dragged from its dreamy embrace.
By the time I had been in the Philippines a few weeks, my blood
pressure was down to 88 systolic and 60 diastolic (the normal is
120 systolic and 80 diastolic). It rosé slightly after my return to
Cincinnati in May, but not until late the next winter did it
again hit the 130 lcvel.

In Manila I was surprised to find more cases of hypertension
than would be expected in the hospitals of a tropical city, al-
though the number was much less than would occur in an
American city of the same size. The probable reason for this
strange situation seemed again to lie in storm effects, for Manila
lies in the westward path of the Oriental typhoons which sweep
across the Philippines and lash up along the China coast. Al-
though high blood pressure is generally rare in tropical climates,

50
  the storminess seems to affect people, to increase the stress of
life and the incidence of the disease. In Manila the net effect of
these two opposing factors resulted in a hypertension rate above
that normaily to be found in tropical centres.

Another sign of a similar interplay of forces was obtained last
year by a young physician in the Canal Zone. Thousands of
labourers are imported from the West Indies for work in the
Zone and thousands of native Panamanians are also used.
All must be carefully examined before being hired. The exam-
inations revealed that hypertension was far more common
among the labourers from the West Indies than among the
natives of Panama. Like the natives of Manila, the West Indians
were much less afflicted than people of the United States, but
they showed more high blood pressure than is common among
tropical races. Again, the only evident difference is that the
West Indies lie in a tropical storm pathway where hurricanes are
frequent, while in Panama cyclonic storms are almost un-
known. The matter needs careful investigation under controlled ,
laboratory conditions and I hope soon to attack it.

Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #31 on: July 22, 2022, 06:48:33 PM »

During the weeks spent in the Philippine heat—in the typhoon-
free season—I developed a real enjoyment of relaxed idleness.
Nothing like this had ever been possible in Cincinnati, even
during summer warmth, for depressing heat here is seldom long
continued without being interrupted by periods of refreshing
coolness. The heat during the summer of 1934 in America was
the most severe and jprolonged of any year within my memory.
That summer I noticed many of us changing to a tropical
metabolic make-up; our tissue fires and blood pressures sub-
sided to tropical levels.

One sixty-year-old patiënt with extremely high blood pressure
and severe distress, whom I had been seeing through 1933 and
the spring of 1934, benefited markedly by the prolonged heat.
His pressure declined and he was quite comfortable, with only
a modest hypertension, when he last visited me four years later.
Every summer brings a moderate fall in the blood pressure of
many people, but it takes a long heat wave to exert any pro-
nounced effect. We have learned, however, that people with
diabetes or limited working capacity of the heart can regularly
allow themselves more freedom in summer warmth without ill
effect.

Few people realize that they expend more energy climbing a
flight of stairs in January than in August, or that the tropical
native can do more work than the energetic northerner on •a
loaf of bread as fuel. He will take a longer time for the job, but
  as a working machine he is more efficiënt; he wastes less energy
in maintaining high muscle tone and in useless motions. Not
only are people of middle temperate regions pushed into doing
more because of a rapid tissue combustion, but they are also
more wasteful in the doing of it. These two factors combined are
perhaps largely responsible for the alarming evidences of bodily
and mental breakdown they are now showing.

The rush of city life in itself seems to intensify the stress factors
of life, especially in regions where climatic stimulation is intense.
High blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, heart failure,
diabetes, and all the other evidences of stress are much more
common in the city than in the country. Statistics show that this
applies even to cities of five to ten thousand population, but
probably not to village life. It is important to discover just what
factors of city life are responsible for the appalling evidences of
bodily and mental breakdown which urban populations of
America are undergoing. Your country cousins may appear
unsophisticated, but they live a much saner life and are likely
to remain active long after you have broken under the strain.

Men are far more involved than women in this breakdown,
particularly with the acute types of heart failure—coronary
attacks and angina pee tor is» The worries and effort entailed in
supporting a family are probably responsible for the greater
evidences of stress in men, because breakdown in women is
also accelerating as they too become wage-earners in the com-
merce and industry of cities. Diabetes is now more frequent in
women past forty years of age than it is in men, and hardening
of the arteries is rapidly increasing. Stress in women, however,
shows most frequently in the form of nervous breakdown or
exhaustion. Lack of restful hours in the rush of city life is taking
this toll in the hcalth of both sexes. The effects are less evident
during the early decades of high vitality, but after forty the
human machine begins to show its age. Men in their forties are
usually hardest pushed in their efforts to get ahead, while women
of the same age group or a bit older must face disturbing physical
and mental readjustments incident to the “change of life.”

When knocks and creaks begin to appear in our bodies, it
means that we need longer and more frequent rest periods so
that repair forces can do their work. Proper hours of sleep at
night are essential, but a short afternoon nap is equally im-
portant. Few American men take time out for such relaxation
however much they might benefit by it. Not only do they miss
this rest and reach home thoroughly fatigued by the day’s stress,
but they are then often called upon to go through an evening of

52
  social activities with a wife who has been refreshed by her
afternoon nap.

It is probably this lack of rest and relaxation, accumulating
through years of urban existence, which is behind much of the
breakdown taking place in the earth’s most energizing areas.
The northern United States leads the world in this respect, for
nowhere else is the climate quite as driving in its effects or as
upsetting with its frequent storm changes. People of this region
need more rest instead of less, but their energy and restlessness
keep pushing them on at a rapid pace until the collapse comes.

In tropical lands the afternoon siësta is an established custom,
even for most city dwellers. Women migrating from energizing
climates need it, for they are prone to nervous exhaustion if they
try to lead their life of accustomed activity in tropical heat.
One of my medical friends from the Ohio Valley belongs to the
type which succumb in a short time from some form of stress
breakdown if they remain in this stimulating climate. He left
the north early, however, and has spent several active and useful
decades in the tropics. He is now in his sixties, alert and heaithy
—and an afternoon siësta and proper hours of sleep at night are
essential features of his daily routine. Each year he spends a few
months in the northern United States, and his greatest complaint
is the difficulty of obtaining sufficiënt rest.

One of the most refreshing features of a tropical visit for me
is the relaxing afternoon nap, taken in the thoroughly disrobed
tropical fashion. I always come back from a few weeks of such
relaxation well fortified for another year of northern stress.
Summers in Cincinnati are almost as restful, for then I usually
take luncheon at home and sleep for half an hour or so afterwards.
During the winter the stronger urge to be doing something keeps
me on the go from early morning until evening and leaves me
thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day. Temperate-zone
summers should be periods of real biological rest for people who
are hard pushed through the cooler seasons. I myself find'the
winter stress much more trying if I avoid the summer heat by
migrating to cooler regions. A summer spent at Woods Hole
(on Cape Cod) is certainly delightful, but it leaves me less fit
for the next winter’s activities than does a summer spent in
Cincinnati heat.

There are probably few factors which would change the
alarming urban breakdown picture as markedly as the in-
stitution of a regular afternoon siësta and of adequate sleep at
night. The matter is an extremely important one for people
entering middle life, when the body machinery is beginning to

53
  show signs of wear from previous decades of activity. Unless
present trends are in some way reversed, civilization in the
earth’s most progressive regions will be truly threatened by this
loss of its most energetic and promising members just as they
reach what should be their most productive period. A man at
fifty has gained valuable experiences which increase his value to
society from then on to old age. It is more important that his
life be spared for another decade or two than that a few more
babies be saved from the hazards of infancy and early childhood.
Medical science is faced with a serious need for better methods
of handling the health problems of middle and more advanced
ages.

The basic need is that men learn the art of living a hygienic
life. Once disease actually appears, particularly that of the
breakdown type, it is often too late to repair the damage. This
is almost as true of nervous breakdown as it is of heart failure,
for in either case the stricken individual remains crippled for
life. It is difficult to get people to see this, however, until they
themselves have suffered—and then the time for healing has
passed.

> Americans in the prime of life often say they prefer a fast pace
and a merry one, come what may at a later age. But life assumes
an entirely different aspect once the break has come and they
are faced with the necessity of living on under sharply restricted
conditions. As a result, they advise the younger generation to
take life lcss strenuously, but young folks pay little attention.
Their exuberant energy pushes them-on in the never ending
rush and hurry, and the destructive round of work, unalleviated
by true relaxation, continues. We are becoming all too famiiiar
with the results.

chapter 7

DRUGS AND STIMULANTS

Eating and drinking habitsoftengreatlyaccentuatethe
effects of climatic environment. In the tropics people need extra
supplies of the B vitamins, yet they eat meats low in these
dietary factors and cook them so long that even the reduced
content of valuable ingredients is destroyed. The net effect is to
further emphasize the lethargie pace characteristic of hot

54
  climates. An opposite but equally unfortunate set of circum-
stances exists in energizing temperate-zone climates, where men
are driven to restless activity in their daily lives, yet turn too
frequently to drugs and stimulants which place a further burden
on their straining bodies.

Caffeine—the stimulating factor in coffee, tea, and cola
products—provides an excellent example of this sort of habit,
It is the ideal stimulant for the body tissues when properly used
but its abuse probably constitutes the most widespread drug
addiction among mankind to-day. Any regular devotee who
develops a headache when the drug is omitted for one day
should consider himself in that class—a private in one of the
largest armies on earth.

Caffeine speeds up the burning of food in the tissues and
increases their functional activities. Mental processes become
keener, the heart works harder, reflexes are quickened, special
senses become more acute, and in every way the body becomes
more highly alive and vital. All this happens, however, only if
the tissue response has not been dulled by habitual and often-
repeated use of the drug. Being such an active stimulant, its
continued use tends to bring on an exhaustion calling for ever
increasing dosage.

Although originated and produced in tropical lands, coffee
is consumed principally by people of the temperate zones.
Well over half the entire world output is used in the United
States—more than 2,000,000,000 pounds a ycar or probably an
average of almost a pound each week for those who use it.
Heaviest consumption is in the northern States.

Most users freely admit that they drink coffee for the pick-up
and feeling of increased strength it gives. They like its help in
carrying them through the day’s stress, and probably for this
reason it is used most heavily by people of the stimulating
climates. For persons already subjected to the strain of a too
rapid pace of life it does provide a transitory sense of fitness and
efficiency. But its habitual use only intensifies the underlying
exhaustion of body tissues which is to-day leading people of the
invigorating regions into a most alarming breakdown.

Among ship’s captains coffee is almost an occupational
necessity. While en route to the Philippines in 1935 as the only
passenger on a cargo ship, I was urged by the captain to try a
sample cup of special coffee they had just taken on at Honolulu.
He praised it highly as being able to keep him awake when no
ordinary coffee would and used it for periods of protracted stress
at sea when he had to remain on the bridge without sleep for

55
  days at a time. I am not a regular user of caffeine and am quite
sensitive to its stimulating eifects. So I managed to resist his
urgings for 4 few days. But he finally sent the steward with a cup,
catching me while I was playing chess with the chief engineer.

As the captain said, it was really delicious coffee, and enabled
me to go ahead and win three straight games. I had not the
slightest urge to retire that night, however, even though I had
nothing else to do except read the rather limited material at
hand. The second night I went to bed, but was unable to sleep.
The third I dozed off for a couple of hours, but it was not until
the fifth night that I managed to get as much as six hóurs of
sleep! After that experience I could appreciate why the ship’s
officers preferred to have this brand of coffee available in times
of emergency when they had to keep awake. It naturally affected
them less than it did me because they were all regular users
of caffeine, but even so they used this brand only on special
occasions.

The captain himself regularly drank about twenty cups of
coffee daily, as nearly as I could estimate. Since such heavy
coffee use is customary with those responsible for a ship’s safety
at sea, I can readily see why they so often come to an early end
by sudden heart failure or apoplexy. Since then I have found
much heavier users of coffee, and among people without such
responsibility or special need for wakefulness to justify their
over-indulgence. One extremely nervous woman claimed that
she was drinking about 60 cups daily, her son about 30, and a
grandson 15, the three of them using over a pound of coffee each
day. Another woman, complaining of great nervousness, sleep-
lessness, headache, palpitation, and weakness, was herself
using 3 pounds a week!

Such extremes, of course, are a form of slow if not very subüe
suicide, especially in northern climates. But tropical natives may
use caffeine with little danger of ill effects since their capacity
for response to its stimulating action is low. Even I can use it
almost regularly after being calmed down by a month of tropical
heat. With the higher combustion rate of northern winters,
however, I find it entirely too dynamic for continued use. These
pages are being written under caffeine influence, for it does induce
a ciarity of thought seldom achieved otherwise. But even my
single early morning cup must be discontinued after a week or
so if troublesome nervous tension is to be avoided.

Coffee and caffeine are being used interchangeably because
coffee provides by far the major part of man’s supply of this drug.
About four times more coffee than tea is used throughout the

56
  world, but in America the ratio is more like twenty to one.
Orientals—particularly Chinese and Japanese—are heavy tea
users, while in Europe the two are more evenly balanced. Tea
leaves contain roughly twice as much caffeine (or simliarly
acting substances) as does coffee, but methods of brewing the
two beverages are so varied that either may contain more
stimulant per cup as consumed. Americans are noted for brewing
coffee of pleasant taste and powerful stimulating effect. Curiously
enough, it is in the invigorating climate of the northern States
that this art of brewing has been most highly developed.

Cola nuts form an important caffeine source for tropical
natives, and their extracts are used in many popular cold drinks.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans obtain considerable caffeine
in consuming enormous quantities of these beverages. The
demand is particularly strong among children and young folks
who use little tea or coffee. It has been said that 5,000,000 pounds
of pure caffeine go into the cold drinks manufactured each year,
making some of them almost as potent stimulants as coffee. It
is heartening, however, to learn that the manufacturers of one
of the leading American bottled beverages have progressively
reduced the caffeine content until now it is only a half-grain per
bottle—as compared to the three grains or so in a cup of coffee.

Caffeine merits detailed attention because it is intimately
related to climatic drive all over the earth and to the human
stress which is becoming so devastating in regions where this
stimulation is most intense. Although caffeine is valuable for'
brief periods of need, its over-use to whip up the flagging spirits
of people already jaded by over-intense stimulation is a most
irrational procedure. Not only does the drug—by masking
underlying fatigue—permit people to perform more daily work
than their systems can stand, but it often cuts down one’s valu-
able sleeping hours. Contrary to common belief, the effect does
not wear off entirely within two or three hours. The nervous
system remains over-excitable for many hours, upsetting the
relaxation necessary for a good night’s sleep. This deadly com-
bination of overwork and lack of rest gradually leads to physical
or mental breakdown.

Although most physicians themselves like their cup of coffee,
more and more of them are coming to see it as one important
factor responsible for the increasing frequency with which heart
failure is striking down members of their profession. Thoughtful
medical men now recognize that caffeine throws added work
upon the heart to support the greater bodily activity which it
makes possible, and that use of the drug should be prohibited

57
  when the heart’s working capacity is in any way impaired.
There is also some evidence that it causes contraction of the
vessels and a rise in blood pressure. In many cases of hyper-
tension elimination of caffeine from the diet results in a consider-
able fall in blood pressure—unless advanced hardening of the
vessels has already taken place. At the first hint of coronary
trouble the wise physician now prohibits the use of all caffeine-
containing beverages.

Some weeks ago a woman neighbour complained of being
easily fatigued. She had pain in her shoulders and was nervous
and weak. A local physician merely diagnosed her condition
as high blood pressure and advised the woman to have all her
teeth pulled. The price he quoted for the extractions and the
fact that all his patients had been discussing such loss of teeth
aroused her suspicions. Thinking that he might be one of those
who profit by this overworked tooth-pulling idea, she asked my
advice. I suggested Consulting at least one other reputable
physician or dentist before giving up all her teeth, adding that
meanwhile she should give up coffee and see if that would not
relieve the high blood pressure and most of her symptoms.
This suggestion took her quite by surprise, since the first physician
had not brought up the subject. She and her husband were
rather heavy coffee-drinkers, and their children often drank
cola beverages. After a few weeks, however, she reported her
condition much improved.

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #32 on: July 22, 2022, 06:49:20 PM »
.

* Two other women about forty years of age also came to me
with similar complaints a year ago; both obtained complete
relief from their high blood pressure and the resulting symptoms
by cutting out caffeine ‘ entirely. Another woman of the neigh-
bourhood ploughed her way straight to a severe nervous break-
down with a coffee cup in one hand and an aspirin bottle in the
other—but her physician never suggested that she avoid caffeine.
A cautious hint finally caused her to try caffeine-free coffee, but
the damage to her nervous system can never be completely
repaired. It is an old and often heartbreaking story to see the
devastation wrought by this delightful beverage among energetic
northerners and the frequency with which doctors overlook this
factor.

Just recently a mother brought her fourteen-year-old son for
examination and asked me to find the reason for his retarded
development and poor school record. He was a very nervous
boy, undersized and malnourished, but without symptoms of
any disease to account for his condition. His heart action was
rapid and extremely forceful, however, and upon inquiry I

58
  found he regularly drank cofTee for breakfast and usually had
caffeine in some form at least twice a day. He was of German
stock and had been started on the drug as a baby, actually being
given a mixture of half cofTee and half milk in his bottle. This
seems to be rather a common practice among many Gincinnati
people.

Several times in Boy Scout work I have listened to a number
of hearts in sucession and been able to piek out the boys who
were under the influence of caffeine at the time of examination.
Ghildren are particularly susceptible to its effects. A careful
survey of several hundred school children a few years ago re-
vealed that those who used caffeine regularly in any form were
considerably retarded in development as compared with other
children of similar economie level. I explained all this to the
mother of my fourteen-year-old patiënt and finally obtained her
somewhat reluctant co-operation in getting the boy to abstain
from all caffeine-containing beverages. Two months later she
reported that he was sleeping more soundly, progressing well in
his studies, and was much more manageable at home.

Such experiences with the effects of caffeine on children have
been repeated many times each year. They have finally led me
to condemn most emphatically its use in childhood or early
youth. Even during college years, when thq days are too short
for crowding activities, caffeine usage is very likely to be over-
done. It adds temporary sparkle and vivacity to the individual,
but is likely to reduce efficiency in the long run. The practice of
taking cofTee to study late the night before examinations is
particularly bad. A much wiser procedure is to get plonty of
sleep beforehand and then take stimulating caffeine about an
hour before examination time.

It is encouraging to note the increasing use of caffeine-free
cofTee. Many thoughtful hostesses keep it on hand and inquire
regarding the guests’ preference. Some serve it instead of regular
cofTee without comment, but this shows little consideration for
certain people, who will most certainly develop a headache
without their regular caffeine. Particularly heartening also is
the fact that most college students drink milk in their cafeterias
and dining halls, although tea and cofTee are available.

From the climatic standpoint, over-use of caffeine is a most
dangerous and pernicious habit, since it usually developes in
those very regions where people are aiready driven at too fast a
pace by the urgings of climate itself. Wide individual variations
exist in people’s response to the drug, so that no one should
consider three cups of cofTee safe simply because he knows others

59
  who drink that much with ^pparent impunity. People of the
northern United States should develop far greater moderation
in caffcine usage and realize its close relation to the other stress
factors which are bringing so many to a premature end.

To introducé the discussion of another popular drug, nicotine,

I can think of no better anecdote than the following from the
Progressive Farmer: Aunt Becky was punctuating the Negro
preacher’s sermon with “Amen! Amen! . . . Praise de Lawd!

..as he lit into every sort of sin from murder to shooting craps.
Then the parson moved on against snuff-dipping, and Aunt
Becky exclaimed to her neighbour indignantly, “Dar now!
He’s done stopped preachin’ and gone to meddlin’!”

Many patients assume a similar attitude when their family
physician gently suggests that they stop smoking, but the advice '
is usually sound. Though evidence is still far from satisfactory
or complete, indications are that in many people smoking induces
a blood vessel spasm or contraction which interferes with proper
functioning of* the vascular system. Such a spasm has been shown
quite clearly for at least certain parts of the system. And thus,
though physicians in general are heavy smokers, they have
become somewhat more wary in the last few years. The astound-
ing increase in coronary heart trouble is making them more
suspicious of any factor which may accentuate vascular troubles.
The use of tobacco—as well as caffeine —is now strictly pro-
hibited at the first sign of serious coronary trouble.

The way several heavy smokers among my associates suddenly
became total abstainers in recent months would have been
amusing if it had not been so closely associated with the tragic
faculty deaths. The most confirmed smokers, who previously
refused to believe that tobacco was in any way harmful, now
stopped smoking entirely.

One of my colleagues who died two years ago of coronary
heart trouble had been a confirmed “chain” smoker for many
years, lighting onc cigarette from the burning stub of the pre-
ceding one. After his first coronary attack he quit both coffee and
tobacco for almost two years. Habit finally reasserted itself,
however, and shortly before his second and fatal attack he was
smoking as hard as ever. Most victims of these attacks are heavy
smokers, usually men. In recent decades, however, women of
the younger generation have been smoking almost as much
as men, so it will be interesting to see whether they also
become more susceptible to this disease through the coming
years.

I myself have never smoked much, but even four or five
60
  cigarettes a day tend to make my heart beat irregularly and blur
my intellect. Many smokers use two or three packs a day without
direct evidence of harm, and yet there is a growing feeling that
such immoderate use of tobacco may eventually be harmful.
Cigars are worse than cigarettes, particularly if they are smoked
down close to the butt. The harmful ingredients of tobacco
smoke may be largely removed by absorbant filters, but these
must be changed frequently to be effective.

It is indeed urifortunate that no clear case yet exists either for
or against the use of tobacco. Within moderate limits it may be
quite harmless for most people living in regions where stress on
the vascular system is not severe; but in the earth’s stimulating
areas much greater caution should be exercised. Just as with
caffeine, it is the restlessness and tension of life in the stimulating
climates which lead people into excessive smoking. The act
itself is usually an expression of this restlessness and lack of rcpose,
especially cigarette smoking. Hence we see the most excessive
and harmful overuse of tobacco among the very people who
should be most on guard against its effects.

Caffeine and nicotine are not the only commonly uscd drugs
which have a direct bearing upon man’s reaction to climate.
Coffee and tea became popular in Europe only in the sixteenth
century, about the same time tobacco was introduced from the
New World. But alcohol has always been with us and had its
large army of devotees back into the most remote recesses of
antiquity. Highballs, wines, beers, and the numerous other
drinks in such demand to-day have had their counterparts all
through human history. Probably the first recordcd use of an
alcoholic beverage was by Noah as describcd in Gen. ix. 21, only
nine generations after Adam. For revelry and a free flow of
emotions alcohol has always been in demand.

Delirium tremens patients who enter our hospitals as complete
nervous wrecks, however, represent a type of case seldom seen
elsewhere than in the temperate zones. It was perhaps not
chance alone that the first temperance crusade took place in the
invigorating, stormy climate of the western plains when Carrie
Nation, with her axe, led a revolt against the most vicious and
destructive effects of alcohol. In warmer regions where human
energy is low alcohol produces only a mild excitement phase
which quickly passes into drowsiness or lethargy. With energetic
people of cooler lands, however, the early excitement phase is
more marked and often leads to extremes of ill-considered vio-
lence. Alcoholism has a curiously strong tendency to produce
troublesome social problems in these regions. Only among

61
  energetic people of cool climates is the old Indian term “fire-
water” particularly appropriate.

The reason for this climate difference in response is found in
the effects of alcohol upon the brain cells. It is not a stimulant
in any real sense. It does not increase cellular combustion or
tissue activity in the way caffeine does. Being a near Chemical
relative of the simple sugars, alcohol is burned as a food in the
cells. lts chief physiological action is upon the central nervous
system, particularly the brain. Here it acts as a narcotic with a
deadening effect upon the brain cells. The cells of the highest
centres in the cerebrum are most susceptible to its action—they
are the centres having to do with judgment, moral sense, in-
hibitions, and with the other high psychic phases of existence.
As the cells of these higher centres become deadened by the first
effects of alcohol, the centres of lower order are allowed freer
play in determining actions and conduct. Basic emotions—those
of sex, anger, affection, and the like—thus escape from the
inhibiting influences of the higher centres, and existence drops
closer to the animal level of direct response to every impulse.

Among tropical people of low energy this release from higher
inhibitions means little. Fewer inhibitions ai;e needed or are
present where the urge to action is low. The tropical native acts
almost as freely when sober as when under this releasing effect
of alcohol. He seldom has an excess of energy which requires
curbing or which gets him into trouble when his higher inhibi-
tions are dulled by alcohol. But inhibitions are socially necessary
among the dynamic residents of cooler climates where tissue fires
bum faster. As alcohol dulls the inhibitions, chaotic situations
may arise only too readily and lead to disaster.

A man in his early forties came to me recently for advice
regarding his drinking habits. He had been happily married for
eleven years and had three fine children. The home life of the
family had been pleasant in all respects except that a sharp
limitation of income had made them live a most economical
life. Income had not increased as the family grew in size—it had
in fact shrunk during the depression years—and the financial
oudook had become more and more hopeless as debts began to
accumulate. About a year ago the wife told me her husband was
drinking considerable quantities of wine in the evenings after
coming home from work. This interfered with his tasks next day
and further intensified the family’s economie problem.

The man seemed beaten by his long years of worry and lack
of financial progress. He had no force left to fight the hold alcohol
was taking on him. Only through its deadening influence could

62
  he forget his feeling of frustration and despair. He seemed
earnesüy to desire help, so I sent him to a good psychiatrist—
but to no avail. The spirit was willing but the body weak. At
present he is'attending nignt school, training himself for a better-
paid type of work in one of the key defence industries, and seems
to have taken on a new hope at this prospect of a solution to
his financial problems. But he is still drinking and will need
something more powerful than mere hope to bolster his ego.
Only real success can now fortify him against the desire for the
deadening effects of alcohol.

Here is a man worn down and almost defeated in the keen
economie fight to support his family adequately. Alcohol affords
him temporary escape from the hard realities of his problem,
but its use only makes the situation more precarious. This
experience has been repeated in millions of families of every
generation back through the centuries and has been one of the
chief factors behind the development of the temperance move-
ment in Europe and America. Such people really need sympathy
and help, for theirs is an economie failure and alcohol soon robs
them of even their small earning capacity. Their problem is most
acute in regions where life follows a rapid course and the scale
of living is high, for failure shows up most sharply there. Few
bother about such matters where tropical complacency prevails.

A fellow investigator at Cincinnati showed that one of the
chief damaging effects of alcohol is due to the fact that it lacks
the B vitamins. These are just as necessary to facilitate the
burning of alcohol in the body tissues as they are for the burning
of the chemically related sugars. Normally the foods which
supply our tissues with sugar contain these important vitamins,
but alcoholic beverages contain practically no vitamins of any
sort. In addition, people heavily addicted to alcohol often have
little appetite for regular foods because the burning of alcohol
has replaced that of sugar. Thus they readily develop vitamin
deficiencies, particularly pellagra from lack of proper nicotinic
acid and nervous or neuritic symptoms from lack of Bi or
thiamin.

Drinking affects the brain cells immediately because they
contain a higher proportion of special alcohol-absorbing fats
than most of the body’s other tissues. But later brain effects from
prolonged addiction seem to be due mosdy to B vitamin de-
ficiency. The brain has the highest combustion rate of all body
tissues and hence requires the greatest supply of these vitamins
catalysts. Jittery, highly irritable alcoholics who are nearing
the convulsive stage of delirium tremens now promptly receive

63
  large amounts of the vitamins and plenty of nutritious food when
they come for treatment.

The drinker who becomes quarrelsonle, unruly, and violent
under the influence of alcohol has provided society with the most
acute phase of the liquor problem. As we have emphasized, he
is predominantly a product of the earth’s most stimulating
climate. His abundance of energy runs riot as alcohol dulls the
inhibitions which normally keep antisocial impulses under
control. His excesses may take almost any form, but they usually
involve the very fields of morality most closely guarded by
inhibitions during normal life. Sexual excesses, assaults upon the
person and property of others—these are the lines most often
followed by his unbridled energy.

In those regions where life is most strenuous, perhaps the most
justifiable use of alcohol—outside of its applications in medicine
—is the late afternoon or evening cocktail or highball to relieve
the brain from the day’s stresses and worries. This may be
relatively safe for strong and successful persons, but uncontrolled
addiction is likely to result among those who find life’s battles
too severe. Many women of American cities who flounder in
aimless idleness are among to-day’s heavy users of alcohol.
The very futility of their existence inclines them to alcohol and
other narcotics which dull their appreciation of life’s unsatis-
factory aspects. People really do “drown their sorrows and
disappointments in drink,” but at the same time they frequently
drown themselves in permanent alcoholism.

The threat of drinking is especially great among those who
migrate from energizing climates into tropical heat. Many of
these persons, especially the women, develop a feeling of frustra-
tion because of life’s slow pace and prevailing physical inactivity.
Extremely sad cases of chronic alcoholism have developed among
the wives of prominent men who have had to Jive their lives in
the stagnation of tropical service. Heat subdues the tissue fires
and leads to less rapid burning of the alcohol absorbed into the
blood, thus making such people more susceptible to its narcotic
effects.

This is perhaps the first time the alcohol problem has been
considered from a climatic point of view, but such an approach
is extremely appropriate. It makes quite evident the reasons why
the temperance movement is largely restricted to the most
energizing regions of the earth. The hard-driven people of cooler
lands are most addicted to overuse not only of alcohol but of
caffeine-containing beverages, tobacco, and narcotic drugs
such as morphine, cocaine, and heroin.

64
  One of the great unsolved problems of life in energizing
climates is how to avoid the dangers of bodily and mental stress
described in this and the preceding chapter. Scientists and the
medical profession are finally awakening to the serious hazards
which such strain is bringing to man in regions where his past
progress has been most astonishing.

chapter 8

STORMY WEATHER AND RESPIRATORY
INFECTIONS

Last winter a worried man of middle age came to my
office. In approved medical style, we shall keep him nameless and
refer to him only as Mr. X. This patiënt wanted me to help him
solve the problem of chronic sinusitis which was making life
miserable for himself and his family. As far as physical symptoms
went, Mr. X was a typical sinus sufferer, so his case shall be a
guiding example throughout this chapter to illustrate the
climatic do’s and don’t’s of this most annoying affliction. He
differed from most victims of the disease in' that he had an
intelligent and realistic viewpoint, considering good health
more important than money-making. Although a successful
Cincinnati manufacturer, he was willing to move permanently
to any region where he would have a definite chance to enjoy
life more fully. Because of his sane attitude, it was a real pleasure
to discuss with him the climatic and weather factors influencing
respiratory infections in different parts of the country.

Throughout his life Mr. X had suffered from nasal catarrh—
chronic sinus trouble—having lived in the changeable weather
of Cincinnati, where the atmosphere is highly polluted with the
irritating products of soft-coal fires (soot, silicate ash, and
sulphur gases). For generations nasal catarrh had been the
curse of his family, just as it is in countless other familues living
in stormy regions of the earth.

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #33 on: July 22, 2022, 06:50:05 PM »


Both his father and his grandfather had been similarly afflicted.
His only child was already developing chronic bronchitis. All
members of the family suffered with frequent colds. The entire
case history was characteristic of the disease, which runs in
families for two main reasons. It often begins because a highly

CCMM   65
  arched palate in the mouth has pushed the central partition of
the nose to one side and obstructed the opening to one of the
secondary cavities. This was the case with Mr. X. As long as
these cavities or sinuses remain open and well drained they
cause little trouble. But when the opening is obstructed, every
acute nasal infection which comes along settles there for a
prolonged stay, and soon a chronic sinus condition develops.
Since shape of the face and likelihood of a highly arched palate
are strongly hereditary (as our patiënt learned to his regret),
so also is the tendency to chronic sinus trouble. But other causes.
such as childhood adenoids and mouth breathing, can lead to
the samc arching of the palate.

Although Mr. X inherited an arched palate and this is suffi-
ciënt to explain his case, the second reason why sinusitis may be
a family curse is also of interest. One affiicted member of the
family is likcly to spread the disease into the sinuses of others in
the household. Every “cold” organism brought home from
outside by the children lodges in that good growing spot, grows
merrily in the poorly aired cavity, and becomes more virulent.
Later it finds its way into the sinuses of others in the family.
Thus one chronic case in a household usually means frequent
colds for all and an excellent chance for sinusitis among those
persons who, because of hereditary or acquired predispositions,
happen to offer fertile fields for infection. Persistent bronchitis
and the tendency to frequent colds can often be traced to the
presence in the household of a person with chronic sinus in-
flammations. In one Cincinnati family a change of maids finally
clcared up the respiratory troubles. But if the sufferer happens
to be a paren t, the remedy is not so simple and a change of
location might well be considered.

A previously broken nose may also start a long line of sinusitis
sufferers. The break usually pushes inward on the nasal partition,
bending it and obstructing a sinus opening off to the side. My
wife suffered such an injury during a high-school basketball
game, but scarcely noticed it until she was swimming two years
ago and broke her nose again. Typical nasal catarrh then set in
and I sent her to a surgeon for a so-called “sub-mucous resection”
or cutting out of the cartilage in the dividing partition. This
operation, followed by a mid-winter trip to the steady warmth
of Panama, effected a complete cure and probably saved our
family much trouble. An interesting feature of the hospital stay
was her loss of smell while her nose was packed with gauze
following the operation. At the very time when a patiënt needed
to be coaxed by attractive delicacies, she complained bitterly

66
  of the poor, tasteless food served. It was not an amusing matter
to her, considering the daily rates charged by the hospital. To
this day she will not believe that everything seemed tasteless to
her simply because she couldn’t smell the food odours and that
by far the greater part of food tastiness depends on a keen
smelling apparatus.

Fortunately, sinusitis is not a fixture in our family a5 it was in
Mr. X’s. As it happened, he was not content to sit back and
continue under the same conditions which had resulted in
generations of ill health. The only thing for him to do was to
migrate to a more favourable climate—and that involves the
fascinating geography of sinusitis. One thing was certain: Mr. X
could not remain in Cincinnati, for this city is extremely stormy,
and sinusitis, like high blood pressure, is most prevalent in the
world’s stormiest regions. As yet no onc knows exactly what
storm changes in the atmosphere do to our bodies, but thcy
seem linked in some fashion to the initiation «of sinusitis and
acute respiratory and rheumatic attacks. There is some cvidence*
that our tissues take up more water and swell as the outside
barometric pressure falls and then give the water off through
the kidneys after the storm centre has passed on. We appear to
be somewhat spongelike in this regard, and the change in tissue
water content may well interfere with our resistancc to inlection.
Whatevcr the mechanism of this storm effect, it is true that
acute respiratory and rheumatic attacks are most frequent in
stormy regions and during the most stormy scasons of the ycar.

Colds and other respiratory infections are less troublesome
during the summer, not because of a greater vitality from the
more intense sunshine, but rather because of the reduced summer
storminess. Actually, the body’s ability to fight infcction falls
during periods of prolonged warmth and is highest when body
heat can be rcadily lost. Therein lies an extremely important
point in connection with any considered change of residcncc for
climatic benefit.

I had to consider these and other factors before telling
Mr. X where to move for a happy life. Although Cincinnati is
not the worst place on earth for storminess and sinusitis, it
certainly ranks high and was no spot for my patiënt. Similar
conditions prevail throughout the upper half of the Mississippi
Basin from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalarhians, where all
respiratory troubles are common. The low'er half of the Ohio
Valley lies under an even blacker curse. This is probably the
chief sinusitis zone in the United States. It also has the nation’s
highest tuberculosis rate. Cities in the Ohio Valley are near

67
  producing fields for the poorer grades of soft coal, and their
atmospheric pollution probably intensifies the respiratory
disease hazard (this possibility calls for immediate and thorough
investigation).

Obviously, neither the Ohio Valley nor Cincinnati would do
for Mr. X, and from past experiences I also eliminated many
other regibns. For example, when I was in Manila a few years
ago, I was asked to see another person from Cincinnati who had
taken his Ohio Valley chronic sinusitis to the Philippines, but
without any relief. We should expect this from the last chapter,
which emphasized the storminess there. The northern half of the
Philippines lies in the Orient’s major typhoon pathway, and these
low-pressure storm centres often play havoc in Manila itself.
Whether as a result of these circumstances or not, it is a fact that
sinusitis, tuberculosis, and the other more chronic respiratory
complaints are almost as common there as in the upper Missis-
sippi Valley. On the other hand, the depressive moist heat
prevailing in Manila sharply reduces the ability to fight these
infections. Tuberculosis runs a rapidly fatal course and sinus
troubles go unchecked. Mecjical friends from Puerto Rico inform
me that a similar situation also exists in the West Indies hurricane
belt. It is a curious fact that only in these two tropical storm areas
are acute appendicitis attacks as frequent and severe as in the
Mississippi Valley. For some unknown reason appendicitis
attacks also are prone to come on days of falling barometric
pressure as a storm centre is approaching or passing.

I explained all this to the Cincinnatian in Manila, but his
business and family ties seemed to bind him to a choice of
Manila, Cincinnati, or New York City as a place of residence.
Of these three locations New York would perhaps offer a slightly
less severe respiratory handicap, but none of them offers much
hope for relief from chronic sinus trouble. I have not seen this
man for several years, but my guess would be that he still has
his chronic sinusitis, with perhaps a chronic bronchitis now
added to his troubles during the winter months.

Although Mr. X had lifelong business ties in Cincinnati, he
was willing to break all connections to get rid of his condition.
Parts of Colorado or Southern Florida have most excellent
climates, but, as far as this patiënt was concerned, the one is
too close to winter storm pathways coming down from the north-
west and the other is afflicted by hurricane-type storms which
sweep in across the West Indies and northward up the Adantic
coast. When I had told him about this relationship between
storminess and sinusitis, I also dismissed certain seemingly

68
  possible regions as out of the question. He could have escaped
all storm effects by migrating to Panama, Hawaii, or any
number of calm tropical areas. Broad reaches of the tropics are
free from both the cyclonic storminess of the temperate zones
and the typhoon or hurricane types which afflict limited other
parts of the tropics. But if he migrated into tropical warmth,
the ability of his tissues to fight his sinus infection would be
reduced and his troubles would persist. What he needed was
freedom from storms without the depressing moist heat of the
tropics. Even along the Gulf coast of our Southern States the
prolonged moist summer heat has this depressive effect.

But there happens to be one important section of the United
States where respiratory troubles in general are at a minimum
and where chronic sinusitis in particular has an excellent chance
of lapsing into almost complete inactivity. Sudden storm changes
seldom occur in the South-west, a large and favoured region
including New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California. As I
pointed out earlier in this chapter, Mr. X was intelligent and
anxious to obtain every possible advantage from his change of
location. I told him that the climate of Southern Arizona or
New Mexico would be best for his catarrh, but he was a clothing
manufacturer and needed contact with a large urban centre
for business reasons. This narrowed the choice quite drastically,
leaving only the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

It was somewhat against my better judgment that I finally
recommended this area as a future home for this family. Mr. X
happens to be afflicted with moderately high blood pressure and
some anginal pain over his heart. The dry, non-stormy climate
of Southern California will unquestionably lessen the family’s
respiratory troubles, but there is a restlessness and artificiality
among the people which will not help this man’s coronary
trouble. Although the climate of Los Angeles is certainly not
stimulating, one is aware of a rush and urgency seldom en-
countered except in the most invigorating climates. Driving
speeds on the main thoroughfares seem faster than in any other
metropolitan area. Much of the rush might be explained by
migration there of restless people from all over America, many
of them seeking quick fame and others diversion from previous
dullness elsewhere. Generally life follows a more sedate course
in less stimulating climates.

My patiënt was warned about the disturbing influences around
Los Angeles and was advised to establish his home in the out-
skirts of the city well away from all the hustle and bustle. San
Diego would have been an even better place for him to live, but

69
  the greater isolation from his business world would have been
an added economie handicap offsetting the slightly greater
heaith benefits. Having located Mr. X’s fiiture home in Los
Angeles and, more specifically, in one of that city’s quieter
suburbs, ‘I also gave him several important additional hints.
For example, I told him to select a home site at as high an
altitude as possible within commuting distance pf his future
place of business. Although daytime heat is dry in the
South-west, the temperature is sometimes enervating and
even the midday heat is less severe at moderate elevations above
sea-level.

Another suggestion was that he live back as far as possible
from the coast. You may wonder why I told this patiënt to stay
some distance away from the ocean and its delightfully cooling
breczes—but there is a good reason. Air movement there along
the coast is always inland, carrying salt spray and mists, so that
the climate of the Coastal fringe is very different from that of the
desert regions some miles farther inland. Nothing seems to
benefit sinus infiammation so much as the non-stormy dryness
of desert climates.

A few summers ago my family spent the month of August in
a cottage directly overlooking the ocean south of Santa Monica
and lound the cool ocean breezes a most welcome relief from
Midwcst heat. Ho wever, the winds off the ocean were quite
moist through the night and most of the forenoon hours. Before
the month had passed two of us had dcveloped definite sinus
trouble which persisted until we started inland across the deserts
on our return trip. Daily bathing in the surf among the massive
breakers and churning sand probably did much to keep our
sinus infiammation going. It is unwise for a person with sinus
trouble to bathe in salt water or strongly chlorinated pools
unless he avoids getting water into his nose, because water in
the sinus cavities irritates delicate lining tissues. After that
experienced with moist California Coastal breezes, I could easily
see why people with sinusitis or nasal catarrh should locate
faither inland.

Mr. X wanted to obtain every possible advantage from his
change of location. It takes courage for a man to break off all
his lifelong relationships and give up a successful business just to
seek a more healthful location, but he had seen enough of the
continual misery brought by sinusitis in the Midwest to be
wïlling to face the economie risks of such a move. In my opinion
he exhibited a realistic wisdom which a great many other
northerners could well imitate. Good heaith is worth more, even

70
  at a lower economie level, than is a life of wealth always over-
shadowed by physical discomfort and chronic ill health. He
intends to move to Los Angeles soon, and I am certain that he
will suffer far less because of his decision.

He is probably avoiding a great deal more than sinus trouble
alone, for in stormy climates this malady is only the beginning
of ill-health. Germ-laden secretions and pus from the involved
sinuses drop down into the air passages and lungs during sleep
and soon set up chronic bronchitis. This goes on year aftcr year,
slowly growing worse with each winter and moderating some-
what with the calm warmth of summer. Eventually the smaller
air passages develop dilated portions filled with pus and then
the person has bronchiectasis. His cough is then practically
continuous throughout the year, with largc amounts of foul
sputum being expectorated at all times. Every acute respiratory
infection acts almost like an attack of pneumonia in setting up
severe inflammation throughout the diseased air passages and
subsiding at an irritatingly slow rate. For such people life is a
dreary round of coughing and expectorating, with one actitc
flare-up following another through the stormy seasons.

It is this slow spreading of trouble from chronic sinus infections
which makes the matter so important for futurc health. Usually
only one sinus cavity is involved at first. The trouble tends to
spread to other sinuses, however, then down the air passages into
the lungs. Nose and throat spccialists can often help clear up a
sinus infection while it is still in its early stages, bul they usually
have little success when it has become chronic. Chronic sinus
patients provide lucrative practice for these physicians in stormy
regions, but for the victims themsclves there is only incrcasing
ill health unless they seek a non-stormy climate.

Respiratory infections are the major producers of ill health
in stormy regions. Unfortunately the medical profession has little
real help to offer by way of prevention. Drug therapy in pneu-
monia has made great strides toward conquering the terrors of
this disease in the last few years, but colds, sinusitis, chronic
bronchitis, and bronchiectasis are still about as stubborn as ever.
Migration away from storms offers the only real help for people
so afflicted.

While the South-west provides unique health advantages in
its freedom from cycionic storminess, the region is handicapped
by its barrenness and cannot support a dense population. A
realistic public-health policy could soon remedy this handicap
by proper use of mountain water supplies for irrigation purposes
and for the generation of electric power to turn the wheels of

7i
  new industries. A few good steps have already been taken in
this direction, but far more must be done before a means of
livelihood can be found for more than a small part of the afflicted
people who would benefit by migration from stormy regions.

chapter 9

TUBERCULOSIS, LEPROSY, AND RHEUMATIG
INFECTIONS

Although energetic people of temperate-zone
climates enjoy winter vacations in warmer surroundings, the
change in environment may have certain bad effects which
should be carefully taken into account. One of our industrial
leaders, wintering in Florida a few years ago, was suddenly
called back to Cincinnati to meet an unexpected financial crisis.
At seventy he was still a vigorous man, active in business and
civic affairs. A few days after his arrival here, however, he
contracted a cold which went on to fatal pneumonia. The
months of Southern warmth had sapped his vitality and left him
unprepared for the respiratory hazards of northern winters.
Although he had been a heavy contributor to the city’s medical
activities, the medical profession could do little for him. Present
effective methods of Chemical and serum treatment were un-
developed at that time.

His death emphasized the dangers people encounter in
changing suddenly from a warm climate to the stormy cold of
northern winters. It is quite common for acute respiratory
infections—colds, sinusitis, bronchitis, or pneumonia—to attack
persons who come north after having become adapted to tropical
warmth. One or two weeks of winter vacation in the south have
little softening effect, but with a stay of a month or more the
body’s vitality declines and resistanqe to infection is sharply
lowered.

During the first week of our return from Panama late in
March, all three of us contracted colds in the raw spring weather.
We had enjoyed excellent health in the south, but two months
of tropical warmth had lowered our resistance. This loss should
be an important consideration for those 'who winter in the
south or who spend a longer time in the tropics. A return to
cooler climates should be made during the summer, so that the

72
  body can gradually become accustomed to cold as temperatures
drop through the autumn months.

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #34 on: July 22, 2022, 06:50:47 PM »

The fall in tissue vitality which takes place in tropical heat is
an element of especially great importance in one of the world’s
greatest scourges, tuberculosis. No victim of this disease, no
matter how inactive it may be at the time, should plan a stay in
the tropics. Tuberculosis there progresses rapidly and may easily
be fatal unless the person is removed to cooler regions. In the
Philippine lowlands, for instance, the tuberculosis death rate is
extremely § high—cases are numerous and resistance is low.
Hospitalization in a sanatorium does patients little good and
merely decreases their chances of spreading the disease. But if
they are taken into the cool mountains, they wage a much better
fight. The resulting improvement is soon lost, however, if they
return again to the lowland heat.

Most physicians in the tropics now appreciate the importance
of this lowered vitality in hot climates and send their patients
out to more invigorating regions as soon as tuberculosis is de-
tected. But the wise doctor will take care that this move does
not plunge his patiënt into the respiratory hazards of winter cold
and storms. Here again the dry non-stormy South-west offers
the region of choice.

To-day many physicians in the northern States feel that
tuberculosis can be handled just as well in the home region as
in the South-west—and so it can be if the patiënt is carefully
guarded against the possibility of acute respiratory infections.
Each cold he contracts, however, is likely to aggravate his
tuberculosis. Northern coolness heightens his general nutrition
and vitality, but the frequent storms which accompany this
coolness add greatly to the dangers of respiratory infections and
more than offset any advantage. Contrary to the belief of some
physicians, therefore, the safest course would still seem to be
migration to the South-west, away from the disturbing storms.
Furthermore, location there should be at altitudes high enough
to afford freedom from severe summer heat.

These findings have important implications for the medical
examination of American troops selected for tropical fighting.
Army and Navy physicians have been carefully X-raying
recruits’ chests to detect incipient or active tuberculosis, but
special attention should be given to divisions slated for future
duty in Affica and other hot climates, where the disease would
thrive. Native troops, on the other hand, are best fitted for
fighting in surroundings to which they have been accustomed
from birth—aswas emphasized by bitter experiences of the last war.

73
  From 1914 to 1918 tuberculosis became a terribly fatal disease
among native troops from northern Africa during the winter
months of trench fighting in the mud of France. These men were
ill adapted to the wet and cold of northern France. They showed
little ability to fight the infection. Three months of high fever
and rapid tissue destruction almost inevitably led to an early
death, whereas among French, British, and American soldiers
the disease followed a slower and less fatal course. Pneumonia,
too, and all the other acute infections of the air passages struck
with special fury among the tropical troops fighting or serving
in France during the last war.

A few years ago I decided to investigate the influence place
of birth might have on the ability to fight tuberculosis around
Cincinnati. Large numbers of our people—both coloured and
white—came from the Southern States, while we also have many
immigrants from Europe. Our large tuberculosis sanitorium on
the outskirts of the city cares for the indigent tubercular members
of the population. In going over some three thousand records
of patients who died in this institution, I found a striking differ-
ence between those of northern and those of Southern birth in
their respective abilities to fight the infection.

The disease—from first symptoms to death—had an average
duration of nine months among Negroes from the Gulf States,
while among Cincinnati coloured people it lasted eighteen
months.* White migrants from the Gulf States endured tuber-
culosis for an average of eleven months, but northern-born
whites held out twice as long. Like the Gulf-state group, emi-
grants from Mediterranean countries also survived only about
eleven months, while those coming from countries north or
west of the Alps lasted twenty-two months. These statistics
dealt only with sanitorium deaths from tuberculosis. If we could
follow up patients discharged from the institution, we would
probably find an even greater difference in the ability to survive.

We should remember, too, that these figures include only
tuberculosis among Cincinnati’s poor, in whom the disease runs
its most rapid course. People of higher economie level and
better nutritional state naturally have much stronger resistance,
and their chances of final recovery are much greater. During
peacetime body resistance to tuberculosis has been increasing
in the United States. Even while the country’s sanatoria and
clinics have remained jammed with patients and carried long
waiting lists, death rates have been falfing.

Although the disease continues unchecked as a terrible
scourge among tropical people, it is being brought under control

74
  in middle temperate regions and the ultimate conquest is almost
in sight. Freshmen are given tubercuiin tests as a routine in
most colleges, and the number of positive reactions is declining
each year. A positive tubercuiin reaction means that at some
time germs grew in the individual’s body, although they may
all be dead and the person entirely well at the time of the test.
Even fifteen or twenty years ago a majority of the students gave
positive tests, indicating that they had at some time been in-
fected, but to-day relatively few positives are found among
northem college freshmen.

Tuberculosis is also a most deadly disease among tropical
dairy herds, making the production of safe milk a difficult job
in most tropical lowlands. But in the northern United States the
herds are becoming even more free of the disease than human
beings are. This is due largely to the practice of killing all
infected cows, but better feeding and care may also have in-
creased the herds’ resistance.

Although tuberculosis in man rarely comes from cattle, it is a
curious fact that the decline in the disease should have taken
place almost simultaneously in both human and bovine beings.
One other possible reason for the almost concurrent decline
might involve the enlightened and strongly enforced measures
to prevent spread of the disease from sick to well individuals.
Most positive tubercuiin reactions among young people to-day
occur in family groups, indicating direct spread of the disease
from one member to another.

There is no specific drug for the treatment of tuberculosis.
The main burden of the battle falls upon the patient’s own
tissues. It is essential, therefore, that the body be provided with
plenty of good food, including the vitamins nccessary for proper
fuel burning in the cells. But good food and vitamins will be of
little help if external warmth keeps the tissue lires blanketed
down to a slow rate of burning. Cool surroundings promote
rapid combustion of food in the cells and a high general vitality.
Therein lies the principal importance of climate for the tubercular
patiënt.

A disease resembling tuberculosis in many ways is leprosy, the
germs of which are so similar to the tubercle bacillus that it
is difficult to teil the two varieties apart under the microscope.
Both microbes may produce almost identical changes in .the
body; in fact, physicians at leper colonies frequently speak of
tuberculoid leprosy. So it should be no surprise that the diseases
both flourish among people living in depressing tropical heat.
Energetic persons of middle temperate regions appear practically

75
  immune to leprosy. Among those actually infected the disease
is inactive and non-contagious. There are scores of lepers in
New York and London who come and go freely without trans-
mitting the disease to others.

In 1935 I went without fear into the wards of the old San
Lazaro Hospital in Manila, where the worst cases of leprosy
have been housed for centuries. The old plank flooring was
being replaced in one wing of the building, and I must admit
I had a feeling of uncleanliness as the winds blew into my face
the old dust which had sifted through that floor from past
generations. In a children’s colony just outside Manila I exam-
ined early-stage cases and touched skin lesions without danger
of contracting the infection. Naturally I used the antiseptic
precautions always taken by physicians handling contact diseases.

In tropical heat leprosy is largely transmitted by contact,
particularly among household or family groups where infants
and children are especially susceptible. Colonies in the past
have usually been placed in localities where the disease is worst,
so that the patients would not be too far away from their friends
and relatives and transportation problems would be minimized.
However, I considered it illogical to keep these unfortunate
victims in the very climatic conditions which so rapidly promote
and spread the disease—especially when we know that it tends
to become inactive and non-contagious in cooler regions.
Therefore, as a result of this Philippine trip and subsequent
studies, I recommended that colonies for the segregation of
leprosy patients be established in the most stimulating climates
available rather than in the regions where the disease spreads
most rapidly.

Our own American leper colony should not be kept at Garville,
where the long summers of debilitating Louisiana heat reduce
diseasc-resisting vitality. Instead, it should be moved to the
Dakotas, where climatic stimulation is high and physical vigour
at its peak. Since no specific leprosy cure has as yet been found,
it would seem reasonable to give northem coolness a fair trial.
Patients brought to the Dakotas would need careful protection
from respiratory hazards during their first winter, but after that
the climate’s effect should be allowed full sway. Perhaps some
day this suggestion will be carried out. Certainly little progress
is now being made to lessen the inroads of this disease among
tropical people.

In stormy climates the rheumatic ills rank next after respira-
tory infcctions as causes of ill health. They are even more closely
related to storm changes than are tuberculosis and sinusitis,

76
  and consequendy migration to non-stormy climates is cspecially
imperative.

A young physician with rheumatic arthritis recently visited
me to discuss where he could practise medicine with a
minimum of discomfort from his affliction. He had developed
the infection in both ankles during his intern year at the hospital
and had just suffered his first known rheumatic attack. But his
heart valves showed old damage which had probably occurred
during childhood at some period before repeated sore throats
had necessitated removal of his tonsils. He had spent most of his
life in northem Ohio, amid the cold and storms so conducive
to rheumatic troubles. Having finished his medical course and
internship, he now wished to apply to his own personal problem
some of the climatic information he had heard me explain
during my rounds of the hospital wards.

Except for the slight rheumatic infection in his ankles and the
old damage to his heart valves, this young doctor was apparently
healthy. We discussed the dangerous effects of storminess,
especially during the winter months, and the likelihood of
repeated rheumatic attacks if he continued living in the northern
United States. I recalled how some years ago groups of rheumatic
fever patients were sent from the North Atlantic States for several
months of rest in Puerto Rico. As a result of this step thcir
condition improved considerably. They still had periods of
flare-up in the infection, however, although the recurrcnccs
were by no rtleans as frequent or severe as those in the north.
Patients sent to the non-stormy South-west, on the othcr hand,
have practically no new outbreaks of trouble. Instead, the
damage to their joints and hearts gradually repairs itself.

After considering such cases, I strongly advised the young
man to migrate to the South-west, preferably somcwhere within
200 miles of the Mexican border between El Paso and San
Diego. Because of his damaged heart valves, I also recommended
that he select some branch of medicine requiring relatively
little physical strain. He was already interested in becoming an
eye specialist and I assured him that this type of practice would
not draw too much upon his limited physical resources. But an
eye specialist—or almost any specialist, for that matter—cannot
make a respectable living in rural sections or small towns without
also branching into other lines of practice. This the young doctor
could not do, so his choice of location was limited to Los Angeles
or San Diego, as in the case of the clothing manufacturer with
chronic sinusitis.

Even if no attack of acute arthritis had occurred and focused

77
  this young physician’s attention on his rheumatic state, the old
heart damage should have been sufficiënt reason for a change in
residence. Heart damage from rheumatic inïection in childhood
may apparently heal and remain quiet for many years, only to
reappear years later as the result of some other infection or
circumstance which lowers the person’s vitality. Only recently
one of Cincinnati’s leading physician’s—also a faculty colleague
in the medical school—was stricken by such a reappearance of
old rheumatic vegetations on his heart valves and died a few
weeks later. Some years ago a similar fate struck another of our
medical school professors who had devoted his life to medical
research and teaching, but had done so in one of the world’s
worst regions for the rheumatic heart trouble he had carried
since youth.

“Physician, hcal thysclf” may be good advice, but it is seldom
applied. Yet the future secms more encouraging because present-
day physicians are beginning to apply their knowledge to their
own health problems. The more they do this, the more certain
it is that they will pass the benefits of climatic findings on to
their patients. I have received inquiries from physicians through-
out the country who want to know how modern knowledge of
climate could be brought to bear in solving their personal
health problems. It is no small matter for a doctor to give up an
established practice and move to a new region where he must
begin all over again. The fact that physicians now think along
these lines means that they really are coming to appreciate the
important part climate plays in health.

One physician in northern Illinois who was troubled with
sinusitis and high blood pressure asked me which would be best
as a new home site: St. Louis, Seattle, or Houston (Texas). I
assured him that a change to either St. Louis or Seattle would
bring little help. But Houston, I continued, would be an im-
provement, since its warm weather would definitely bring about
a gradual lowering of blood pressure. As for the doctor’s sinusitis,
Houston, while by no means an ideal spot, is less stormy than
St. Louis or Seattle and would have the least irritating effect on
this condition. Incidentally, I emphasized the greater advantages
of the South-west, and at last report the physician seemed
inclined toward Houston.

A Wyoming doctor in his middle forties also wrote for advice.
He was much concerned over the great number of breakdowns
he had been witnessing among men of his age and hoped that
he could escape a similar fate by strategical migration. Since
he had no respiratory or rheumatic troubles, but only a growing

78
  tendency toward high blood pressure, I suggested that he seek
the relaxing warmth of Southern Florida. No word has come
as to his final decision.

Every patiënt I see with active rheumatic infection or old
damage to the heart is strongly advised to migrate permanently
to the non-stormy climate of the South-west. Many of them find
it economically impossible to make the move, and bthers lack
the courage for so radical a step. The matter is of greatest im-
portance for rheumatic children. With them it often means the
difference between a healthy and useful life in that beneficial
climate and one of increasing disability in northern cold and
storminess.

Rheumatic infections are far more common and destructive
among poor people, probably because they live on a lower
nutritional level and are less able to protect themselves against
weather changes with adequate clothing and housing. People
of means can afford to send a rheumatic child to a better climate.
The poor, however, cannot make such a move, and the child is
left to grow up in a climate where it is likely to become an
invalid requiring expensive hospitalization on community funds.

In these days of free spending for public welfare, it would
therefore seem wise that steps be taken to insure proper care of
those afflicted with rheumatic infections. Communities should
be set up in the South-west to give them convalescent care and
the chance to again become self-supporting members of society.
The cost would probably be little more than the total now spent
for repeated hospitalization and medical care at home. Time
after time I see young rheumatic patients in the charity wards
of the hospital who most urgently need to get away from the
storminess of Cincinnati winters; yet they are bound by the iron
chains of poverty to the very climate which is worst for them.

An attractive young woman recently came to the hospital
compiaining of acute rheumatic pain and swelling of several
joints. Two weeks previously she had contracted a summer cold,
and less than two days later her joints had become involved.
This reawakening of old joint trouble by a recent respiratory
infection is an extremely frequent occurrence. The young woman
had contracted rheumatic trouble early in childhood, during
repeated attacks of tonsillitis, and had suffered many recurrences
of acute rheumatic fever, with marked damage to her heart
valves. By careful living she had been able to grow to maturity,
marry, and give birth to one child. She had almost died of heart
failure during childbirth, had been warned against future
pregnancies—and, of course, was taught the proper technique

79

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #35 on: July 22, 2022, 06:51:38 PM »

79
  for avoiding them. All stimulants which might increase the load
on her damaged heart—such as cofFee, tea, and cola beverages—
had been removed from her life. In fact all she had left was an
existence of minimal activity permanently overshadowed by the
likelihood of renewed acute joint troubles.

Bom and raised in Cincinnati, she was compelled by poverty
to remain in a climate particularly bad for rheumatic patients.
Her husband, a semi-skilled factory worker, was unemployed
for most of the recent prolonged depression. During the present
rearmament activity, however, even semi-skilled labour is in
great demand, so I urged that he seek employment in some
defence industry located in the Los Angeles area of the South-
west. Permanent migration away from cold and storms offers
this young woman her only hope of relief from further damaging
rheumatic attacks. Her leaky heart valves can never be repaired,
but she could live a useful life if she were freed from attacks of
new infcction every few months. Let us hope that some day
steps will be taken to give such patients the benefits of migration.

Rheumatic and respiratory infections probably produce more
disability in the stormy middle temperate regions than all other
diseases combined. It would be well for people living in these
regions to appreciate what storminess means to them in terms
of ill hcalth. Usually affliction is endured blindly year after year,
without the knowledge that good health might be enjoyed
elsewhere. Migration, to be most effective, should be permanent
and not merely for a brief period of improvemtnt. Even with the
complete recovery possible in the South-west, old troubles are
likely to reappear if the person returns to stormy regions.

CHAPTER io

GANCER

Few people consider climate a determining factor
in cancer occurrence, but recent studies have strongly hinted
that the linkage may be fully as close as it is with heart failure
and the breakdown diseases. Cancer is becoming more frequent
and coming at ever earlier ages in those same regions of the
earth which show in other ways the most severe evidences of
bodily stress. Animals in our experimental chambers have also
indicated that climate may indeed be a factor of major im-

80
  portance in determining the frequency and killing speed of this
disease which takes the lives of more than 156,000 Americans
a year.

Cancer occurs about as frequently in mice as in human beings.
Through the years of our hot- and cold-room studies thousands
of laboratory mice have been under observation for varying
periods of time. Between 10 and 12 per cent. of the adults dying
in the cold room developed cancer before death, while in the hot
room not a single tumour was seen. This coincided so well with
the high human cancer rate in cool climates that I decided, to
study the matter more closeiy on certain strains of mice known
to have an extremely high rate of cancer development. Some
cancers in mice seem to be rather strongly hereditary, and in
certain laboratories tumour incidence has been greatly increased
by inbreeding, mating together the offspring of cancerous
parents.

One such strain of mice has been bred to show a high incidence
of breast cancer, over half of the females developing tumours
before death. Two hundred females of this strain were purchased
soon after weaning age and divided into three groups. One
group of 67 was placed in the cold room at 65° F., another 67
were put into the hot room at 910 F., while the remaining 66
were kept under the more variable conditions ordinariiy pre-
vailing in the outside laboratory air. Close watch was kept for
tumour appearance during the next eighteen months. The usual
lifetime of a mouse is about two years, and we had intended
continuing our observations until the mice died of old age.
Failure of the controlling device in the hot room one night,
however, allowed the temperature to rise too high and caused
the death of all in that group when they were about twenty
months of age—but not before they had given us very valuable
information on cancer development.

By twenty months of age 14 of the cold-room group had
developed tumours, while only 4 in the hot room had. The first
mass appeared in a nine-month-old mouse in the cold room.
In the hot room not a single case was found until fifteen months
had passed. Tumours grew almost twice as fast among the cold-
room animals as among the hot-room group and took only half
as long to kill the mice after they were first observed. The first
mouse to die of cancer in the cold room was only ten months old.
The first such death in the hot room occurred at almost nineteen
months. The group kept under the variable laboratory conditions
developed almost as many tumours as were found in the cold
room (13 v. 14), but the masses appeared slightly later and grew

Öi
  less rapidly. On examination of all the mice at death, 9 intemal
tumours were found in addition to those of the breast which could
readily be feit before death. These 9 other tumours were dis-
tributed 4 to the cold room, 4 to the control group out in the
laboratory, and only one in the hot room.

These interesting mouse findings are now being checked by
lifetime observations on other groups subject to different types
of cancer. Although final figures are not yet available on the
new groups, it is noteworthy that so far 28 have developed
tumours in the cold room as compared to only 9 in the heat.
The first cold-room mouse to develop tumour did so when 6
months old, while in the heat the first tumour came at 10 months.
None of the hot-room mice of this series have developed more
than one tumour mass, but in the cold room 6 have had 2 or 3
masses appear in different parts of the breast tissue. It would
sccm that the invigorating effect of easy heat loss quickens the
metabolism of cancer cells as much as it does that of normal body
tissues. If this is true, then cancer must be classed along with the
breakdown diseases which received so much attention in an
carlier chapter.

Cancers in human populations are suppressed in tropical heat
almost to the same marked degree we found with our mouse
tumours in the hot room. Cancer death rates along the Gulf of
Mexico are much lower than in the upper Mississippi Valley,
except for cancers of the skin. For some reason tumours of the
skin and mouth are more common in the South than in the
North, perhaps because of irritating effects of the more intense
sunlight. Most other forms occur with greater frequency among
people of the North.

Our laboratory mice also develop skin tumours more readily
in heat than in cold. Painting their skin with cancer-producing
substance from coal tar leads to an earlier production of cancer
in the heat. These tumours grow more rapidly and kill the
animal earlier than in the cold. Live cancer cells injected just
under the skin also develop into fatal tumours more quickly in
hot-room mice. This does not happen when the cancer cells or
irritating Chemical are injected into the deeper tissues. It seems
likely that the richer blood supply going to the skin to facilitate
loss of body heat in hot environments gives such skin a more
active metabolism and renders it more susceptible to cancer.
Human hair grows fastest in hot weather—men must shave
oftener.

Cancer is largely a disease of the later decades of life. From 45
years onward its frequency rises rapidly to old age. Since fewer

82
  people survive infectious diseases to reach old age in the warmer
regions, it was thought that this might account for the lower
cancer death rate in the South. Closer study of death statistics,
however, showed that the rate among those living in each age
decade rosé much faster in the North and was 50 per cent.
higher among the aged in the North than in the South.

No one yet knows exactly why cancer is more frequent in one
climate than in another—nor indeed what causes it in any
climate. Early operation and radiation therapy have so far
offered the only real hope of cure and then only when the
tumour is in an accessible location. All too common now as a
cause of death, the disease is certain to become even more
frequent as the percentage of older persons increases in the
American population. To-day there are only about 8 or 9 million
persons 65 years of age or over, but this group will probably have
swelled to about 22 million in the United States by 1980—and
that means hundreds of thousands more cancer cases. Educa-
tional campaigns have made people more cancer-conscious and
caused them to seek medical aid earlier than previously. Thou-
sands of lives are saved by the earlier operation of breast tumours,
but the general cancer death rate continues its uninterrupted
rise.

As scientists delve more deeply into ways of causing and
curing cancer in animals, they may find methods for its control
in man. Certain coal-tar products are particularly prone to start
cancer developments in animals, which suggests the possibility
that the combustion products of coal and oil poured out to
contaminate the air of temperate-zone industrial centres may be
responsible for the present rapid increase in the number of lung
tumours. Two decades ago cancer of the lungs was relatively
rare in America; to-day it has become the most frequent type
of cancer among city males of low-income groups. This form of
the disease, together with cancers of other tissues coming into
direct contact with the air breathed or nasal mucus swallowed,
contributes the great majority of such deaths among men of the
poorer classes. Among women cancers of the uterus and breast
still predominate.

Dr. Oughterson of Yale University has recently presented
statistics which hint strongly that some air impurity may be
inciting cancer of the respiratory and upper digestive tract.
On going over death records of the last ten years in the New
Haven General Hospital, he found that cancer of these tissues
was several times more frequent among men on the charity
wards than among private-room patients. It was aiso several

83
  times more frequent in men than in women. The difference in
tumour incidence between charity and private patients or
between men and women was less for tumours of the small
intestines, while cancer of the large bowel or rectum was present
equally in all groups. Cancers of the breast were also equally
prevalent in women of the charity and private-patient groups.

These New Haven findings indicate that some cancer-
producing substance is being taken in through the nose and
mouth, affecting the poorer classes more strongly than those of
higher economie groups and men more then women. This
substance must be in the air we breathe, since it involves tumours
of the lungs just as much as it does those of the mouth, throat
and stomach. It fails, however, to affect the most distant parts
of the digestive tract or breast cancer in women.

The finger of suspicion must therefore point to some con-
taminating material in the outdoor air of the city slums, since it
is the poor man who is most affected; and we naturally think
at once of the soft-coal combustion products which usually hang
more densely over city slums than over better residential suburbs.
The New Haven figures should be checked by similar studies
in other cities and among rural residents. Perhaps there is much
more to the city smoke problem than its aesthetic and economie
aspects.

Interest in the contaminated atmosphere of city slums is
further justified by cancer studies on animals. The most active
cancer-producing substances so far known have been obtained
from coal tars. Injections of mere tracés of these substances—
called carcinogens—produce malignant tumours in susceptible
strains of mice, the kind of tumour being determined largely
by the type of tissue cell irritated by the injected material.
Skin tumours follow their repeated application to the skin, lung
tumours follow their continued inhalation of dust particles, and
other kinds of tumours their injection into still other body tissues.
Investigators working with carcinogens take just as great care to
avoid contaminating their own tissues with the materials as they
do with cultures of the most deadly bacteria. Watching mice
develop the cancer masses and die within a few weeks tends to
make the observers cautious. Microscopically and in other ways,
these ' experimental tumours are similar to those occurring
spontaneously in human beings.

Late in the last century it first became known that coal tars
were capable of causing cancer when the London chimney
sweeps were found to be unduly afflicted with cancers of the
skin. Still later physicians observed that men employed around

84
  gas-manufactueing plants or handling coal tar in various forms
were also subject to frequent skin cancer. Tars from soft coals
which contain much volatile matter seemed most liable to
induce these tumours, although the coal itself was quite harmless.
Miners usually have little cancer, except in certain European
mines containing radioactive ore, where more than half the
miners died of lung cancers before proper safety precautions were
finally instituted.

Recent intensive studies have given us much Information
about cancer-producing fractions of coal tar and about some of
the avenues through which they may reach our bodies. Labourers
coming in direct contact with tar in their work are not the only
victims. Dust particles swept up from tarred roads contain these
substances, as do also the dust particles polluting the air of the
industrial cities in our energetic northern climates. They can
readily be extracted from the soft-coal soot in our chimneys.
They volatilize at the firebox temperatures prevailing when soft
coals burn with heavy smoke production and pass off with other
flue gases. As the gases cool down in the chimney, coal-tar
compounds condense on carbon soot and ash particles and are
thus carried out into the city air. It is the coal tar on soot which
makes it smear so readily and produce the stains so difficult to
wash off.

Medical scientists and cancer investigators are not yet ready
to say that soft-coal smoke is an important factor in the sharply
increasing occurrence of lung cancer in our city slums. But the
suspicion that such may be the case is rapidly gaining ground.
Direct linkage of any such serious health menace to soft-coal
smoke would pave the way for speedy clearance of the smoke
from our city atmospheres.

CHAPTER I I

SHADOWS OVER OUR CITIES

The atmosphere-darkening shrouds of dust and
smoke which hang above so many American cities have often
been the subject for a peculiar sort of optimism. In the past
people have pointed to the man-made shadows with national
pride, saying that the darkness was a sign of prosperity and
industrial activity. To-day the fumes pouring forth from United
  States factories indicate that the greatest war effort in history
is hitting on all cylinders, but the darkening pall over our
cities brings with it serious heaith hazards of major proportions.
The picture is darker than the thick smoke clouds themselves.
It is a story of increased and increasing disease.

Natural climates are not the only ones affecting human heaith.
Man himself, by widespread burning of soft coal in industrialized
areas, has brought about local climatic conditions loaded with
the most vicious and dangerous heaith aspects. Great publicity
was given some months ago to the effective blackout of a large
industrial plant in the Mid-west by a few switch engines spraying
a tarry preparation on to the hot coals in their fireboxes. This
method of blackout could indeed well be used for daytime
concealment from bombing planes. It needed no special demon-
stration, however, for such blackouts have long been the winter
curse of our soft-coal-burning industrial cities. But the evil effects
of smoke on heaith, as revealed by some studies I have recently
made in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, raise the question whether
such blackout for wartime use would not be even more deadly
for a city than the bombing it was intended to prevent.

A truly devastating respiratory disease situation has been
found to exist in the “bottoms” districts of Cincinnati and
Pittsburgh, whcre crowded humanity lives alongside factories
and switch engines which keep the atmosphere heavily polluted
with their flue products. Many other cities fare just as badly,
although the price they pay has not yet been investigated. St.
Louis faced a particularly vicious situation with her cheap
high-sulphur coal- from the nearby Illinois fields. There were
times when the sulphur gases in her “smoggy” atmosphere
became really choking to breathe. She has now passed two
winters under a stringent anti-smoke ordinance, and most of
her citizens are enthusiastic about the improvement already
accomplished. Pittsburgh followed suit with a similar regulation,
but heavy war-industry demands for all kinds of fuel has made
enforcement impossible until peacetime conditions return.

Other cities—Cincinnati among them—were giving the
subject active consideration when the war with Japan broke
out. Here in Cincinnati I had been asked to serve on a com-
mittee looking into the local smoke situation, with a view to the
passage by city council of an effective anti-smoke ordinance.
This had necessitated my active interest in the subject and soon
brought to me a realization that very little was known regarding
smoke’s harmful effects upon heaith. Some study had been given
the matter in the Ruhr Valley of Germany and in our own

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #36 on: July 22, 2022, 06:52:21 PM »

86
  Pittsburgh, but the published findings were only of a general
nature and inconclusive.   *

I therefore decided to see what specific evidences of harm I
could find in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, choosing these two cities
for two reasons. Each has good soot-fall and death-rate data by
census tracts or soot-fall districts over a number of years, and
each has a local topography which presents sharp contrasts in
smoke density. Pollution is severe in the low-lying bottoms
districts of both cities and is relatively mild in their hilltop
suburbs, especially those situated to the west of the industrial
sections. The facts unearthed in this study leave no doubt of
smoke’s evil effects. The respiratory disease situation thus
uncovered is severe enough to demand vigorous action regardless
of cost as soon as the war emergency and coal shortage have
passed.

The threat is illustrated by the case of a friend of mine from
New York who recently stopped for a few days in Cincinnati on
his way to the South-west. The weather happened to be lowering,
with little movement in the muggy air—the kind that keeps our
smoke as a heavy blanket over the low-lying basin area of the
city. My friend developed an extremely severe respiratory
infection and frantically called for me by telephone from one
of the hotels down under the smoke. (The incident happened
just at a time when I was out seeking for evidences of its effect
upon the city’s population.) Unable to find me, he finally called
another physician, who sent him to a hilltop hospital.

This man claimed that he was always affected in this fashion
if he stopped in Cincinnati during the winter season, and he was
convinced that the smoke was responsible. This time he came
very near to pneumonia, with considcrable fever and acute
inflammation well down in the smaller air passages. Treatment
with the newer Chemicals which have proved so effective in
pneumococcic infections soon made him well again, but the
experience has only deepened his conviction that our city* smoke
is dangerous.

Smoke’s chief effects are naturally upon tissues of the respira-
tory system, from nose to lungs, for these are the body surfaces
brought into most intimate contact with the dirty air. My
search for harmful effects thus centred around pneumonia,
tuberculosis, and lung cancer, since these are the respiratory
diseases which kill and leave death records for study. Information
on sinusitis, bronchitis, and colds would be even more interesting,
but these milder diseases rarely kill and no records of their
incidence are available.

87
  The pneumonia situation is most striking in its relation to
smoke, so let’s look atit first. My New York friend was indeed
fortunate to have escaped pneumonia, for it strikes with great
frequency each winter among people living in the dirty air of
our congested industrial districts. During 1937 and 1938 in
Gincinnati there were 480 pneumonia deaths among 178,000
residents of our low-lying census tracts and only 160 among

277,000   people of the hültop suburbs! Three-quarters of the
city’s pneumonia deaths in only a little over a third of its
population!

This was at first thought to be due to overcrowding in the
basin area where family incomes are lowest. Pneumonia is a
contagious disease, it is true, and overcrowding does tend to
spread it from one victim to the next. But this does not explain
why the men in these areas should have almost three times as
much pneumonia as do the women living alongside them!
In the cleaner suburban districts men have only Slightly more
(5 per cent.) pneumonia than their wives, but as smoke pollution
increases, the male rate rises much faster than the female. In
the dirtiest sections the men have three to five times as much
pneumonia as the women!

This greater pneumonia hazard of the city labourer cannot
be due to his outdoor exposure to chilling, for men on Ohio’s
farms have only 5 per cent. more pneumonia than their wives
(just as in the clean city suburbs). Nor can it be a result of their
low economie status and faulty diet, for men are usually better
nourished than their wives. The only reasonable conclusion left
is that the high rate is due to the outdoor smoke-laden atmos-
phere in which the men as a rule spend the most time. Those
remaining indoors do not escape entirely but they are much
less affected.

In both Gincinnati and Pittsburgh the railroads enter largely
along valley routes, and industrial plants have naturally located
along the railroads. Major use of soft coal thus takes place in the
low-lying districts, and on days of little air motion the smoke
from these sources hangs suspended in the valley sections. In
both cities the pneumonia death rates fall rapidly with each
hundred feet of ascent up from the valley bottoms. The death
rate is three to ten times higher in the dirty basin districts than
out in the cleaner air of the suburbs.

Tuberculosis deaths are also far more common in the most
smoky parts of the city. The rates are many times higher than
out in the clean suburban air and are markedly higher for men
than for women. Negroes, many of whom have migrated from

88
  the South, cohgregate mainly in these dirty districts and have
tuberculosis and pneumonia death rates twice as high as the top
rates of the white population. Regardless of race, any group
migrating from Southern States will be far more susceptible to
respiratory infection than will native northerners, but these
migrants are particularly unfortunate when they settle in our
most polluted districts.

The distribution of soot-fall (both carbon particles and fly
ash) in various parts of the city bears a direct relation to pneu-
monia and tuberculosis deaths: The very districts having most
excessive soot-fall are the ones with highest respiratory death
rates, while in the cleanest suburban areas such deaths are
quite negligible in number.

Most of the city’s lung cancers also develop in these same
dirty basin districts, people there being about three times more
likely to develop the disease than are suburban residents. This
form of cancer, too, is several times more frequent in men than
in women. That the non-contagious, non-infectious lung disease
should show the same relation to soot-fall as do tuberculosis and
pneumonia is strongly suggestive that air pollution may be the
damaging factor. That men, who are out in the dirty air much
more than women, should be so much more afflicted with all
three of the lung diseases only adds to the suspicion that air
pollution is largely responsible for these hcalth hazards of dirty
districts.

In presenting these findings, I do not intend to belittle the
evil effects of overcrowding, poverty, and malnutrition which
are so prevalent in our basin districts. The harmful effects of
smoke are only added to these other hazards which confront
the unfortunate residents of polluted regions. It is difficult to
assess accurately the relative importance of the various health
handicaps they face, but air pollution is probably responsible
for many respiratory illnesses than all other factors combined.
Since respiratory troubles are by far the most frequent causes of
ill health among people of temperate regions, it would scem
imperative that steps be taken to eliminate the smoke hazard
which so severely intensifies this type of illness in our polluted
urban districts. Urgency is dictated not only by common human
impulses, but also by a realization of the tremendous loss of man-
hours among workers in war industries who are stricken by the
smoky excrements of their own factories.

Perhaps most city residents have given*little thought to just
what materials they are taking in with the air they breathe.
The black smoke you see is largely carbon, and you have probably

89
  been told that carbon is harmless—may indeed'be beneficia!.
It is harmless if it is pure carbon, but that issuing from smoky
chimneys is far from pure. Coal-tar compounds in soft coal are
also liberated as gases under the same furnace conditions which
produce the black smoke. As these gases cool in the upper
chimney, they condense on the carbon and ash particles present
in the smoke and are thus carried out over the city. Soft-coal
soot from the chimneys of English homes has been found to be
almost half coal tar in some instances. High-volatile coals
liberate the largest amounts of both soot and coal tar when im-
properly fired; if burned smokelessly, then both tar and carbon
are consumed in the firebox. These tarry substances which
condense on smoke particles contain the cancer-producing
Chemicals used in experimental cancer studies and are coming
to be seriously suspected as a possible cause for the lung cancer
increase among the people of our city slums.

Along with the carbon in smoke goes a considerable amount
of so-called “fly ash” composed of much the same sort of silicate
compounds which killed so many hundreds of tunnel and quarry
workers exposed to the fine rock dust produced in blasting
operations. It was formerly thought that these particles irritated
the lungs because of their sharp cutting edges, but now their
action is considered to be a Chemical rather than a physical
irritation. Before proper precautions were instituted, these
particles produced deadly silicosis among tunnel workers. But
the ailment is seldom seen among city residents exposed to fly
ash. It is possible that a lower grade of irritation may be respon-
sible for their increased susceptibility to respiratory troubles.
Similar fly-ash irritation in the nasal sinuses probably plays a
large part in the prevalence of sinusitis among dwellers in our
coal-burning cities. One might expect suburban residents who
work daily in the downtown basin area to be affected almost as
much as the basin “natives.” Most of these people, however,
work in indoor atmospheres which are much less polluted and
sleep at night under cleaner air conditions.

Carbon soot has been decreasing in recent years, because more
factories and homes have installed mechanical stokers and
secured better burning of the cheap grades of soft coal. Atmos-
pheric fly ash, however, is thicker than ever because more violent
mechanical draughts in fireboxes and chimneys have carried larger
proportions of furnace ash out into the air. The great heating
plants of industrial, apartment, and office buildings add to the
fly-ash problem by their nightly blowing-out of the accumulated
material in their stacks. This material should be trapped and

90
  removed from below instead of being permitted to escape and
contaminate the sleeping city.

Still another important smoke constituent is the sulphur
which passes off in the form of oxide gases. Sulphur oxides
become highly irritating and corrosive acids when dissolved in
water. It was probably this type of irritation which affected the
noses and air-passage linings of St. Louis residents and, more
than any other factor, inspired that city’s successful anti-smoke
crusade. Coals burned there have a high sulphur content (3-5 per
cent.). At times the atmosphere became really choking from
these fumes. Out-of-towners usually transacted their business
as quickly as possible on such days and then rushed away to less
irritating atmospheres outside the city. Many centres are much
more fortunate in being supplied with coals of lower sulphur
content, but even so there is still enough of these acid fumes to
etch stone buildings and disintegrate outdoor paints and exposed
metal surfaces.

Fly ash, sulphur fumes, and carbon soot loaded with coal tar—
these are the damaging factors in city smoke as far as man himself
is concerned. Cutting off of sunlight is probably the least im-
portant loss, for normal winter cloudiness and the acute angle
at which winter sunlight strikes the earth in Cincinnati make it
necessary for us to get our vitamin D supply from food sources
during the smoky season. Considering the matter from the
respiratory disease standpoint alone, urban residents are fully
justified in taking any steps necessary for abolishing the smoke
pollution evil. Several cities are becoming greatly concerned
over the situation, and as usuai there are economie interests
which oppose the needed changes. A half-century ago
similar objections were raised against plans for purifiction of
city water supplies. It was only the clear-cut demonstration that
typhoid and other enteric fevers from polluted water were killing
thousands each year that forced the acceptance of water purifi-
cation. Similarly, purified city air will probably remain a mere
hope until enough citizens properly appreciate the hcalth
hazards of smoky atmospheres.

If any smoke-abatement programme is to lessen air pollution
hazards, it must consider certain fundamental factors. Carbon
soot and coal-tar compounds flow into city air almost exclusively
as a result of the faulty burning of high-volatile soft coals. Such
coals can be burned smokelessly with proper furnace equipment.
Hence, abatement campaigns are being conducted mainly along
the lines of prohibiting the use of high-volatile soft coals unless
proper equipment is available for burning them without smoke.

9i
  Few industrial plants (except for blast-furnace operation) use
any coals except the cheaper, high-volatile types which are
obtainable in' largest quantities. Proper equipment enables these
companies to burn such coals smokelessly and without loss of
unburned fuel through smokestacks. Increasing numbers of
home-owners are also installing efficiënt mechanical stokers for-
these cheap coals. All that is necessary to do away with the black
smoke evil completely is to insist that the rest of the homes and
the railroad engines either burn low-volatile coals or obtain
equipment for the proper handling of the high-volatile varieties.

Relief from black smoke, however, in no way lessons the fly-
ash problem. The ash content of coal is not related to its load
of volatile materials or its tendency to smoke when improperly
burned. In fact hard coals with almost no volatile matter may
yield just as much ash as the high-volatile soft coals. Entirely
separate steps must be taken to clear city atmospheres of fly-ash
hazards. Better settling chambers or traps for the flue ash, or the
use of water sprays to cleanse the chimney gases, will do the trick.
Relief may often be obtained simply by avoiding sudden air
blasts into the firebox. Many types of home stokers have only one
speed for their draught fan, and the sudden air blast as the fan comes
on carries large quantities of fine ash up the chimney. A more
gradual onset of the draught current would remedy this situation.

Washing of flue gases with water sprays would eliminate most
sulphur gases as well as solid soot and ash particles. In fact, this
is practically the only method by which the sulphur oxides could
be removed. Proper firing to eliminate visible smoke will in no
way lessen sulphur-oxide fumes—it might even slightly increase
them by providing for better oxidation of the last tracés of
sulphur in the coal. So St. Louis, even with her stringent anti-
smoke ordinance, may find her atmosphere just as choking and
corrosive as ever unless she compels spray washing of flue gases.
Her water supply would prove quite inadequate for such washing
in all her chimneys, but in the larger coal-burning plants water
could be used over and over again after proper treatment.

The amount of carbon soot deposited over Cincinnati has
been declining in recent years with the increase of stokers and
gas or oil fumaces. Greater use of coke has also helped. However,
fly ash has increased even more than carbon soot has decreased,
so the net health situation is worse instead of better. Evidently
some highly technical consideration must be given to smoke
elimination before genuine relief can be obtained.

One highly vocal objection raised by certain politicians and
economie groups is that nothing should be done which would

9*
  increase the financial burden of poor people residing in polluted
districts. To be sure, low-volatile coals and coke cost more than
the high-volatile varieties and are difficult to bum in the make-
shift stoves of slum districts. Newer types of firebox arrange-
ipents, however, will solve that problem; a two-chambered
firebox has been devised in which the coal bums freely on one
side while new coal on the other side is being coked by the heat.
Liberated gases are forced to burn in the flame of the open side.
When new coal is needed, it is placed in the burned-out side and
permitted to coke while the heat-treated coal on the other side
is burning. With such an arrangement, high-volatile coals could
be burned with little smoke in the poorest home.

Lacking storage space for fuel, the poor usually buy their coal
in small lots from hucksters. Hence, fuel costs dearly and high-
volatile coals are usually used which burn most freely in make-
shift stoves. Establishment of city-controlled fuel depots where
these people could obtain their own coal would provide better
fuel for the same money. New-type stoves to burn even high-
volatile coals smokelessly, and with more economical-combustion,
would save enough on two years’ fuel bill to pay for the new
stove. Thus the poor need not suffer. On the contrary, they
would enjoy lower heating costs and, from a health viewpoint,
would gain most from a lessening of the pollution evil.

We have not yet even considered the greatest pollution element
in city air, the element most responsible for lowcred visibility
and winter “smog.” This factor is the steam given off from
industrial power plants and locomotives. Soot-fall over Cincin-
nati is in the neighbourhood of a half million tons a year, while
the railroads alone liberate about ten times that much steam
into the city atmosphere. The steam quickly turns into invisible
water vapour during the summer when the air’s water-holding
capacity is high. Cold winter air holds little water vapour,
however, so all added steam then remains as fog to becloud our
atmosphere.

For several years I tried to find out just how much steam the
railroads actually produced daily in our metropolitan area.
Officials made evasive replies and continually referred my
inquiries from person to person, bringing me to an utter dead-
end as far as information was concerned. But during recent
hearings before a committee attempting to draft a municipal
anti-smoke ordinance, I did obtain the desired information in a
roundabout manner. Upon questioning, the railroad and coal
representatives revealed the approximate amount of coal used
annually by locomotives operating within the Cincinnati

93

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #37 on: July 22, 2022, 06:53:18 PM »

  switching area. This was roughly a million tons a year. Each
pound of coal burned in a steam engine changes 5 to 10 pounds
of boiler water into steam. Using the lower figure of 5 pounds of
steam for each pound of coal, I calculated that the railroads
alone would add enough water daily to our city atmosphere to
give o*6 grains per cubic foot of air over an area of 50 square
miles and extending upward for 300 feet. On windless days the
steam would be held within these approximate bounds under
prevailing topographical conditions.

This 0*6 grains per cubic foot of air is a negligible amount
during summer warmth. Air at 90° F. can hold over 10 grains of
water vapour per cubic foot and is not often over 70 per cent.
saturated except during periods of actual rain. As midday
temperatures drop down below 6o° F. through the autumn
months, however, the air holds less water vapour, and additional
nightly cooling brings it to the saturation point. Engine steam
then begins to remain as visible fog instead of disappearing as
invisible water vapour. Fogs form even in country districts
because of this nocturnal cooling and supersaturation of the air,
but their presence in industrial districts is tremendously in-
tensified by the steam liberated from power sources. Thus, no
matter how thoroughly city dwellers eliminate smoke and fly
ash from the air, they should not expect to have clear winter
atmospheres and good visibility unless the steam problem is
solved.

The situation is particularly acute on windless winter days
when the blanket of industrial and locomotive steam shrouds
lower-lying urban districts, at times even piling up sufficiently
to hide some of the hilltop spburbs. On such days all the flue
products from the city’s fires are held suspended or in solution
by the steam cloud, and we have to breathe this vile mixture—
often for several days at a time. These periods probably play the
most important role in bringing on respiratory diseases and
general ill health. Fly ash and soot quickly settle to the ground
during the summer, leaving the air fairly clear. But during the
cold, still days of winter steam clouds hold in suspension all the
poisonous flue products, giving us the soupy mixture which has
been aptly called “smog” (smoke and fog).

Many large industrial plants use their exhaust steam to heat
their buildings in winter. Others might follow this example or
at least condense the steam to keep it out of city atmospheres.
Just how feasible condensing devices would be for railroad
engines is a matter of which I have little knowledge. Already
railroads are rapidly changing to Diesel power, however, and

94
  if the trend continues, steam may become as outmoded as the
horse and buggy. The only other socially beneficial alternative
in heavily populated metropolitan districts is the use of efficiënt
steain condensers or electricity. Use of Diesel or electric loco-
motives would solve both smoke and steam problems so far as the
railfoads are concerned.

For years I have driven from bright suburban sunlight down
into the dense murk of the basin area. And for years I have
wondered how long the people of our American cities would
continue to tolerate such pollution of the air they breathe. At
last they seem really to be awakening to the evils of the foul
artificial climate in which they must live. The drive to produce
materials for the all-important war effort may stimulate further
and faster action by persons who realize that the healthier a
nation is, the bet ter it can fight. The first efforts to cleanse
American urban atmospheres may fall short of the ioo-per-cent.-
effective mark. But only by trial and test will it be possible to
arrivé at a solution of the vital pollution problem. Man may not
be able to control natural weather, but he should be doing a
much better job in straightening up the mess of his own weather-
making.

CHAPTER 12

KILLING HEAT

Northerners encounter still other risks than
those of natural storminess and the man-made smoky
atmospheres over their industrial centres. They are especially
vulnerable to the severe summer heat waves which often settle
over middle latitudes of the United States. The high-metabolism
people of these regions cannot subdue their inner fircs quickly
enough to meet the sudden difficulty{ in heat loss. Thus thousands
of them may develop heatstroke within a few days’ time—and
this at temperatures which would not bother tropical residents
in the least. Heatstroke—in both animals and men—occurs more
frequently in the upper half of the Mississippi River Basin than
anywhere else on earth. Most of the deaths occur during the first
fortnight of a torrid spell, for the body takes about two weeks to
adjust its rate of heat production downwards. After this adapta-
tion has taken place, it can safely stand still higher temperatures.

95
  Heat which kills men and animals in June or early July can
usually be endured during August.

All warm-blooded animals protect themselves against excessive
heat almost entirely by increased evaporation of water. Their
bodies normally lose heat in three ways—by direct outward
radiation into the surroundings, by conduction to the air or
other materials in direct contact with the body, and by water
evaporation from the skin or mouth and air passages. The first
two avenues of heat loss can operate to advantage only when
surrounding temperatures are below that of the body. They
are thus of little help on days of severe summer heat when extemal
temperature is higher than that of the skin. In fact, the body may
even be taking up heat through these two avenues, especially if
exposed to the direct radiant heat of the sun. Water evaporation
must therefore bear almost the entire burden of heat loss in
times of real stress.

Water is peculiarly well suited for this purpose. In passing
from liquid to vapour form it takes up enormous quantities of
heat, cooling the surfaces from which it is evaporated. Vaporiza-
tion of a pint of water takes four and a half times more heat than
is required to raise the water from the freezing to the boiling
point. This heat of vaporization is said to go into the latent
form, for it disappears without rise in temperature. About three
quarts of water vaporized per day would be needed for the
average resting person to lose all his heat through this channel.
During physical labour or active exercise the amount required
would be three or four times that much.

When the body’s water-evaporation system cannot meet the
extra demands of hot weather and allows too much heat to
accumulate within the tissue, the result is a dreaded heatstroke.
One of my first experiences with this condition—which strikes
animals as well as men—occurred in the Dakota harvest fields
where I worked as a hand at the age of sixteen. The victim was a
valuable and much-loved horse whose death affected me deeply.

Tom was a light Hambletonian carriage horse with plenty of
fire and sparkle to make life interesting on the road, but during
the busy harvest weeks he had been pressed into service tem-
porarily as a substitute for a sick mare in the six-horse team
pulling the header. This was before the day of tractors or power
farm machinery of any sort. Horse-power on the farm still meant
horses. Through the hot forenoon sun Tom forged well out in
front of his slower teammates, trying to urge them to a faster
pace. Such drudging slowness ill fitted his fiery spirit and willing
heart. About ten o’clock he ceased sweating and in another hour

96
  suddenly began to stagger in the hot sun. His owner, riding the
header, had been watching him closely all morning, trying to
hold him back to a slower pace. He had noticed Tom’s glossy
coat changing from wet to dry, but had delayed action until the
horse actually began to collapse. At the first stumble Tom was
quickly unhitched and his harness taken off, but within five
minutes he was prostrate on the ground, and in another half-
hour he was dead.

That heatstroke death of the farm’s favourite pet and most
willing and intelligent servant just about broke the hearts of the
farmer and his wife. Many days passed before they could smile
again. At that time I knew little about the physiological basis of
heatstroke, but experience with human cases in the years since
then has indicated that Tom’s life could have been saved if he
had been plunged promptly into a tank of cold water to take the
fever out of his system. But there he was, completely prostrated
a half-mile away from any water. We poured the little we had
in our jugs over his head and body, but to no avail.

The tragic death of Tom in the Dakota harvest field, was
typical of a danger for which the wise farmer was always on the
lookout. During July and August heat, any horse which ceased
sweating while at work was always carefully watched for further
signs of trouble. A small drainage ditch ran through our Indiana
farm, and we would sometimes dip up water from it to pour over
the horses if they began to be seriously affected by the heat. We
knew there was little danger as long as free sweating continued.

Other farm animals are much more susceptible than horses
to heatstroke, but they are not forced to do hard work out in
the fields under the hot sun. Cattle develop fever quite readily.
They have a much less effective sweating mechanism and like
to stand in water when the weather gets hot. Hogs and chickens
have almost no sweat glands and are quickly prostrated by
excessive heat—as I learned that hot August day when I neglected
to open the feed-lot gate so the shoats could wallow in the mud
through the midday heat. Hogs provide their own heat pro-
tection if any water or mud is available, but chickens or turkeys
like to keep their feathers dry. Their only method of increasing
heat loss from the body on a hot day is by panting, which
quickens the evaporation of water from the mouth and linings
of the air passages.

Even with their efficiënt water-evaporation method of losing
heat, human beings may be affected by the hundreds during
particularly blazing periods. The grim symptoms of heatstroke
are familiar to physicians. The victim first stops sweating, then

Dcüm   97
  developes headache and high fever. He soon collapses and be-
comes unconscious, with a rise in blood pressure, full, bounding
pulse, and dry, hot skin. Death often comes quickly—just as it
did to Tom in the harvest field—unless the victims are freed of
the accumulated heat. When a heatstroke patiënt is brought into
the hospital, he is immediately placed in an iced bath and
massaged vigorously until internal temperatures have dropped
almost to the normal level. He is then taken out of the tub and
wrapped in wet blankets to get rid of the last tracés of fever more
slowly. If the massage in the ice-water bath lasts too long, the
body temperature may drop far below normal, bringing on a
condition of shock. Many heatstroke patients died of such shock
before this fact was properly appreciated.

To be most effective, heatstroke treatment must be started
soon after the patiënt has collapsed, and the sooner the better,
for the high internal temperature brings quick damage to vital
body tissues. Any victim should immediately receive the benefit
of whatever cooling facilities are at hand, even though it is
nothing more than dousing with a pail of water and vigorous
fanning to speed evaporation. Such emergency measures, applied
while the victim is being hurried to better cooling facilities,
greatly improve the chances of recovery.

Such attacks are common in parts of the United States. In
early July of 1934 severe heat settled over Cincinnati, St. Louis,
Kansas City, and other population masses living in that portion
of the Mississippi Basin, prostrating many people and actually
killing over five thousand. Two years later heat came in mid-
August and killed relatively few veteran heat sufferers in these
cities. Farther north, however, in Omaha, Minneapolis, Chicago,
Detroit, and other mid-western cities of similar latitude, this
heat was fatal to thousands who were unaccustomed to such
acute difficulty in losing body heat.

During the first week of the 1934 heat I went by automobile
from Cincinnati to Kansas City, passing through the Indiana
and Illinois harvest fields. Horses were dying of heatstroke by
the hundreds, and tales of human prostration greeted me at
every place I stopped. A hush of awe and dread had settled over
the country as the margin between life and death seemed to be
narrowing down to the vanishing point. In Cincinnati, ambu-
lances were busy day and night, bringing prostrated and un-
conscious victims to the hospital for treatment. Body temperatures
of iio° F. were not uncommon, and many victims died before
they could be placed in the iced baths for quick cooling. In the
1936 heat wave we were somewhat better organized to handle

98
  the heat cases, with police and hospital ambulances carrying
ice so that the cooling of the victims could begin as soon as they
were picked up.

One man working in the railroad yards became dizzy at one
o’clock on a July aftemoon, feit hot and started to walk home
about an hour later. He collapsed after going four blocks, was
picked up by an ambulance, and became conscious again only
after his body temperature was approaching normal in the iced
bath at the hospital. When he reached the institution at half-past
three his temperature was 109° F. Twenty-five minutes later
in the iced bath it was 102° F. He was then removed from the
tub and wrapped in cold blankets so that the last remnants of
fever could die down at a slower rate. In another forty-five
minutes his temperature was 98.2° and he feit almost normal.

Acute difficulty in losing body heat may affect people in
quite a different way, producing so-called heat exhaustion.
lts onset, less sudden than that of heatstroke, comes with weak-
ness, prostration, lo’w blood pressure, and weak, rapid pulse.
The skin is pale and wet with a clammy perspiration, although
in certain cases there may be some fever. Stomach cramps,
vomiting, and diarrhoea often accompany heat exhaustion and
accentuate the patient’s collapse. To plunge such a person into
a cold bath—as one would a heatstroke victim—might bring on
a fatal shock. What hc needs is stimulation and the application
of warm packs if his temperature is subnormal.

Another common effect of heat is connected with the body’s
water-evaporating efforts to keep cool. Water excreted through
the sweat glands carries out with it considerable quantities of
salt, and people working in hot environments are liable to
become ill simply from loss of too much body salt. Muscle
cramps, weakness, dizziness, prostration, nausea, and vomiting
may occur, with prompt relief when the lost minerals are re-
placed by simply swallowing salt water. This form of severe
heat effect is seen in boiler or furnace rooms, in certain processing
plants where the product requires hot moist air, and among all
workmen doing hard labour under difïicult conditions of heat
loss. Under such circumstances men are now advised to keep
salt tablets handy for use at the first hint of trouble and to drink
salt water instead of regular drinking water. Many offices in
Washington, D.C., which is notorious for its scorching humid
summers, have a handy supply of salt tablets for desperate
employees.

The case of a thirty-year-old coloured foundry employee
illustrates quite well the problem of heat cramps. One sultry

99
  June day, while working in the hot foundry environment, he
drank immense amounts of water and cold beverages to make
up for his sweating losses. About noon he vomited and was
seized wth severe cramps in his hands, arms, legs, and abdomen.
Large knots of cramping muscle stood out on his body and
caused excruciating pain. He was taken to the nearby emergency
hospital and given a quart of salt solution—with almost instant
relief. Thousands of industrial workers are now saved simiiar
trouble by keeping salt tablets at hand to eat or dissolve in
drinking water during periods of excessive sweating. As we
might expect from our findings in Chapter IV, some industrial
plants are also finding that equal or better protection may be
afforded by a few milligrams of thiamin (vitamin Bx).

Bathers often suffer from cramps during hot-weather swimming
because of this same body salt loss. Sudden chilling in cold water,
after previous perspiration in the heat, brings on the painful
symptoms. A simiiar cramping tendency of the muscles is also
present during the digestion of meals when large amounts of
salt-containing fluids are being poured into the stomach and
intestines for digestion of the food. That is the scientific basis for
the warning against going in swimming immediately after
mealtime.

But heatstroke is the most common hot-weather threat to
energetic northerners. It is important and interesting to know
that certain groups among the population are more susceptible
than others. Elderly people, especially those with high blood
pressure or hardening of the arteries, are most likely to be
stricken. Difficulty in gctting rid of the body’s waste heat causes
a spceding-up of blood flow from internal organs to the skin, a
process which brings heat to the surface where it can be dissipated
more rapidly. This increased blood flow throws greater work
on the heart and is liable to bring on heart failure in people
whose margin of safety has already been reduced.

Chronic alcoholics are also particularly sensitive to heatstroke.
Many victims reveal a history of habitual drinking, or else
doctors find they had been drinking just before collapsing in the
heat. The relationship between alcohol and heatstroke is probably
due to liquor’s effect upon the brain centres and a disturbance
of the intricate nervous control over the sweating mechanism.
Medical experience indicates that alcoholic drinks should be
avoided or used sparingly during severe heat. Even in the tropics,
where a low combustion rate reduces the danger of heatstroke.
people usually forgo strong alcoholic drinks during midday heat.

One of my friends with several decades of tropical experience

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
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  cautions against hearty beer drinking when the body tissues
have been dried out by previous perspiration. To quench one’s
hot-weather thirst with beer is liable to lead 1$ rather profound
intoxication, for the dried-out nervous tissue takes up the alcohol
and water quickly and becomes deadened before the alcohol
can be burned. A normal person will burn the small percentage
of alcohol in beer almost as fast as it can be absorbed into the
blood, and as a result beer intoxication is difficult. But when the
body tissues lose a great deal of water by profuse sweating,
absorption becomes much more rapid and even beer drinking
has its dangers.

One attack of heatstroke or prostration leaves an individual
far more susceptible to similar trouble in subsequent heat
waves. Since doctors have not yet found a way to overcome this
sensitivity, heat victims must take special care to avoid futurc
exposure. Proper intake of the B vitamins in adequate amounts
may protect them against future trouble to a considerable
degree.

City dwellers suffer much more during severe heat waves
than do residents of rural areas. This is largely bccausc the sun’s
daytime heat tends to be stored in the pavements and piled-up
masonry of the crowded buildings faster than it can be given off
at night. Trapped inside the buildings, it causcs indoor tem-
peratures to rise higher with each succeeding day of heat. In
open rural areas cach day’s load of heat is pretty thoroughly
re-radiated into outer space at night. Green vegetation also helps
in lessening the sevority of heat, for it is largely composed of
water which absorbs the heat without much changc of tem-
peraturc. The dry earth of cultivated fields, or the masonry and
pavement materials of the city, become much hotter under the
same intensity of sun’s heat than do growing plants.

Highest daytime temperatures are usually cncountcred in
desert regions, for the sand heats up quickly under the blazing
sun; but it also cools quickly at night as it radiates its daytime
heat off into space. Although tropical regions of heavy rainfall
receive just as much heat, the dense water-laden foliagc on all
sides keeps air temperatures from rising very high; but the
abundance of water everywhere, with its load of stored heat,
also makes the nights warm and oppressive. Tempcratc-zone
cities, with their towering and crowded buildings of concrete
and brick, offer the most severe summer heat problem. It was
this problem which led to the development of air-conditioning
for summer cooling.

One of the most acute heat problems faced by man is to be

101
  found inside the tanks engaged in desert warfare. When closed
for action, they quickly become veritable ovens in which the
occupants suffer 4 terrible torment. The steel turret readily
absorbs the sun’s heat and re-radiates it into the interior. Lining
the inside of the turret with aluminum foil should greatly lessen
this heating-up of the interior; it should also give considerable
protection against attack from flame-thrówers or the kerosene
bomb which now makes of the tank a blazing inferno. If tanks
were to be lined with foil and then provided with sufficiënt
mechanical cooling to remove the body heat the occupants
produce, it should be possible for the men to work inside in fair
comfort for hours. At present the heat problem presents a severe
limitation to tank operation in hot weather or tropical climates.

chapter 13

BAD MOODS AND FALLING BAROMETERS

We have seen in PREVious chapters that people
living in regions marked by frequent storms and the accompany-
ing wide changes in atmospheric pressure suffer particularly
from respiratory ailments, high blood pressure, and other upsets.
Acute appendicitis attacks are most likely to come when the
barometer is falling, so much so that knowing surgeons rather
expect an epidemie of cases on such days. This disease is most
severe and fulminates only in the world’s stormy areas; it is
mild and infrequent in the more stable climates of Europe and
most of the tropics.

But the effect of changing weather can show itself in signs far
more subtle than the symptoms of physical disease. People have
long known intuitively that their emotions and personalities
were influenced by their climatic surroundings. In fact, this
awareness is built firmly into the English language with such
phrases as “stormy emotions,” “tempestuous feelings,” and
“a face as dark as a thunder-cloud.” As so frequently is the case,
our closest companions among domesticated beasts provide us
with clear evidence of this phenomenon.

Farm animals are often good barometers of weather change,
exhibiting a growing restlessness and irritability as a storm
approaches. All country children realize this, but those raised

102
  in the city have missed the close touch with Nature which comes
from such daily associations. Cattle, horses, hogs, and other
domestic livestock are in their own ways just as natural as wild
animals which roam the untouched forests, and they can teach
us many valuable lessons if we will but take the trouble to stop,
look, and listen.

Time after time these friends on our Indiana farm demon-
strated that sudden weather change is an extremely disturbing
factor in daily life. We had with us for years one particular cow
which acted as an excellent weather gauge. During clear, settled
weather she was a docile and likeable creature, friendly and
co-operative; but on days of falling barometer and approaching
storm, she became most unruly and erratic.

Nell was an easy and voluminous milker of part Jersey heritage,
but too unreliable for me to handle in my very early years.
Almost as soon as I could reach, I began helping with the least
excitable cows at the morning and evening milking. They were
usually milked outdoors in good weather, and it was my duty
to bring them in from the pasture. Many snappy autumn
mornings I would warm my bare toes under some friendly
bossy before rousing her from her pasture bed.

In my later childhood Nell and I were particularly good
friends most of the time. I loved to play jokes on her and she
retaliated now and then with a well-placed kick which sent me
and the milk pail tumbling. There was no meanness about her,
though, for her big soulful eyes assured me all was forgiven as I
clambered up from each such balancing of the score. I soon
learned, however, to treat her with respect, especially on the
off-weather days, when her temper became brittle and her
sense of humour non-existent. On one such lowering June
morning she most unceremoniously boosted* my mother over a
six-foot gate, while we were trying to take away her week-old
calf. Even to-day, at eighty-two, mother becomes irate when
the memory of that undignified handling is revived.

One of my jokes on Nell still doublés me up with laughter
whenever I recall it. It occurred on one of thosc restless evenings
before a storm, when flies and mosquitoes had made milking
difficult and kept everyone on the move. Just at dusk I carried
out a basketful of com nubbins for the cows, since scarcity of
rain had made the pastures short. Corn to them was like candy
to hungry children, so they quickly gathered around for the
treat. To the first nubbin thrown out I had attached a long piece
of thread, and just as NelPs nose touched the corn I gently
pulled it away. She followed it a step or two, then her ears went

103
  forward in wonder. Puzzled by this mysterious behaviour of the
nubbin, she regarded it closely a few seconds, then cautiously
reached for it again. This time, as it moved away just beyond
reach of her hungry tongue, she emitted a low, rumbling groan.
A wild look came into her wondering eyes. One more twitch of
the corn and around the corner of the barn she fled with a terrified
bellow, tail pointing high. She might have been as puzzled, but
probably would not have been as emotional, if the trick had
been played on a rising-pressure day.

Horses, especially the more excitable ones, are also very likely
to behave in unexpected ways when the barometer is falling.
They become more irritable, fighting each other and frequently
disobeying orders. On stormy days they are most inclined to
bolt at the slightest opportunity and provide the disastrous
runaways which farm children remember so vividly throughout
their lives. Hogs, too, fight more among themselves on these
days—in fact, I suspect that an hourly count of their fights
through the week would provide a good measure of barometric
changes.

Man’s closest companion, the dog, becomes restless and goes
off on his longer scouting trips when a storm is approaching.
In one large American city with a leash-law all loose dogs are
picked up and taken to the pound. The pound-keeper insists
that dogs smell approaching storms and run out to take their
exercise while they can. His pick-ups are much more
numerous on days before bad weather begins. It is only the
restlessness common to all species, however, which drives the
dogs into unwonted activity when the barometer is falling. Like
the farm cattle and horses, dogs also are more perverse then and
likely to snap at a friendly hand. For safety’s saké, confine your
petting of strange canines to rising-pressure days.

Fishermen given to the telling of tall ‘tales become highly
excited about the way fish rise for bait at certain weather phases.
Anglers* journals have discussed the matter at great length,
finally concluding that barometric pressure change is probably
responsible. A dozen fishermen scattered over a lake may have
been casting for hours or days without luck and then have the
fish suddenly strike at every cast made. As a boy I recall that
fishing in our gravel pit was best the day before bad weather set
in, when the barometer had just begun to fall. Several of my
scientific friends who are rabid anglers take the matter quite
seriously.

People are no more immune to the psychological effect s of
weather change than lower creatures, although the notorious

104
  pride of Hom sapiens usually prevents him from admitting it.
We all like to blame our occasional “blues” on concrete, reassur-
ing things, such as worries about the future, and during domestic
squabbles each person is dead sure the other person is at fault.
A wiser course might be to take a look at the barometer, for
human beings respond just like other animals to falling atmos-
pheric pressures and approaching storms. Family mombers are
more irritable on lowering days, when husband and wife snap at
each other and the children seem perversity incarnate. All of
us remember the low-barometer evenings when we arrived home
exhausted from a day in which everything went wrong only to
find the whole family on edge and intolerant of every suggestion.
Each person is inclined to overlook his own irritable state and
blame any unpleasantness upon unreasonable attitudes of others.
Those are the evenings children are chastised because a parent
is tired and irritated, although it is true the children themselves
are more likely to be unduly perverse.

A heavy rain clears the air at such times in more ways than
one, for then the barometer usually begins to rise and good
nature again prevails in the home. Even in their sleep many
people are restless before a storm, tossing with vivid and night-
marish dreams. Our whole family sometimes awakens when a
low-pressure crisis comes along in the middle of the night, and
inquiry of other people next day frcquently reveals many
instances of similar behaviour. So, do not always blame a child’s
wakefulness or his refusal to eat what you thought good lor him
upon mere perversity—it may be only the weather!

Perhaps the children of tropical natives are well behaved
because they are not subject to the frequent weather changes
which disturb temperate-zone residents. Human relationships
everywhere would be more peaceful and unruffled if people
would only realize the effect of weather on their dispositions and
make proper allowance for little flare-ups. Try it out on your
own family; you will soon have them laughing off situations
which previously led to disagreeable bitterness. When my wife
and I look at our children asleep after these quarrelsome even-
ings, we often wonder how we could have been so severe. But
our resolve always to keep good-natured with them usually lasts
only until the next period of low pressure.

People subject to severe headaches or fainting spells most often
have their -attacks when the barometer is falling. Attempts at
suicide are then much more likely to occur. Low spirits and an
inability to think clearly lead to a feeling of frustration and
hopelessness in many people. At such times life seems scarcely

105
  worth while; but as the storm passes on, everything assumes a
more cheerful aspect.

A few years ago in Tokyo statistics showed that people were
more forgetful on low-pressure days. When the barometer was
falling, bus and street-car passengers left more packages and
umbrellas on the vehicles and put an extra burden on the lost-
and-found department. Traffic accidents in American cities are
also most numerous in such weather, but in many cases the
drivers may be hurrying to reach their destinations before the
storm breaks. Industrial accidents, however, show this same
increased frequency on days of falling pressure. Even childbirths
seem precipitated in veritable epidemics at such times, according
to some of my obstetrical friends.

Some people, hypersensitive to weather change, respond to
every cloud which hides the sun. Sunshine and shadow keep their
emotions jumping from elation to depression, and on days of
steadily falling pressure they become morose and dejected. The
exact mechanism by which such weather changes affect human
beings in so many ways is not yet known. One of my fellow
investigators in this field, Dr. Petersen of Ghicago, believes it’s
all due to shifting Chemical balances in the blood and body
tissues, and he may be right. Other preliminary findings indicate
that our tissues take up more water at such times and a resulting
slight swelling of the brain may upset us emotionaily. Since the
evidence is not yet entirely convincing, we can only say that so
far we do not know.

When we are equipped for close study of pressure change
effects under controlled laboratory conditions, we will probably
find just why these things happen to us—and perhaps how they
may be avoided. They result only from several hours of falling
pressure acting on our tissues, for quick ascent in an elevator or
airplane is apparently harmless. Investigations of pressure effects
are being greatly stimulated by the marked increase in air
travel—both civilian and military—and no doubt researchers
will soon be able to report interesting results.

Even though the reason for such effects is a mystery still,
proper appreciation of their presence will take much of the stress
and unpleasantness out of life in stormy regions. In my own
family, greater tolerance is exercised on those days when we
know we can expect each other to be more restless and irritable.
I have learned in my own work that some days are good only for
routine jobs, while on others difficult tasks are readily accom-
plished. A falling barometer is particularly bad for the type of
cerebration required in writing, so much so indeed that para*

106
  graphs written under such conditions usually need complete
revision. For highest quality output give me an early moming
of rising pressure and a cup of fragrant coffee! Lines written then
are scarcely recognizable as my own after the caffeine effect has
worked off and the pressure has started to fall.

If you are in business, avoid your most difficult customer on
falling-pressure days. His instinctive reaction is most likely to
be curt and unfavourable; he will look upon you with a suspicious
eye. Gall on him when fair weather and a rising barometer are
standing by as your allies. If you must give a lecture or make
some other sort of public appearance, pray that the weather may
be clear and cool. At such times, even the feeblest attempt at
wit will be appreciated and your delivery will be at its peak.
Attack your most difficult problems on the mornings of rising-
pressure days, when to the favourable weather there is added
the barometer’s daily climb from its post-midnight low.

Some day, when we know more definitely just what falling
pressure does to our body efficiency, perhaps we will have
school buildings equipped for pressure control. Then we may
elimlnate those days when both teachers and pupils are ineffi-
ciënt, when everyone is restless, irritable, and susceptible to
wandering attention and blurred intellect. The control of indoor
pressure will probably be one of the future’s major developments
in indoor conditioning, and its first application should certainly
be to school buildings. We shall have more to say in a future
chapter about man’s effort to create made-to-order weather.

chapter 14

GLIMATE AND HUMAN REPRODUCTION

1 hose who have spent their lives studying the
dim corners of the subconscious mind teil us that stronger even
than man’s tremendous drive for self-preservation is the deep-
rooted urge to preserve his species on the face of the earth. The
destructive forces of the most violent wars, including the present
conflict, are puny when compared with the long-term interplay
of great forces which make for larger populations. By the year
2000 the world will probably house a half-billion more persons
  than it does to-day—wars or no wars. Despite the fact that
reproduction is one of the most vital of all human functions,
however, many of the factors influencing it are still a great
mystery to modern Science.

What are the reasons for vast population trends? Why is
fertility declining in England, France, and the United States
and rising in Japan and Russia? Although complete answers to
these and other questions are impossible, scientists have studied
certain factors affecting the general picture. Diet plays some part,
but the exact effect is not at all clear. Animal-breeders are
aware that proper food and vitamin supplies are highly important
for the best reproductivity. But in human beings we see highest
birth rates among the most poorly nourished third of the popula-
tion. For some unknown reason, women run down with advanced
tuberculosis or other weakening disease are often quite
fertile.

The economie factor is undoubtedly important. Perhaps you,
like many other moderns, feel that reproductive fertility is more
of a curse than a boon. Children are no longer economie assets,
it is true, since unlimited and cheap mechanical power has taken
over so much of the world’s work. Expensive staudards of living
make child-rearing and proper education a considerable econo-
mie burden, particularly if the children attend college. Hence
is it that married couples are coming more and more to consider
children a luxury which automatically deprives them of many
other pleasures in life. Most modern women look forward to a
first child as one of life’s greatest experiences, a few welcome the
second, but beyond that it is only the unusual mother who does
more than tolerate further progeny as an unwelcome result of
marital relationship.

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #39 on: July 22, 2022, 06:54:37 PM »

There is nothing, however, which enriches adult life as much
as the rearing of a family. Overpopulated though the earth may
be, with more power already available than man knows how to
use, children still are among the most essential ingredients of a
well-rounded existence. Of course we want them to be blessed
with lusty health and vigour so that repeated illness will not
burden us with worry and economie drain. Ability to reproduce
well is therefore still an important part of life, and we should be
interested in the factors which favour or hinder it. Here is where
climate and the seasons enter the picture, for temperature of the
environment and rate of food burning allovyed in your tissues
dominate your reproductive powers. The following pages of this
chapter will show not only that your own fertility is highest
during certain seasons, but that you can take advantage of this

108
  important fact. If yöu select the proper time of year to conceive
a child, its chances of success in life and good health will be
tremen'dously increased.

Your fertility is highest when outdoor temperatures range
around 65° F.; conceptions then occur most readily and the
offspring are most' lusty. Winter temperatures averaging below
40° F. make you somewhat less fertile, even though you may be
more active physically; and as mean summer temperatures
climb above 70° F. you decline in both fertility and bodily
vigour. You probably had no idea you were so affected by
changes in temperature and would like to have proof that it is
so. You cannot very well test it out on yourself without en-
countering troublesome social difficulties, so look instead at the
fluctuations in fertility other people show as mean temperatures
go up and down through the seasons.

Live-birth statistics paint a vivid picture, if the births be dated
back nine months to the time of conception. Birth in itself is of
little importance, even though we do celebrate it every year as
long as we live; it is only a more or less inevitable outcome of
earlier events. Of much greater importance are conditions
prevailing at the time of conception, when the characteristics
and vitality of the parents’ germ cclls unite to mould the off-
spring’s future. Throughout pregnancy the mother only nourishes
and shelters the new life as it starts unfolding.

Starting at Montreal, where summer warmth, is ncver de-
pressive, fertility hits its peak in midsummer and sinks lowest
during the steady cold of winter. In Boston there is slight re-
duction during July and August when mean temperatures rise
slightly above the 70° F. line, but in Cincinnati this summer
drop becomes more definite. In the steady moist heat of Charles-
ton^ summer the fall in reproductivity becomes marked, but it
is followed by good recovery through the autumn coolness.
Even more striking reduction is found at Tampa, conceptions
being fully a third less during summer heat than during the
mild winter coolness.

Japan and other countries blanketed by the extremely de-
pressing heat of the Oriental monsoon summer show the most
extreme fertility changes. Japanese conceptions reach their peak
during the cherry-blossom season, when most neariy ideal
weather conditions prevail (April to June). With the onset of
monsoon heat in late June, reproductivity takes a nose-dive and
remains at a low level until October coolness initiates a slow
revival. Marriages in Japan also reach a high peak at the cherry-
blossom season, but éven if every wedding were followed by

109
  immediate conception, not over a tenth of the season’s rise in
conceptions could be thus accounted for.

The beauty of the blossoms themselves helps to make that
season the most emotional one in Japan, so temperature may not
be the only factor responsible for the high conception rate.
Until the present war with Japan broke out, much had come to
be made of cherry-blossom time in Washington also. Perhaps it
is significant that even before war began steam shovels were
uprooting many of the trees lining the drives in Potomac Park.
A few years ago, several thousand of the trees were planted in
one of Cincinnati’s parks which has since become quite popular
for outdoor evening dancing. I shall watch with interest for their
effect upon the city’s birth rate!

A few years ago one of my colleagues spent some time as
visiting professor at one of the large Japanese universities. He
became interested in houses of prostitution (a purely platonic
interest, of course!). Such places in Japan are closely supervised
by the authorities, and the compilation of complete and detailed
statistics shows that Germany has no monopoly on Teutonic
thoroughness. Every day the keeper of each house officially
informs the police exactly how many patrons were received.
These figures, obtained by the professor, show no significant
reduction in the use of brothels during the monsoon summer heat.
A Japanese friend tells me that sex relations are fully as active
in summer as at other times of the year. The summer decline
in conceptions must therefore represent a true reduction in
ability to reproduce.

It has been suggested that the reduced summer conception
rate of America’s middle and lower temperate latitudes may be
due to longer hours of outdoor work during that season, with a
higher rate resulting from winter idleness. The same reasoning
fails to hold farther north, however, where highest conception
rates coincide with summer activity and lowest rates with the
long winter nights. The condition is one of real alteration in
biologie fertility and can readily be brought about in laboratory
animals by changing only their ease of heat loss.

Our hundreds of white mice kept at 65° F. became so fertile
that practically every mating resulted in prompt conception.
The litters were large in number and of high vitality, with very
few stillbirths or infant deaths. Within two weeks after the
temperature of the mouse quarters was raised to 90° F., how-
ever, conceptions were difficult to achieve and litters were small
and puny. Many animals were bom dead and many more died
before weaning age. These differences occurred even though

110
  mating was carried on just as freely at 90° F. as at 65° F. The
reproductive organs, studied under the microscope, showed
reduced activity in the heat. Complete sterility can be induced
by raising the temperature three or four degrees higher
still.

The use of artificial fever machines has demonstrated that
human reproductive organs also lose their potency for several
weeks after as little as a single five- or six-hour fever treatment.
Production of spermatozoa is exceedingly low for the succeeding
month. There have also been instances of valuable race-horses
rendered permanently sterile by a single day of excessive heat.
A Kentucky blue-grass colt became overheated one sizzling day
while his car was standing in the railroad yards of a certain city
awaiting an outgoing train. He apparently recovered, but had
lost his racing edge. Sold for stud purposes, he was later found
to be completely sterile.

Breeders of small animals around Cincinnati frequently find
that their charges are almost completely sterile by the end of a
hot summer, while the same rabbits, mice, or guinea pigs kept
in cooled quarters continue to reproduce profusely. One beautiful
male rabbit, known to be highly fertile, was overheated in our'
laboratory hot room, but recovered to apparent good health.
Afterwards, repeated matings showed him to be permanently
sterile.

In Panama warmth the prolific guinea-pig becomes a poor
breeder, improving slightly during the short dry season, when
low humidity renders the warmth less depressive. Large numbers
of guinea-pigs are required for certain hospital and laboratory
procedures in Panama, but those imported from the north
endure the heat poorly and are of little value. Last year we
equipped a room for 70° F. temperature and found that pigs
placed in its coolness almost at once regained their famous
productivity.

During the severe heat of the 1934 summer in the Middle
West, human fertility was sharply reduced. Kansas City showed
a 30 per cent. reduction in conception rate during the month
when midday temperatures regularly rosé above ioo° F. (The
usual summer decline is only 15 per cent.) All through the
Middle West birth statistics showed the same sharp decfine for
conceptions during that period of blazing heat. .

Thus, prevailing temperatures profoundly affect reproductivity
which—depending on the weather—may vary all the way from
100 per cent. fertility to complete sterility. But the problem is
not merely one of your own capacities; temperatures not only
  affect the number of progeny, but also their vitality and ability
to survive. Human stillbirths and infant deaths are most numerous
at high temperatures, just as we found with our laboratory
animals. Since you may be more interested in the quality than
in the quantity of your children, you must remember that the
healthiest offspring are conceived during the season when your
own fertility is greatest.

My parents were practical people, with little faith in the
sayings of crystal-gazers or fortune-tellers. They sought no
horoscopic reading of their children’s destinies. To them one
month of birth was as good as another, even though they recog-
nized season as an important factor in animal breeding. Their
six children were bom in six different months—January, April,
May, August, September, and December.

In those days there was no evidence that the season of con-
ception exerted a marked influence over the child’s entire future.
If my parents had even suspected that winter or early spring
conception would confer distinct advantages on their offspring,
I am sure they would have made every effort to give us such
benefit. At that time, however, it had not been shown that the
‘volumes of IVho’s Who are largely filled with the names of people
conceived during the winter or spring months, that people
conceived then tend to live several years longer, and that the
likelihood of their entering college is almost twice as great as it
is among those conceived in midsummer heat.

This knowledge was not even available during the years when
my wife and I were raising our own children. However, my older
son and his newly-wedded wife have already been told of its
implications and importance for the future of the children they
intend to rear. My daughter and younger son also became
keenly interested in the subject as they read the preliminary
manuscript for this chapter. Most people \yish to give their
children all possible care and advantage in life, but few realize
that their efforts should begin even before their children have
been conceived. Optimal health and vigour in the parents are
just as important as season of conception for the child’s future,
but few couples consider this important fact. The facts here
presented, however, will be of great interest to those forward-
looking few who desire to give their children every possible
advantage. ,

Investigators in various countries have studied the influence
exerted by season of birth, but Ellsworth Huntington, research
geographer of Yale University, has gone into the subject most
deeply. His book, Season of Birth, lts Relation to Human Abüities,

112
  is not recommended as light reading, but it does contain a wealth
of interesting information.

Every mother may not expect her son to become President,
or sit among the nation’s mighty, but she hopes to see him rise
somewhat above the common level. She and her husband can,
if they will, greatly increase the son*s chances for success in life.
The child’s hereditary background btfcomes definitely fixed
when his parents wed, but the activation of his inherited abilities
is largely determined by the physical environment under which
he is conceived and lives.

Prospective parents of middle temperate latitudes should keep
in mind that their own bodily vigour goes through a yearly
cycle, rising to a peak in the spring, declining sharply through
summer heat, and then recovering again during the autumn
and winter. Among the thousands of prominent peoplc in
Who's Who, conceptions rosé steadily through winter cold to a
high spring peak and then declined sharply to the year’s low
point in midsummer.

Your child stands the best chance of being a success if he is
conceived during the season when conceptions are most numerous
in your locality. To be sure, criminals and certain types of the
insane are also more frequently conceived during the same
optimal season, but the dividing line between genius and in-
sanity has always been a narrow one. Proper selection of a mate
should reduce the chances of insanity developing in your children,
while the right kind of home environment will go far toward
suppressing criminal tendencies. If you prefer the greater safety
of mediocrity for your children, then you should choose the less
vital seasons for their conception.

Washington and Lincoln were both born in February. Their
greatness was probably due to the fact that they were conceived
in May at the year’s peak of vitality, for American prc-eminence
has always been closely associated with spring conceptions.
Twenty-seven of our thirty-one presidents were conceived during
the eight months from December to July, and only four during
the remaining third of the year. Not a single President was
conceived in August heat, or born during May or June. Elevcn
of the 31 were conceived the first quarter of the year, 10 in the
second, 4 in the third, and 6 in the fourth. Let those figures be
your guide in choosing the season of conception for your children
—not in the hope that each of them will become world-famous
if properly conceived, but simply so that they may be given this
potent advantage in later life.

As a start toward future greatness, you probably hope your

”3
  child will be able to obtain a college education. If you have
ample means, this may worry you little; but those means may
be dissipated in the world turmoil now going on before your
child is ready for college. It would be safer to have him conceived
during the season which starts him off with sufficiënt energy to
carry him to college on his own initiative. In the northem United
States a youngster conceived in March is half again more likely
to enter college than one conceived in August. Far greater *
parental vigour seems transmitted to offspring conceived from
December to March—vigour which drives the new individual
ahead to develop faster, live longer, and accomplish more.
Even puberty shows a significantly earlier onset in those conceived
during winter cold.

Season of conception affects the vitality of the offspring much
less as one goes south from middle temperate latitudes into
subtropical warmth. The cool season still is best, but its benefits
are less striking. In real tropical heat there is no optimal period—
vitality is low at all times of the year. Prospective parents living
in the tropics who desire to practice the highest type of eugenics
and give their children all possible benefits should spend several
months in northern cold before conception takes place. One
young couple in Panama, hearing these facts, congratulated
their infant on having such a fortunate background, for they
had spent several months in Canada just before conception
occurred.

Probably much of my own restlessness and driving curiosity
has resulted from a fortunate March conception—at the very
peak of vitality for the latitude of my birthplace. One of my
children is also fortunate, with the background of a February
conception, but the other two were conceived in October. If I
had only known earlier of this ingrediënt in the recipe for
advantage in life!

These remarks presuppose active timing of conceptions by
prospective parents. Such control is widely practised, however,
and promises to become even more so as new marriage laws
compel young people to undergo medical examination before a
licence can be issued. These laws bring people more in touch
with physicians, many of whom are quite willing to assist in-
telligent couples in properly spacing their conceptions.

As we emphasized earlier in this chapter, widespread use of
inanimate power on farms and in industry has tended to displace
man-power and has made a child more of an economie liability
than an asset. This change is probably responsible for the
sharply declining birth rate and the increasing number of

114
  childless marriages. There were ten children in my mother’s
family, seven in my father’s, and six of us at home during my
childhood. But the six of us have a total of only eight offspring.
Average family size has declined from six to less than three
children within one generation. Since quality must now take
the place of quantity in human reproduction, parents should
carefully consider the seasonal and climatic factors which alter
the quality of their progeny.

Keen intellects and high vitality will be at a premium in the
troubled decades of future world reconstruction. Children
conceived during the most favourable seasons have an exception-
ally good chance of possessing these qualities—all that is required
is proper parental foresight. See to it that your offspring never
look back as adults and blame you for lack of such thoughtfulness!

CHAPTER 15

MADE-TO-ORDER INDOOR CLIMATES

We can do nothino about curbing or modifying
the vast outdoor climatic and weather forces which have so
much influènce on our vital rhythms and health. But in Chapter
11 we have already shown that a socially minded community
can and should do a great deal to control the man-made climates
which result in the great clouds of dust and other potentially
dangerous combustion by-products over our industrial centres.
Another method of handling the problems of our surroundings
is to escape from them into that form of localized artificial
climate known as air conditioning.

The benefits of such artificial environments may be illustrated
by an interesting case in Manila. In a local factory 100 Filipino
women were busy wrapping and packaging sticks of bubble gum.
The manager had installed cooling equipment to maintain a
65° F. temperature so that the gum would be kept hard while
being handled. This he had done with many misgivings, since
Filipinos were extremely sensitive to chilling. The labour supply
there was plentiful, however, so he had gone ahead. Bundling
the women up in sweaters, shawls, woollen dresses, and stockings,
he had advised them to eat lunch in the workrooms and to leave
the wrapping room only at the end of the day. They thus had
avoided the shock of frequent change from indoor cold to outside

"5

Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #40 on: July 22, 2022, 06:55:13 PM »

  does not require a warming of the air in winter oir the cooling
of it in summer. I refer to reflective radiant conditioning, as
demonstrated a few years ago in my laboratory, in which all
warming or cooling of the room occupants is done entirely
through radiant channels.

Heat or infra red rays travel through the air at the speed of
light or radio waves (186,000 miles a second) without any
appreciable warming influence. Their warming effect occurs
only when they strike some solid body which can absorb the
beams. The absorbed rays cause the atoms of the object to move
violently, and the resulting kinetic energy of motion produces
heat. A person’s heat loss can readily be controlled through
radiant channels alone, no matter how hot or cold the surround-
ing air may be, if arrangements are made to govern the amount
of this radiant heat falling upon or leaving his skin surfaces.

Everyone knows the sharp contrast in comfort between standing
in deep shade and out in the hot summer sun, even though
actual air temperatures may be the same in both cases. And in
cold winter air, it matters greatly whether you are on the sunny
side of a building or in its shadow. Those enjoying winter sports
on the mountain slopes of Switzerland or Idaho are kept warm
by the sun’s radiating heat waves reaching them through zero
air. European air-conditioning engineers made some use of this
principle by imbedding hot water pipes in the ceilings or floors
so that the warmed surfaces might radiate heat to the occupants.
Remember that this is radiant heat, the kind which does not
raise the temperature of the air between its source and the
absorbing object. They thus succeeded in achieving comfort at
air temperatures ten degrees cooler than those required by
American air-conditioning methods.

Scientists at one large industrial concern in America tried for
several years to perfect a method for winter heating and summer
cooling through control of wall temperatures. Using metal wall
surfaces, they could make lightly clad persons quite comfortable
in zero air by having the walls radiate heat. Many persons
understand this sort of situation in which heat rays pass through
air, strike the body, and warm it as a result, but they find it
difïicult to grasp how heat may be removed from the body by
radiation. The main point is that the body, like any other object,
can lose heat by emitting infra red rays, and, if the walls of a
room are cooled instead of heated, these rays are removed from
the room confines as fast as they are given off from the skin.

The researchers proved this by placing persons in the room
at no° F. Then they lowered the wall temperature. Despite

118
  the sizzüng heat, the subjects relaxed comfortably because their
bodies were able to eliminate the excess heat by radiation. These
tests were interesting and valuable. Judging by their skin sensa-
tions, occupants of the experimental room often could not
guess whether they were in cold air or warm. For some reason,
the hot air was not even disagreeable to breathe when body
skin surfaces were losing heat readily to the cold walls. In quite
thorough fashion, the scientists demonstrated that bodily
comfort could be obtained by control of wall temperatures
regardless of prevailing air conditions.

The studies were finally abandoned for two reasons. There
was no way of controlling wall temperatures within reasonable
economie limits, either for construction costs or for maintenance;
and walls chilled for hot summer weather were always wet with
water which condensed upon their cooled surfaces. Obviously,
no heating system will sell if its hot-weather operation causes
wall surfaces to drip with moisture.

In my laboratories the radiant idea was carried a step further.
Instead of using hot or cold wall surfaces, I covered all the
inside walls of an experimental chamber with aluminum foil.
It is a highly efficiënt, mirror-like reflector of all heat rays, so
much so that its surface temperature rises very little even when
intense heat is directed at it from a close-up source. On two side
walls of the foil-lined room, I installed steel plates which could
be chilled by fluid circulated from an outside compressor unit.
The air in this room was kept hot and moist at all times (930 F.
and 70 per cent. saturated) by means of an automatic con-
ditioning unit. In another foil-lined room, arrangements were
made to chili the air down to freezing temperatures, with
ordinary electric radiant heaters as a source of heat rays.

I found that a person could be quite comfortable in the tropical
moist heat of the hot room when he lost body heat solely by
radiation to the cold plates—either directly or by reflection
from the foil wall surfaces. With all the cold plates in operation,
loss of body heat was so rapid that actual chilling resulted if a
person sat quietly reading for an hour. Rats and mice grew just
as rapidly, and with as high vitality, as in the 65° F. air of my
ordinary cold room. An assistant, in caring for the animals,
found that she needed a sweater to keep from being chilled—and
this in air at 93° F.!

Metal cages, wooden objects, and clothing in this hot room
were cooled by radiation of their heat to the cold plates, while
all foil surfaces remained at the 930 air temperature. A person’s
clothing thus became several degrees cooler than the air im-

119
  mediately in contact with it. This is a resnlt difficult to ïmagine,
but it actually occurred. As one entered from severe outside
summer heat, no immediate difference was noticed; but within
a few minutes a feeling of cool comfort developed as clothing
temperatures dropped and more rapid loss of body heat became
possible. No shock whatever was experienced on passing from
the room’s comfort into outside heat, for air conditions were
approximately the same inside and out. Here was adequate
summer comfort without air cooling and the shock and hazards
it brings to those entering or leaving the conditioned confines.

In the other foil-lined room, radiant heat furnished delightful
shirt-sleeve comfort while air temperatures remained near
freezing. A pleasing phase of this set-up was that one had cold
air to breathe while the remainder of the body was properly
warm. By sufficiently increasing the input of radiant heat (still
keeping air temperatures low) a person would find himself
perspiring freely while surrounded by cool air. Under such
excessive radiant heat load, animals showed the same slow
growth and lowered vitality as in ordinary tropical moist
heat.

Reflective radiant conditioning, effectively demonstrated in my
experimental chambers, offers alluring advantages for both
winter and summer use. In the first place it removes the necessity
of setting up sharp differences between air conditions indoors
and out; this was the particular point I had hoped to achieve
because of its health implications. Another very definite advan-
tage is the marked reduction in power load needed either for
winter heating or for summer cooling. Different engineers and
architects have estimated that the fuel or power load would be
reduced 60-80 per cent., since little is wasted in warming or
cooling the air mass or wall materiais. Such reduction would
bring conditions easily within the gas or electric field, thus doing
away entirely with the home use of coal and all the resulting
smoke nuisances.

Another benefit of reflective radiant conditioning would be
its saving in insulation costs. Since the reflective foil surfaces
remain cold in winter air and hot in summer—at practically the
same temperatures as those of the outside air—heat transfer
through the wall would be small. In addition, the foil surface
radiates on into the room very little of the heat which comes to
it through the wall. Thus, the surface is highly reflective for rays
striking its surface, but has almost no power to emit heat which
may actually be in the foil itself. In this conditioning system the
walls need be constructed to turn wind and rain, but with little

120
  consideration for heat-transfer values. This is sharply different
from the expensive insulation needed for efficiënt air conditioning.

One installation of reflective radiant conditioning has been
made under actual field conditions. This was in an operating
room of a large hospital where surgeons and nurses enjoyed
delightful comfort even while midsummer air temperatures in
the room remained above 90° F. Certain further developments
are needed, however, before this type of indoor conditioning
can come into wide üse. Means of decorating the foil surfaces
must be found, for few people will be willing to have shiny walls
in their homes; but such decoration must not interfere with the
foil’s mirror-like reflectivity. Scientists must develop paints
which are heat-transparent in thin coatings. Certain lacquers
can be used safely on the foil surface, but pigments must be found
to put colour into a room. Finally, the system calls for a'heat-
transparent plastic to protect the heating and cooling plates
from room air, since in radiant conditioning it is desired to leave
air tempertaures as little changed as possible. One material
already in use has been found to be about 50 per cent. trans-
parent to heat rays (that is, it allows about half the heat rays
striking it to pass through), and careful search in plastic labora-
tories will probably yield another of the desired efficiency. With
such sealing-in of the plates, the only heat entering or leaving
the room will be that in a radiant form.

A housing research unit in the engineering college of another
university is at present equipping a small cottage for radiant
conditioning along the lines followed in my experimental
chambers, with a conventional air-conditioning system in an
adjoining companion cottage. There comparative operating
costs and working efficiency will be studied under actual
field conditions, and the method made ready for practical
application.

It has been quite definitely shown that skin sensations of heat
or cold depend upon the rate of heat gain or loss and not on the
manner in which the heat arrivés or départs. Air, clothing,
or other materials feel hot or cold according to the rate at which
they conduct heat to or from the skin by direct contact. But
radiant heat from a distant source—such as the sun—also feels
warm because it too adds to the skin’s heat. These principles
explain why one can feel cool at 930 F. In my foil-lined hot
room, with the air kept at 930 F., a distinct sensation of cold can
be obtained by holding the palm of the hand out in front of the
cold plate. Even though the hand be entirely surrounded by
hot, moist air, the radiant heat loss from the skin to the cool

121
  plate causes a definitely chilly feeling on the palm. It seems to
matter little to the body through what avenue its heat is lost,
just so the total rate of loss be adequate.

Of course, air conditioning is not concerned solely with
heating or cooling of the air, but heat control does constitute its
major concern. Humidity changes and air motion are only
secondary factors to facilitate the warming or cooling effect
upon the body. Cleansing or filtration of the air, however, is
another separate and important part of air conditioning, one
which is greatly needed in the dirty atmosphere of our industrial
cities. Other air-conditioning gadgets of limited application are
the ozonizers and sterilizing lights now being installed in many
places. Sterilizing curtains of ultra-violet light have been found
especially useful in hospitals to prevent the carrying of disease
germs from one patiënt to another by air currents.

Still another proper function of air conditioning is the supply-
ing of fresh air to the room. No one yet knows just what the
difference is between fresh and stale air ëxcept that one is
pleasant to breathe and the other is disagreeable. Gertainly
staleness is not an oxygen lack, nor need it be concerned with an
accumulation of body odours.

Staleness of air has been thought by some to be related to the
degree of oxygen ionization. Ordinary outdoor oxygen exists
in several different forms—as 02, 03, and 04. Its reactivity
increases sharply the greater the number of atoms there are
associated together. Ozone is presumed to be 04 and is the most
active form of oxygen known. “Stale” air at once becomes
“fresh” when passed through a proper ionizing chamber to
reactivate its oxygen. Temperature plays an important part in
this ionization, for the active forms go back into the inactive
more readily when the temperature is high. One of the quickest
ways to make room air lifeless and undesirable for breathing is
to pass it over hot metal surfaces, as is done in many warm-air
heating plants. Room air thus tends to retain its freshness much
better if it is kept cool. Radiant conditioning offers a distinct
advantage here, for indoor winter air can be kept cold and fresh
much more readily when the room occupants are being warmed
by radiant heat. In fact, Windows could be kept open in mid-
winter provided no noticeable draughts were present.

Filtration or proper cleansing of outside air as it is taken into
a room prevents dirt accumulation both in human air passages
and on room furnishings. Such cleansing is badly needed in
industrial or densely built-up urban regions. Many people
carefully filter all the air taken in during the day but throw their

122
  bedroom Windows wide open at night, when the outdoor air
is foulest. The housewife can see her window curtains disin-
tegrate where the night air strikes them, yet she seldom considers
that the foul air may exert a similar corrosive action on the tissues
of her respiratory tract. During winter nights, when the “smog”
hangs thick over a city, one’s nasal linings become heavily
coated with the black soot and ash mixture coming from the
neighbourhood chimneys—unless, perchance, the incoming air
is filtered at night as well as through the day. Our handkerchiefs
usually teil the story with their first morning use.

In homes equipped with warm-air heating systems, which
include a fan to circulate the air through the house, the Windows
should be kept shut both night and day during the winter
season; then all incoming air is properly cleansed. Bedroom
temperatures should be lowered during sleeping hours, it is
true, for people usually sleep best when they have cool air to
breathe. But it seems inadvisable to allow all the city’s flue
products free access to your bed-chamber in order to have a
night supply of cool air. Americans have greatly overdone the
fresh-air idea, anyway, particularly with respect to the wide-
open bedroom Windows. Ten degrees of night-time cooling
should be ample, whereas many of us during the winter sleep
in air thirty to fifty degrees colder than we breathe through
the day.

Many people consider summer cooling prohibitive in cost,
but it is no more expensive than winter heating. The difference
lies in the fact that winter heating is essential while summer
cooling is more or less a luxury. Hot-weather comfort is particu-
larly costly in tropical climates, where the cooling load is heavy
and electric rates aie high. Radiant conditioning will be especially
appropriate there, both on the basis of its lower power require-
ment and because it avoids contrasts between indoor and outside
air.

While proper conditioning of man’s indoor habitat may add
greatly to his comfort and health, it is questionable whether it
can go far toward overcoming the more profound effects of given
climates upon whole masses of people. The lucky few will always
enjoy efficiënt conditioning, but only the poorest makeshift
arrangements must suffice for the unfortunate many. Even with
all the wealth and mechanical productivity of America, indoor
conditioning is still rudimentary in the great majority of house-
holds.

In case you plan to join the lucky few, be sure your job is well
engineered for your particular needs. Accustom yourself to

123
  temperatures around 7o°-72°F.; if any members of the house-
hold are chilly at -these temperatures,* have them wear warmer
clothing. Overheating is just as harmful for some as chilling is
for others. Bare arms or legs are quite often responsible for
complaints. Women produce less heat than men and usually
chili more easily; so they should be the ones to wear the heavier
clothing indoors. Where both sexes live or work together indoors,
the men should be in shirt sleeves or wearing only a light jacket,
and the women should put on work coats as warm as they need
for comfort. Many offices and homes are kept far too warm
simply because some occupant would rather complain than put
on moré clothing. Granny should have her warm corner and
shawl while the youngsters do their homework off in a cool
study.

Glassrooms at school should be made comfortable for the
children rather than the teacher. Being older and less active,
the teacher usually desires higher room temperatures; however,
her needs should be met by additional clothing rather than by
keeping the room too warm for the children. In school buildings
with central heating and thermostatic control it is probably
wisest to keep temperature regulation out of the teacher’s
hands.

People with chronic rheumatic or sinus infection are always
extra-sensitive to chilling. They chili at temperatures quite
comfortable for normal persons, but this chilling is just as bad
for them as real cold would be. The best solution to their problem
is warmer clothing. Except in hospitals and sick-rooms, tem-
peratures should be adapted to the comfort of the normal well
people rather than to the complaining few.

By making indoor atmospheres more uniform and stable,
air-conditioning engineers have added greatly to our comfort.
Progress toward reflective radiant conditioning in the years
ahead may allow us to hold these gains and add to them other
notable advances. I predict that some day we shall see interior
conditioning done largely by radiant means, with a health
betterment and cost saving which will make us wonder why we
struggled so long trying to do the job through heating or cooling
of room air.

But, as we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, air
conditioning is merely a drop in the bucket when the small
and isolated spots of man-made comfort are compared with the
vast realms of space where climatic forces work supremely in-
different to man. The first five chapters have shown how these
forces affect people in the tropics; the following chapters em-

Ï24
  phasized the driving force and health toll of energizing cooler
climates. In the final part of this book we shall look at the larger
effects of climate and weather on mankind in general. People
who still think of man as a builder of his own destiny will not
like what we see.

125
  PART III

CHAPTER l6

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #41 on: July 22, 2022, 06:56:21 PM »

LIFE, SUNSPOTS, AND THE ATMOSPHERE

Ihe earth is surrounded by an atmospheric cloak
which may seem filmy and intangible, but actually is so large
that it weighs an estimated 5,000,000,000,000,000 (five quad-
rillion) tons. Even in an ordinary room there are roughly 200
pounds of air. It is within this vast expanse of air enveloping the
earth that disturbances take place which cause short-cycle
weather changes and the slower undulations of unseasonable
warmth and cold occurring every few years. It is this airy
sheath which provides the oxygen necessary for life, but within
its environs our very existence hangs by the most slender threads
of cosmic circumstance.

In fact, the earth is lucky to have any atmosphere at all.
Mercury, the smallest of the planets, has none because her
gravitational attraction is too small to hold a vast envelope of
atmospheric particles and prevent them from wandering off
into outer space. Mars, which is about one-quarter the earth’s
size, probably has -just enough water vapour and oxygen to
support simple forms of vegetation, but not mammals like those
found on earth. Although Venus is slightly larger than Mars, its
cloudy atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, the gas which
you exhale and which bubbles up in soda-pop and other car-
bonated beverages. Jupiter, Saturn, and the other outer planets
cannot support the life we know because their temperatures are
hundreds of degrees below zero, and their atmospheres are
dense with hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and other unusable
gases.

The earth’s heavy, solid core, combined with adequate size,
gives our planet sufficiënt force of gravity to hold its atmosphere
in place. Even so, only the lower layers of air are dense enough
to support life. A mere 6 or 7 miles away from the earth’s surface
the atmosphere becomes too thin to supply our oxygen needs.
Most people are affected even by riding in an aeroplane at the
usual flight altitude of 2 miles. At 3^ miles the air is about half

126
  as dense as at sea level. From there on out for the next 5 miles
it is called “stratosphere” and is inhabitable by man only if he
takes along an additional supply of oxygen to breathe.

We are limited in a downward direction also, for life becomes
difficult in the dense air i-i£ miles below the surface in deep
mines. Serious troubles often arise on ascending from such mines
to surface air conditions. Workers coming up from the deep
South African gold mines take an hour or so for the trip, being
held for several minutes at different levels to allow gradual
reduction in the amount of air dissolved in the blood. Too
sudden an ascent causes bubbles of gas to be liberated in the
blood; these bring on the “bends” by obstructing blood flow
in the smaller vessels and may produce serious damage.

Under-water workers encounter similar limitations and
difficulties since the pressure of their air supply must be doubled
for each 32 feet of depth beneath the water’s surface. For really
deep descents into the ocean, such as William Beebe makes for
his observations of deep-sea life, sealed chambers capable of
withstanding great pressures are used, with surface atmospheric
conditions maintained for the occupants.

Not only is human life confined to a narrow layer of the earth’s
unique atmosphere, but slight alterations in the composition
of the air would mean death to all living organisms. We see the
fish in our rivers die as we pollute the watery surroundings in
which they live, but we seldom stop to consider some of the ways
in which our own atmospheric sea might change disastrously.
The air we breathe is 78*03 per cent. nitrogen and 20*99 Per
cent. oxygen; sudden disappearance of the latter element would
of course result in the death of every land animal in a matter of
minutes. But the atmosphere also contains other Chemicals in
such tiny quantities that it is difficult to realize their extremely
vital importance. There is only about o*03 per cent. of carbon
dioxide in the air, yet elimination of even this small proportion
would start a vicious cycle indeed. Plants, lacking this com-
pound, which is necessary for their existence, would wither
away and die. Herbivorous animals would soon starve to death,
as would man and other meat-eaters. According to animal
experiments by Professor J. Willard Hershey and Charles
Wagoner of McPherson College in Kansas, the rare gas, xenon,
is necessary to life—yet there are only six parts of this element
to 100,000 parts of air!

Even with this fortunate atmosphere, however, life could not
exist without certain other natural coincidences. For example,
during heat waves we look forward to some relief after sundown

»   127
  when the day’s heat radiates óff into outer space; but what if
the earth rotated more slowly—or not at all—on its axis? Mercury
and the moon have no such rotation, and their long daytime of
accumulating sun’s heat results in temperatures far too high for
any form of life. During their prolonged nights all this heat is
lost into space, and congealing frigidity prevails. So you can see
the intricate set of fortunate cosmic circumstances lying behind
the existence you so thoughtlessly enjoy day after day.

The terrestrial atmosphere which acts as a vast stage for
weather and seasonal changes is also a protection against radia-
tions from outer space. High-energy cosmic rays and ultra-
violet rays beat down toward the earth but lose much of their
force as they batter against molecules in the great sheathing
layers of air. If these layers were less dense, cosmic rays might
be deadly for man and other forms of life, while ultra-violet
beam§ would burn all things to a crisp. But the atmosphere
allows just enough of these radiations to come through and
benefit man. The ultra-violet beams which pass down to the
earth’s surface promote tissue health and kill germs, while
penetrating cosmic rays produce another desired effect.

As these radiations cleave through the upper air, they are
thought to impart their energy to its molecules and give it the
ionic character which we find so stimulating for breathing
purposes. Only in the cooler latitudes of the earth, however,
does man get a chance to breathe air from these activated outer
'layers. Tropical air is usually spiraling upwards, with no com-
pensating down currents from the upper atmosphere. Incoming
currents there travel along the earth’s surface from temperate
regions as the trade winds. In cooler latitudes, however, the
activated upper air is frequently brought down to us as enormous
masses of cold, heavy air—the “highs”—which sweep across the
continent providing clear cool weather and an atmosphere which
is often like a heady wine to breathe.

The cosmic rays may thus play an important part in our lives
by this effect upon the air we breathe. Perhaps the better supply
of this ionized atmosphere in temperate regions is a factor in the
greater vigour people of such lands enjoy. The rays themselves
also penetrate to the earth’s surface more in middle temperate
latitudes than farther, toward Equator or poles. Our knowledge
of their effects is still very sketchy, however; perhaps some day
their importance will be better understood, just as we are to-day
coming to appreciate the role air temperatures play. Perhaps,
too, a sudden increase in their intensity may some day turn
them into real death-rays for all life on earth.
  Another type of radiation striking the earth’s atmosphere is
responsible for the day-to-day and year-to-year changes which
make up world weather and affect human beings in the many
ways described in the previous chapters. Strangely enough,
our weather here on earth is strongly influenced by “weather”
on the greatest body in our planetary system—the sun—for the
sunspots you have been hearing so much about definitely influence
our surroundings and are very like our major storms on earth.
They are whirling in character, originate mainly in the higher
latitudes of the sun’s surface and travel eastward and down
toward the Equator in much the same way our temperate-zone
storms migrate across North America. They may be 100,000
miles in diameter instead of 2,000, but the sun’s diameter is
about 100 times that of the earth. From their centre gases spiral
far outward from the sun’s surface, just as the earth’s surface air
is propelled many miles upward in the centre of our large
cyclonic storms. Heat and electro-magnetic radiations stream
outward from the dark craters. These are the rays which so
seriously disrupt our long-distance telephone, telegraph, and
radio communication. Such disruption is now rather expected
with each new outburst. Those “highs” and “lows” discussed
in the chapter about barometric pressures then come along at
closer intervals, bringing more violent changes and colder
weather to the temperate regions of the earth.

Sunspots large enough to be seen with the naked eye are
present only at or near the crest of the eleven-year cycle, as in
the years 1937 and 1938. They are much less frequently seen
now (1942), and will almost disappear through the next year or
two. They were described in early Chinese writings as well as
by ancient Mediterranean observers. For the last two centuries
fairly accurate records have been kept of their size and number
from day to day. These records show recurring variations from
intense sunspot activity down to almost complete quiescence,
with the time from one crest to the next varying from eight to
sixteen years. An average length of slightly over eleven years
has caused them to be called eleven-year sunspot cycles, although
none of them has actually been of this length.

If you yourself have never seen these spots, you should watch
the rising and setting sun at times when fresh outbursts are
being mentioned in the news dispatches. One clear moming
in mid-October of 1938, while watching a beautiful sunrise, I
was greatly surprised to observe a pair of large dark spots on the
otherwise bright-red disc of the sun’s face. Only after watching
for several minutes to be sure they kept their position on the

Ecmm   129
  rising sun was I certain they were not solid objects in our own
atmosphere. On each succceding morning the spots were seen
more to the right on the sun’s face as it rotated on its axis, and
about a week later they had passed around out of sight. The
succeeding issué of Science News Letter carried a photograph of
the pair as its cover design, with a news note about their appear-
ance on an inside page.

Although earth storminess seems dependent to a considerable
degree upon sunspot activity, it has been found that the sun-
spots themselves are in turn dominated by the planets of the
solar system as they revolve around the sun. Curiously enough,
this influence of the planets was first observed for the earth
itself. Mrs. Maunder, the wife of a British astronomer at the
Greenwich Observatory, in 1889 observed that the spots in-
creased and were more numerous on the face of the sun away
from the earth, while on that portion toward us they diminished
in size and number.

Every layman at once wonders how Mrs. Maunder could
know what was happening around on the invisible face of the
sun, but the answer is simple. She did not use a rocket ship for a
trip out into space in order to view the other face of the sun!
The sun rotates on its axis just as the earth does, except that it
takes 28 of our.days for one complete rotation. Mrs. Maunder
simply kept daily count of the spots in each segment of the sun,
and noted that sunspot activity decreased steadily during the
14 days any area was visible trom the earth. Furthermore, she
found more spots on the surface just coming into view on the
left than on that disappearing from view to the right.

Other astronomers have verified Mrs. Maunder’s findings
and have shown that the same effect is exerted by other planets.
Sunspot numbers decline roughly 15 per cent. during the 14
days a given area of the sun is visible from the earth and ap-
proximately 22 per cent. while it is exposed to Venus. Venus is
somewhat smaller than the earth, but it is nearer the sun and
exerts a gravitational force about half again as great as that of
the earth. These tidal effects of the planets upon the sun are far
from simple, however, and astronomers have not yet been able
to unravel them sufficiently to make accurate forecasts of future
activity.

It was Dr. Abbot, of the Smithsonian Institution in Washing-
ton, who pointed out the direct connection of sunspot activity
to earth temperatures. Over a considerable number of years, he
found that Washington temperatures tended strongly to be lower
for the two weeks after each new outburst than for the fortnight

130   '   *
  preceding. I myself studied temperature records back through
the last two centuries in Europe and America, and found that
unseasonable cold prevailed in two-thirds of the months during
years of rising or high activity; during years when the sunspots
were declining or low, two-thirds of the months were unseason-
ably warm.

The amount of heat given off by the sun is greater when the
sunspot activity is high, and yet earth temperatures fall in
middle latitudes. This is explained as being due to the more
active convection currents set up in our surface atmosphere at
such times by the more intense sun’s heat, particularly in equa-
torial regions where the heat rays strike most directly. The con-
vection currents are supposed to pass outward toward the poles
at high altitudes and return to the earth’s surface as the polar
cold waves which bring increased storminess and lower tem-
peratures to temperate-zone lands. Whether or not this ex-
planation is correct, it is true that greater sunspot activity does
tend to bring cold and storms to middle temperate regions.
During periods of low sunspot activity the weather is more
likely to be calm and unseasonably warm.

When these periods of exceptional “summer” warmth *and
calm come over the earth, northerners tend to take life at an
easier pace. The result, when brought out by careful statistics,
is a vivid example of how man is under the influence of outside
forces, for with the decreased energy men pursue their business
lives less actively, are less disposed to put forth the effort needed
to support non-essential expenditures, and in every way take life
at an easier pace. Wall Street and other financial centres feel
the passive impact of this rhythm during warm periods of low
sunspot activity and, consequently, such periods are often
accompanied by severe depressions. Heat was present with the
panic of 1857, during the gloomy “seventies,” and with the
breaks of 1893, i9°7j i920j and I929- Our security panic of
1929 occurred a month before the temperatures here began their
prolonged elevation, but severe unseasonable warmth had
already struck Europe four months previously.

Practically every prosperity or boom period, on the other
hand, has been a time of normal or low temperatures. Such was
the stimulating weather preceding the nat ion’s past crashes.
For the last three years of the first World War unseasonable cold
largely prevailed in America, giving a firm basis for the remark-
able expaiision in our wartime industrial output. Temperature
conditions were not quite so propitious for production early in
the present war, for we had been held down by protracted

131
  warmth most of the time since late 1929. But there were sub-
normal temperatures generally in 1940 for the first time in over a
decade, and in that year our industrial machine seemed to
shake off its ten-year collection of cobwebs and oil up for in-
tensive action. Moderate warmth in 1941 slowed it down some-
what, but in the first half of 1942 optimal temperatures have
prevailed and allowed our war production to reaph really
amazing levels.

Although the medical profession feels the result of these
weather changes especially strongly, the average physician
seldom realizes how closely temperatures, business activity, and
health are interrelated. When times are hard, he blames his
reduced income on the assumption that fewer potential patients
make calls because they, too, are earning less money and cannot
afford medical service. But the facts invalidate this easy assump-
tion, for general death rates are lowest during those same
depression years when there are fewer calls for a doctor’s help.
The medical profession need not worry, however, for it does not
follow that visits to the family physician actually increase the
risk of death! The high temperatures which accompany low
sunspot activity and influence financial depressions also bring
reduced storminess, greater relaxation—and the human machine
works under lower stress.

During these warm periods respiratory attacks and other
acute infections strike less frequently. Heart failure cases entering
the Gincinnati General Hospital—considering only those
unassociated with bacterial disease—were only a quarter as
numerous through the very warm years from 1929 to 1933 as
they were before or afterwards. Normally such cases are four
times more common in winter than in summer, but during those
balmy winters low summer rates prevailed. Toxic goitre cases
also became more scarce. Quite regularly back through past
depressions in America illnesses and deaths have been reduced
as business activity lessened. Health authorities have always
predicted dire consequences from the smaller expenditures for
health purposes during such hard times, but no such ill effects
ever occur. The health improvement always lasts until the
people again become involypd in another rising tide of business
activity. Hard times severely affect the country’s doctors, for
collections are poor and fewer calls are made upon them.
During prosperity their services are in greater demand to stem
the rising sickness and death rates.

Tuberculosis is one of the diseases showing great improvement
in times of depression, and it is the one which health workers

132
  always expect to become worse because of incrcasing poverty
and malnutrition. It benefits greatly, however, from the reduced
storminess and lessened acute respiratory illnesses of the warm
years. The long decline in its death rate is usually accelerated
most during prolonged economie recessions and sometimes
receives a temporary setback with the return of the colder and
more stormy years of better times. Solution of the mysteries of
sunspot and other outside Controls over earth’s weather would
probably go far toward removing the disastrous effects of these
recurring economie cycles which beset us.

I do not mean to infer that weather is the only factor at work.
Wars, mass migrations, changes in population pressure, over-
expansion of production—these are also extremely important
elements in setting the stage and determining the intensity of
the reaction once it starts. It is weather, however, which affects
the energy background in man himself, deciding whether he
shall be energetic and expansive in his planning or whether
fear and inaction shall prevail.

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #42 on: July 22, 2022, 06:57:47 PM »

All the evidence of this chapter emphasizes the intricate
meshing of environmental factors which makes human life
what it is. It could not exist unless the earth had been able to
hold an atmosphere, unless the earth were tilted on its axis at
just. the right angle. Variations in atmospheric composition,
some of them extremely small, would kill man and all his fellow
creatures, while the air itself is just dense enough to protect
people from the potentially lethal radiations of outer space.
The earth’s great blanket is under continuous bombardment by
these radiations, as well as by the radiations resulting from
sunspots, and their effect plays an important role in the weather
which in turn affects man’s activity and health. Since the sun-
spots themselves seem largely controlled by the positions of the
planets, life—and more particularly human life—is seen to be
part of a vast organic unit, a uilit which includes at least the entire
solar system. Whether celestial bodies outside our own tiny
system also influence our lives has not yet been studied, but
this possibility cannot be excluded.

Without subscribing to the unfounded tenets of astrology,
which hold that the detailed events of every person’s life are
pre-ordained by the positions of planets at his birth, we now
have a scientifically discovered and direct chain of influences
meshing our daily lives into the larger forces of our own solar
universe. The chain cannot be over-emphasized; the planets
in their shifting positions around the sun cause the sunspots to
wax and wane. As a result there arise variations in solar radia-

133
  tions to the earth and changes in temperature and storminess.
These weather changes, both short-cycle and over longer periods,
markedly influence our body functioning.

CHAPTER 17

ICE AGES AND GLIMATES OF THE FUTURE

Short-cycle weather changes and the slower
alternations of unseasonable warmth and cold every few years
are rather well explained on the basis of solar-system forces.
Our knowledge is inadequate, however, to explain other changes
extending through the centuries or covering thóusancfs of years.
Most definite of all climatic fluctuations were the slow undula-
tions from one ice age to another. In the most recent of these
the North Polar ice cap spread down over North America as
far as the present courses of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers.
These rivers were raging torrents as they carried away the
melting ice and snow from the ice cap’s fringe. The Ohio River
cut several different channels for itself here at Gincinnati as the
glacier edge alternately advanced and receded through that
era.

Several times these ice ages have returned to the earth,
causing polar cold to prevail far down into what are now tem-
perate regions and compressing the tropics into a much narrower
belt. In the intervening warm periods tropical warmth has
expanded outward toward the poles and the ice caps may have
completely disappeared. It is estimated that only about 30,000
years have elapsed since the last ice age was at its crest. Where
Cincinnati now sits, with its mild winters and hot summers, was
then a grinding, crackling glacier front with a climate similar
to that of Southern Greenland to-day.

Although men were present here on earth long before the last
ice age, their numbers were small and there is little evidence
from which to construct a story of their activities. Since humanity
has actually stepped out of the shadows only within the last

10,000   years, we can devote chief attention to climatic fluctua-
tions within that period. They have been present, but in a much
less drastic form than the changes from ice age to inter-glacial

134
  warmth. Evidence left by receding ice caps and glaciers, by silt
deposits along rivers‘fed from melting ice, by salt layers along
inland lakes, by the growth rings of our giant redwoods in the
South-west—all these and information gleaned from recorded
history point to several prolonged cold periods altemating with
centuries of warmth.

Through the last 10,000 years these slow undulations have
occurred with fair regularity, the glaciers and ice caps receding
rapidly for a thousand years or so and then halting or even
advancing somewhat for the next thousand. It was this stair-step
recession which left the long moraines of piled-up gravel and
boulders at intervals over the course of the receding ice cap here
in America. To-day the last ice age is represented only by
isolated mountain glaciers and by the small ice sheets
covering most of Greenland and Antarctica. Another cycle
or two of recurring warmth may well cause their complete
disappearance.

The last millennium of warmth feil within the time of recorded
history, covering the Dark Age period from the fall of Rome to
the Renaissance (from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries a.d.).
During this warmth cereal grains were regularly grown and
ripened in Iceland and wine-making was carried on in parts of
Great Britain where it has not been possible to ripen grapes
through the succeeding centuries. The shores of Iceland were
largely free of ice packs for the finst several hundred years after
its settlement, but since the fourteenth century its northern
shore has again been icebound and its climate has become too
rigorous for erop raising.

The climate of Greenland in the ninth and tenth centuries,
when the Norse settlements flourished there, apparently differed
from the climate of more recent times. Early in the eleventh
century, however, the colonies rapidly declined, with increasing
evidence of rickets in the skeletons of those buried during the
settlements’ decline. The dead were buried deep in the unfrozen
earth during the ninth and tenth centuries, but after that the
graves gradually became shallower as the summer thaws pene-
trated less deeply.

Many of those Norse bodies in Greenland were found almost
perfectly preserved when rising world temperatures had again
thawed out the earth to make their excavation possible a few
years ago. Recent excavations in earth which had been solidly
frozen for almost a thousand years have given us a glimpse of
those settlements as they declined in the oncoming cold. In that
ancient warmth the people carried on extensive cattle-raising—

135
  an activity quite impossible in the Greenland of more recent
times.

The scanty records indicate terrible winters of snow and ice
in northem Europe preceding the Dark Age warmth, while the
civilizations of early Greece and Rome were flourishing in regions
which are now too enervating for sustained effort. Egyptian
writings of those centuries teil about winds and storms which can
only 'mean that the cyclonic storms to-day travelling eastward
over Central Europe then passed down the Mediterranean Basin
and on across Asia Minor. Palestine' and the other eastern
Mediterranean countries had a more copious rainfall, better
distributed through the year, than has been the case in modern
times.

The heat of the Dark Ages was at its worst about a.d. 850.
By a.d* 1000 there were evidences in Greenland of returning
cold, and by a.d. 1400 the ice packs had again closed in on
northem Iceland. Through the centuries since the time of the
Renaissance and the revival of learning, cold has largely pre-
vailed. Actual thermometer records go back only two hundred
years, but within that time they show lowest temperatures to
have occurred around 1850, about a thousand years after the
peak of Dark Age heat.

What about the trends of modern times? The records definitely
show that temperatures over the earth have been rising almost
universally for the last eighty years or so, slowly at first but
much more rapidly in recent years and especially during the
last twenty years. Climates have indeed altered since Grand-
father’s day. The winters are milder and the summers hotter.
My father in his later years often mentioned the rigours of his
boyhood winters, contrasting them with the milder tempera-
tures of the twenties and early thirties before his death in 1933.
Even in my own childhood and youth the silky crunch of sub-
zero snow was encountered many times each winter, whereas
now the blankets of snow are wet and sloshy.

Up until very recent years everyone ridiculed the idea of
climatic change. It was claimed that people in later life would
remember more vividly the extremely cold spells, but forget
the milder winters which had failed to leave so strong an im-
print. False impressions of this kind are known to be fostered by
such tricks of memory, so the matter was always treated as
a joke. Ellsworth Huntington and certain other investigators
had great difficulty getting even scientific people to believe their
evidence of past fluctuations. Meteorologists, however, finally
began examining world temperature records of past decades.

136
  The facts revealed by such examination quickly dissipated all
opposition, for they showed beyond doubt that the winters ot
Grandfather’s day really were colder; mean temperatures were
lower and the cold waves more severe and frequent. The
temperature rise is by no means a steady, even one; wide
changes occur with the eleven-year sunspot cycies. But the cold
phase of each succeeding cycle is a little less cold, and each
warm phase is a little warmer.

When we consider what this rise means to us, we come face
to face with a situation emphasized in the last chapter: Man
exists solely because of a fortunate balance of Chemical and
physical factors in his environment. A mere io° F. rise in
tropical temperatures would make life practically impossible for
him and all other warm-blooded animals whenever humidity
accompanied the heat. In my experimental hot room I have
found 90°-9i° F., with 60 per cent. water saturation of the air,
to be the highest level at which warm-blooded animals can live
without a sharp rise in death rate and cómplete loss of repro-
ductive capacity. On several occasions the electric Controls have
failed to operate and temperatures of 97°-98° F. have wiped
out my whole hot-room animal colony within a few hours.

Severe summer heat waves sometimes leave us with an
exceedingly narrow margin of safety even here in middle
temperate America. When heatstroke cases begin to appear in
the hospital, a rise of another 50 F. in air temperatures would
produce a holocaust of deaths. In the summer of 1934, Death
had whole population masses almost within his grasp as
temperatures in middle United States latitudes soarcd past
the ioo° F. level for the daytime maximum. Cattle, horses,
hogs, dogs, birds—all were dying or endangered along with
man.

While a rise of io° F. in earth temperatures would render the
tropical lowlands uninhabitable, a fall of io° F. below present
levels would bring on another ice age and bury large Con-
tinental areas under miles of snow and ice. This happened
several times in the past, blotting out whole species of animal
life. Humanity was then scarce and even in the most propitious
climates led a furtive existence of exposure to the elements.
To-day mankind is numerous and has encroached into the
regions of climatic extremes where existence is sorely handi-
capped. Severe climatic change might well wipe man out in
such marginal zones. Not so many thousands of years ago polar
cold congealed American life well below the Ohio and Missouri
river latitudes, for these rivers marked the Southern boundary

137
  of the ice sheet. It is difficult indeed to imagine Kentucky with
Greenland’s icy cold, but such was then the case.

Man’s chief enemies—aside from his own fellow men—are
the innumerable hosts of bacteria and other micro-organisms
lurking everywhere around him. Many bacteria are ffiendly,
performing functions essential for our welfare. The unfriendly
ones are largely those which reproduce and do best at or near
body temperature (98° F.); they thus thrive best in the tropical
moist heat which is most depressive to our own tissue vitality.
Any considerable rise in earth temperatures would thus also
upset the balance between us and our bacterial foes, increasing
their advantages in the struggle. Conditions would become
more propitious for their growth in food and water outside the
body, while our resistance to their invasive attacks would be
still further weakened. Eventual elimination of the human race
may well take place through the attacks of these swarming
billions of microscopie invaders.

A rise in earth temperatures and further outward expansion
of the broad belt of tropical heat would also bring still another
increase in human handicaps. As the B vitamin requirement is
so much higher in tropical heat, we would need a food supply
richer in these elements; but meat animals grow poorly in the
heat and yield meat deficiënt in these vitamin catalysts. The
cereal grains, our other important B vitamin source, also do
poorly in hot climates. So here would be an additional de-
vitalizing factor puliing man down in a world of even moderately
rising temperatures.

Of course, a io° F. change is not likely to occur universally,
but the dangers of such a change will probably exist to a smaller
degree as the earth’s temperatures slowly rise. It has been
estimated that a rise of only 2° F. in over-all earth temperatures
would clear the polar seas of all ice and raise the oceans’ level
about 150 feet. Dr. Arthur P. Coleman of the Royal Ontario
Museum in Toronto has drawn a vivid word painting of the
result: “With a little imagination, one can picture Oslo or
Rio de Janeiro, seaports with high ground in the rear to which
to retreat, as sending palatial holiday cruisers to see New York’s
deserted skyscrapers rising as steep-walled bird rocks from
a shallow sea

Real-estate owners need not worry for the time being, for
this is still a possibility of the distant future. Temperature rises
of two degrees and more have occurred in restricted regions of
the earth but, luckily for us, not for the entire globe as a whole.
Still, these changes in temperatures and in storminess are pro-

138
  ducing noticeable effects to-day. They result in marked
alterations in inland rainfall. On the western plains of America,
for instance, deep low-pressure storm centres are needed if'
moisture is to be carried that far inland by air currents from the
Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Periods of heat and
lessened storminess therefore mean an expansion of our desert
areas in the South-west. Early settlers on the plains teil of the
grass being stirrup-high even as late as the middle of the last
century; to-day the erop is scanty and short. Much of this
change may have been due to over-grazing, but reduced rain-
fall and more severe summer heat have also played a large
part.

As I drove from Kansas up through Nebraska and South
Dakota in July of 1934, swirling dust clouds obscured the sun
and nearby landscape, and shifting topsoil buried fences,
buildings, and roads under ever-changing drifts. There I saw
deserts in the making—it was truly a gruesome sight. The soil
of Kansas shows that the plains experienced similar periods of
long-continued drought and blowing topsoil centuries before
there was any cultivation or over-grazing upon which to lay
the blame. No narrow band of planted trees is likcly to halt,
or in any way affect, these major shifts in inland ciimates. They
seem linked rather to the changes in world weather taking place
under fluctuating outside influences from the solar system.

As earth temperatures rise and cyclonic storminess lessens,
rainfall in the Southern and eastern sections of the United
States will tend to become more sharply seasonal in character.
Floods and soil erosion will be accentuated during the rainy
season. Drought conditions through the remainder of the year
will be much less favourable to agriculture than is the present
more even distribution of rainfall. Perhaps our Ohio River
flood of 1937 will pale into insignificance as we plunge another
century or two into the coming warmth.

Dust storms of northern China have for centuries been
carrying loose top soil eastward toward the ocean during the
dry winter seasons. In some places enormous banks of this
fluffy loess fill whole valleys, constituting the predominant
top soil there just as it does in Kansas. During the North China
dust storms the sun may be entirely obscured or just faintly
visible through the swirling clouds. A sprinkle of rain at such
times often showered us with pellets of mud. Dust originating
a thousand miles inland was carried hundreds of miles out to
sea over the Gulf of Peichili.

Americans berated the Chinese for permitting farming

139
  methods which made possible this shifting of top soil. But our
own dust storms of recent years have brought home to us the
futility of our puny efforts to hold back the mighty forces of
Nature. Our fertile plains became an American Dust Bowl,
generating clouds of fluffy top soil 1,000-2,000 miles wide which
swept eastward across the continent and out over the Atlantic
Ocean.

I smiled as I saw these enormous dust storms sweep over
Gincinnati, with showers of mud pellets or layers of powdery
clay coating everything in sight. We Americans had been so
sure of our wisdom as we blamed the Chinese people for their
dust storms, floods, and famines. Now they can smile at us as
we experience in a minor way the adverse natural forces with
which they have been contending for centuries. Intelligent
Chinese look upon us as rather raw barbarians, lacking in the
refinements of real civilization and much given to telling the
other person what he should do for his own good. They hope
that another few centuries of living experience may mellow us
somewhat and increase our tolerance of the mistakes others
make when faced with difficult situations. Until recently in our
national history an exuberance of energy and a great wealth
of natural resources had enabled us to make good on our
boastful and egotistic attitude. Perhaps the climatic changes
now apparently brewing will bring to us a degree of wholesome
humility.

You need no longer doubt the validity of climatic change.
Huntington prefers to call it pulsation rather than change,
emphasizing its cyclic character instead of any one-way trend,
and he is quite right.

Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #43 on: July 22, 2022, 06:58:24 PM »

Cyclic fluctuation is the keynote from beginning to end.
Shortest of these cycles are day-to-night variations. Next longer
are weather changes brought by passing cyclonic storms. Then
come the seasonal changes of each year and the more irregular
alterations occurring every few years in an indefinite association
with the eleven-year sunspot cycle. Marked shiftings covering
several centuries have taken place, but the most regularly
recurring ones of longer duration have been the 2,000-year
cycles df alternating cold and warmth in evidence since the last
ice age. Most striking of all, of course, were the alternating ice
ages and interglacial warmth.

This climatic habitat in which we live and by which we are
so dominated is thus seen to be in a most unstable state. One
year we are pushed forward into restless strivings by cold and
storms. The next may bring debilitating heat and physical

140
  lethargy. Sometimes there are almost as marked differences in
the intensity of climatic stimulation from season to season or
from one year to another as there are in different regions.
A long summer of severe heat in Cincinnati may leave the
city’s residents with a distinct turn toward tropical characteristics,
but a winter of prolonged cold again prods them into energetic
activity. Our responsiveness to this fluctuating environment
raises several social and economie problems which deserve
careful consideration against the background of climatic in-
fluence here painted. These will be considered in the following
chapters.

chapter 18

CLIMATE, WEATHER, AND WORLD
DOMINANGE

Stormy weather has been held responsible for many
of our respiratory and rheumatic ills; however, atmospheric
turbulence has its good points as well as its bad. Frequent
change gives a wholesome and stimulating variety to life, in-
ducing in people a restlessness which—when coupled with
coolness and a high energy level—drives them on to build sky-
scrapers, set up great factories, and pursue other energetic
activities. There is little monotony, either climatic, mental, or
physical, in such surroundings; while certain types of disease
may abound, health in general is most buoyant and life most
interesting. The men dwelling amid such influences are the ones
who have dominated the world in the past and who have left
their home countries to build empires in distant lands.

Storms sweeping across Indiana were among the most potent
factors influencing my childhood years. To me they represented
the real might of Nature as they came from the South-west to
darken the entire sky. Excitement and sometimes childish terror
acconipanied the thunderous tumult of their passing, while
deepest awe and exultation came over me as I watched the vivid
colouring made by the setting sun against the receding cloud
masses. Even as a boy they interested me by their definite
pattern of approach and passage. Surely, I thought, only the
most supreme and powerful ruler of the universe could keep
harmony and order in the presence of such violent, raging forces.

141
  City residents miss much of this closeness with Nature. For
them, with attention focused upon crowded humanity and its
doings, such disturbances only bring inconvenience and inter-
ference with plans. Even the glorious after-coloüring in an
evening sky often goes unheeded.

As I grew older I learned that various parts of the earth differ
greatly in their storminess, that few regions can compare with
the middle-west and western plains of America, and that the
storms do indeed follow a quite definite pattern. Across tem-
perate lands they travel mainly eastward, with the low-pressure
centre preceded and followed by a “high” and cool clear
weather. Warm moist winds rush in toward the “low” centre
and then spiral upward clockwise, being chilled as they rise and
precipitating their moisture upon the earth beneath. Baro-
metric pressure falls and temperatures rise as such low-pressure
centres approach a given locality. Those are the weather periods
which most disturb body function in men and animals. As they
pass on, pressure begins to rise, temperatures fali, the skies clear,
and life assumes a more cheerful aspect.

During peacetime ijiany city newspapers printed daily weather
maps, recognizing an increased reader interest in weather and
the behaviour of the elements. War censorship now prevents the
publication of these maps or the broadcasting of extensive
weather reports, because such information would be extremely
valuable to our enemies in plotting the changes coming their
way. Plans for the dash of the German warships Gneisenau and
Scharnhorst from their Brest berth up through the English Channel
were no doubt based upon reports sent in from scouting planes
and ships out in the Atlantic Ocean. With a period of bad
weather and winter fog in the offing, details of the move were
worked out in such a way that the English were relatively help-
less when they finally spotted the ships through a break in the
Channel fog. Swarms of German fighter planes had been held
in readiness for air coverage just in case the fog shöuld lift.
Accurate prediction depends on a thorough knowledge of world
trends in air-mass movements, and the lefcs the Nazis know
about such trends around North America, the less accurate
will be their timing of strategie moves.

As far as possible, you should familiarize yourself with weather
maps, for they are extremely important in your life. Observing
them from day to day, you can see the “highs” and “lows”
marching across the continent, bringing with them the sharp
alterations in weather which give spice and variety to life. Many
of the high-pressure centres come down from the Canadian

14a
  North-west and turn eastward across the Mississippi Basin at
various latitudes, some of them even going down across
Oklahoma and Texas to pass out eastward over the Gulf of
Mexico. Other “high” centres come in from the Pacific coast at
middle latitudes and bring with them less vigorous weather
change.

Not all temperate-zone lands are equally affected by these
eastward-travelling storms; they are probably most vigorous and
reach farthest south in North America. Across Europe they
follow a more northerly course, entering mainly across the
British Isles and countries of West Central Europe. In both
northern and Southern hemispheres they are responsible for the
. storminess of the mariners’ “roaring forties,” but in the south
these latitudes involve relatively small amounts of land surface—
only the Southern half of Chile and Argentina, the Southern
fringe of Australia, and all of New Zealand. South Africa is
little affected.

Storms entering across Europe seem to be dissipated in the
great spaces of Soviet Russia. Siberia has violent weather
changes, but its storm tracks have not yet been plotted. In
eastern Asia less violent disturbances generate on the highlands
of Tibet and Mongolia, then sweep down across China and
Japan during the winter season. Everywhere these temperate-
zone storms are more frequent and vigorous in winter,
penetrating closer to sub-tropical latitudes. In the summer they
become fewer, travel more slowly, and follow a more northerly
course. In North America this seasonal difference means that
the South has stormy weather during the winter, but is blanketed
by stagnant moist warmth through the long summer.
Even in the North, summer storminess is only half that of the
winter.

Another type of disturbance originates over ocean waters in
the outer portions of the tropics, largely between latitudes
io° and 20° and particularly in the Indian and western portions
of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. These are deep low-pressure
centres which—and this is important—are not preceded or
followed by corresponding “highs” as they travel westward
over tropical waters. In the Atlantic they lash the West Indies,
Gulf of Mexico, and south-eastem coast of North America,
many of them swerving north-eastward up the coast sometimes
as far as New England. Here they are known as hurricanes.
Over Oriental waters and the Indian Ocean similar disturbances
are called typhoons. From the Pacific Ocean they sweep west-
ward across the Philippines, then turn north up the China coast

143
  and out north-eastward across Japan. These tropical storms are
sharply seasonal, occurring largely from September to December
in the northern hemisphere. In the Bay of Bengal they are
particularly violent for this brief period each year.

No stimulation attends the passage of such “low” centres,
since they are not followed by “highs.” Populations lying in
their path are wracked by the falling-pressure effects but benefit
by no stimulating coolness such as comes in the wake of
temperate-zone storms.

Over most large tropical land masses the weather is
monotonously even, with never more than a few degrees of
temperature change from day to day—or throughout the
centuries, for that matter—and with negligible pres6ure variation.
Rains are sharply seasonal; in fact the wet and dry seasons are
the only ones spoken of in tropical lands. This type of weather,
non-stormy and sharply limited as to rainy season, also extends
well outward into certain parts of the temperate zones. It pre-
vails in Mexico and the south-western United States, in the
Mediterranean countries of Europe and Africa, and to a con-
siderable degree in much of China.

Considering North America in greater detail, we find that
storms are most frequent across the northern half of the United
States. Weather changes are most violent on the western plains,
with the sharpest and widest fluctuations in pressure and
temperature as the storms pass by. Farther east the changes are
less abrupt. Daily variations in the maximum and minimum
temperature readings throughout the year give sharp emphasis
to this greater turbulence at Bismarck as compared with New
York City.

Each line on the accompanying storm-track maps indicates
the course followed across the continent by a high-pressure
centre, but it should be kept in mind that these moving air
masses are of enormous size—often 1,500 to 2,000 miles in
diameter—so that wide sections of the country are affected on
each side of the moving centre. The south-western United
States, however, is seldom bothered by the centres sweeping
down east of the Rocky Mountains, even during the more
turbulent winter season. A few of the winter “high” centres pass
down and out over the Gulf of Mexico, bringing freezing weather
even to the Southern tips of Florida and Texas.

One such “high” swept down over the Gulf of Mexico late in
January of 1935 while the ship on which I was Philippine-bound
was travelling up the south-western coast of Mexico. As we
started across the Gulf of Tehuantepec a terrible gale struck us

144
  from the north, buffering the ship severely for several hours
until we reached the western edge of the gulf. The ship’s captain
explained to me that such gales were frequent in winter, when-
ever a “high” settled in the Gulf of Mexico. Mountains extend
throughout the length of Mexico except in the low-lying Isthmus
of Tehuantepec, and over this low isthmus the cold, heavy air
of the “high” centre escapes southward to produce gales such
as we encountered.

Storms and the variety of weather changes they bring serve
as foreground details of the environmental picture, while the
more sedate features of climate provide the dominant design
and background. We may be pushed this way and that by short-
cycle weather changes, with our bodily and mental functions
badly disarranged. It is climate, however, which determines the
general energy and vitality level upon which we live. Mean tem-
peratures prevailing at different latitudes out from the Equator
are of profound importance to man, since they decide the ease
with which he can lose his own body heat and hence the rate of
combustion allowed in his tissues.

Tropical lowlands everywhere are blanketed by a continuous
moist heat which makes an active life impossible. Natives of
such regions are sluggish or lazy not as much from choice as
from necessity; if allowed greater ease of heat loss, they soon
become more active. This was well illustrated by the hundred
Philippine women wrapping bubble gum in a Manila factory,
who turned out 30 per cent. more work after the manager
installed cooling equipment to provide a 65° F. temperature
in the wrapping-room.

The tropical blanket of moist heat often extends only two or
three thousand feet above the ground, giving way rather sharply
to cold upper air. It is in this border that clouds form wherever
an upward current carries the moist surface air through into
the cold zone. Going aloft in an aeroplane, you suddenly leavc
the depressing surface heat as you pass above the cloud layer.
Tropical upland regions are thus distinctly more stimulating
than the lowlands, and the natives readily show the difference
by their activity and alertness.

I had not realized just how sharp this contrast might be until
an aeroplane trip transported me suddenly from the enervating
Manila heat up into the mountain coolness at Baguio. From
there I went by car through the Bontoc rice-terrace region and
on up to the Igorot country, where, at 7,000 feet, ice occasionally
formed at night. Up there the midday sun was warm, but
blankets were always needed at night. The natives walked or

145
  trotted with quick springy step, were keen-eyed and stockily
built as compared with the more slender, slouching residents
of the hot lowlands.

According to legend, a large group of lepers had escaped into
this mountain region back in early Spanish days and had lost
their disease in the more invigorating mountain atmosphere.
Whether or not the legend has any basis in fact, it is true that
the disease is very much less frequent in the mountain provinces
than among the lowland people. Going back down again into
the Manila heat, I appreciated more clearly what sharp
differences in ease of body heat loss might mean in terms of
human energy and vitality. The Manila people now seemed
well justified in their praise of the Baguio air.

What such differences mean in military terms was shown in
the case of the highland Igorots, who took such vigorous part in
the defence of Luzon when the Japanese invaded the Philippines.
They were also one of the most powerful groups in carrying on
guerrilla warfare and underground activities after Luzon was
lost. As the war continues in tropical countries, such peoples
will undoubtedly continue to make things as unpleasant as
possible for invading armies and they will be able to do so
because of the driving forces of their native climates. It was in
the high Igorot country that the Filipinos carried out the most
active and prolonged resistance to American forces following
the Spanish-American War.

Unfortunately, highland regions within the tropics are not
extensive or capable of supporting large populations. The Andes
Highlands of South America and the Abyssinian Plateau of
Africa offer temperate climates amid the morass of tropical heat,
and on them man has at times done well. No major storm
changes come to disturb their weather, however, or to add spice
and variety to life. People living at Bogota in the northern
Andes give glowing accounts of their climate’s perfection—
never too hot or too cold, always just right—but they also teil
of frequent nervous disorders during the long cloudless months
of the dry season and of an intense desire for weather change.
For them it is often a relief to spend a few weeks down in the
lowland heat.

South America is not particularly blessed, climatically speak-
ing, except for the Andes Highland valleys—where ancient
Indian civilizations reached such high stages of development
before being despoiled by the Spanish conquerors. Only the
Southern half of Argentina and Chile are favoured by temperate-
zone coolness and storms. To be sure, moderate relief from

146
  I

lowland heat is afforded in the Brazilian Highlands along the
eastern ooast, but throughout the jungles of the Orinoco,
Amazon, and upper Parana basins debilitating heat holds man
down to a life of tropical lassitude.

As a whole, Africa is in a similar situation. It has little to
recommend it in a climatic sense. Monotonous heat is the
dominant factor from Cape Town to Cairo, unrelieved any-
where by major cyclonic storminess. The Southern portion is
a tableland standing 2,000 to 4,000 feet high with its elevation
giving some relief from the heat, but only the Southern tip gets
much weather effect from the cyclonic storms travelling east-
ward a few hundred miles farther south. Winter brings
comfortable coolness to both Southern plateau and northern
desert, yet nowhere on the continent are conditions favourable
to any great human progressiveness. South Africa is handicapped
least, but its climate has little of the invigoration which pushes
man forward in central latitudes of North America or in West
Central Europe. Through the continent’s equatorial jungles
human existence is held to the lowest possible level by steaming
heat.

In sub-tropical portions of the temperate zones, summer
warmth is fully as enervating as in regions nearer the Equator,
but a welcome relief is afforded by winter coolness. Life goes
on at a more active level during the cooler months, but slumps
back into tropical lethargy as summer heat returns.

Man has his best chance to live a highly vital and energetic
existence in middle temperate latitudes of the earth. Summer
heat is usually brief and interspaced with cool periods, winter
cold is not too great, and ideal temperatures are brought by
the spring and autumn months. Across North America at
latitudes from 350 to 50° these stimulating temperatures push
man into an energetic restlessness and a great impatience with
the slower life of tropical lands. From Cape Hatteras to the
mouth of the St. Lawrence, from Memphis to Winnipeg, and
from Los Angeles to Vancouver, human energy and initiative
rise to the highest level. Frequent storm changes in the weather
and wide seasonal variations leave few dull intervals for
Americans of these latitudes.

Best temperatures for man fall farther nortK.in Europe, at
latitudes of about 450 to 6o°. This is owing to the warming
effect of the Gulf Stream as it flows across toward Iceland, and
also to the more northerly course of the storms as they travel
eastward over the continent between the Alps and Southern
Scandinavia. Temperatures and storminess in the Medi-

147
  '   I

Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918
« Reply #44 on: July 22, 2022, 06:59:00 PM »

terranean countries are about on a par with those of our
Southern States bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Italy has
much the same latitude range as New England, but its
climate is more like that of Georgia. Most people think
of Tunis and Algiers as located in tropical heat—and so they
are—but their latitude differs little from that of St. Louis or
Washington.

The Mediterranean region receives a moderate number of
Atlantic storms during the winter months, but depressive heat
rules constantly throughout the long summer just as in our
States on the Gulf of Mexico. Across West Central Europe, on
the other hand, storms coming in over the Gulf Stream bring
frequent weather changes throughout the year, moderating both
the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Toward the east of
Europe weather changes lessen, while seasonal contrasts are
exaggerated; both summer heat and winter cold become more
protracted and severe.

Seasonal extremes of heat and cold also occur over most of
Central Asia. Cold waves penetrate well down from the frozen
northern tundras, but their exit over the plains of India or
China is barred by lofty highlands. As a result, cyclonic stormi-
ness is low over Southern and eastern Asia and the climate is
monotonously regular. During the winters we spent in Peking
cold dry winds blew outward from the interior for weeks at
a time, with the barometer standing constantly high. The
winds were reversed through the summer months, as moist
tropical air flowed north-westward toward the superheated
interior. Those were the summer monsoon winds which lay
a blanket of depressing, moist heat over Japan and China every
year. Similar monsoon currents also flow up across India during
the summer months.

All Southern and eastern Asia is thus oppressed by severe
summer' heat, without cold stormy winters to counterbalance.
The result is a human inertia and energy level only slightly
better than the tropics permit. A few storms do generate on
the high slopes of the Himalayas and highlands of Tibet, follow-
ing down the Yangtze Valley and out over Southern Japan.
These help make the upland portions of China’s Yangtze Valley
one of the most stimulating parts of eastern Asia.

Southern Australia and New Zealand are among the earth’s
most favoured regions so far as climatic effects directly upon
man are concemed. Summer heat and winter cold are moderated
by nearby oceans; cyclonic storms bring ample weather variety
at all seasons. Health hazards of winter are much less than in

148
  the northern United States, where severe cold and the year’s
most intense storminess bring a sharp peak in respiratory
diseases and heart failure. Central Australia, except along the
eastern fringe, is very sparsely inhabited; and in the north,
tropical heat exerts its typical effects. Man’s progress in Southern
Australia during the last century has been astounding, but the
favourable land area is so small that no really large population
mass can ever be properly supported. On the streets of London
one has difïiculty in differentiating the Australians from the
Americans or Canadians except by their speech; all have that
springy step and keenness of eye found only in people from
really invigorating climates.

Truly favourable climates are thus seen to be limited to only
a few areas of the earth and to perhaps a third of its human
population. North America has the largest and most in-
vigorating of these regions, with West Central Europe a close
second. It is probably not by chance that people of these two
regions so dominate world affairs. In them energy and initiative
run high, combined with a restlessness which is forever seeking
new outlets of expression. At the opposite pole of human
energetics lie the broad expanses of tropical lowlands. In them
another third of the earth’s population is held captive by the
insurmountable difïiculty of losing body heat. This third of
mankind seems to exist only for exploitation by the energetic
third. In between lie the people of the middle third, living under
climates which hold them to a neutral course. China, Southern
South America, South Africa, and the Mediterranean countries
seem destined to pursue a middle course in human affairs. As
for Russia and Japan, these nations are at the peak of their
military successes—one in holding off and then driving back
supposedly invincible Nazi armies, the other in sweeping rapidly
throughout the Far East and toward India. But only time can
teil whether they will have sufficiënt climate-given energy to
keep up their successes.

The North American and European stimulating areas are
also blessed by a wealth of natural resources for man’s use in
his ceaseless activities. Not content with their home resources,
however, these energetic people also reach out to exploit the
earth’s natural wealth in other regions where the native resi-
dents are too listless to do so themselves. World dominance is
thus firmly based on the driving force of climate. Were the
storms of Central Asia suddenly shifted across the plains of
China, the people of that great nation would in all likelihood
become more prominent in world affairs, make better use of

H9
  their own great natural resources, and drive the Japanese out
of their country in short order.

chapter 19

THERMOMETERS AND HISTORY

JVEVOLUTION and conquest have always been considered
to spring from the deep inner urgings of people: in the one case
from the desire for freedom from tyranny and in the other from
the desire of a few men for power. Such is really the case, but
the development and growth of these urgings are linked in
a most surprising fashion to the rise and fall of the mercury in
thermometers. Stormy cold has driven oppressed people into
open revolt time after time, just as enervating heat has had
them pliant under the oppressor’s heel. Group after group of
the world’s people have been pushed out on to the roads of
conquest and expansion by optimal climatic conditions, only
to be halted or forced back into oblivion again by less favourable
temperatures. History’s most vivid example of this is frequently
pointed to to-day because of the Nazis’ experiences with Soviet
winter and Soviet man-power; I refer to Napoleon’s attempted
conquest of the vast Russian nation.

The French military leader, turning back in 1812 from his
unsuccessful attempts to invade England, began mighty
preparations for conquest of the one Continental power still
beyond his grasp. Little did he realize that the intense summer
heat and benumbing winter cold of the Russian plains would
offer a more effective obstacle to his ambition than any human
force which had yet opposed him. Prevailing westerly winds
coming in from the Atlantic Ocean provide western Europe
with an equable climate—cool summers and mild winters. In
Russia, on the other hand, summers are often severely hot and
the winters long and cold.

The Grand Army with which Napoleon began his invasion
was a motley mixture, drawn from all the countries of Europe.
None too well welded together, it was by no means the compact
striking force he was accustomed to using in his campaigns of
conquest. Quick manoeuvres and surprise blows were his chief

150
  battle assets, but this army was inclined to be cumbersome and
sluggish. With it he crossed the Niemen River on June 24-th
(1812) to begin his most disastrous venture.

No sooner was he on Russian soil than his army became
enveloped in the first severe heat wave of that fatal summer.
Men died of heatstroke by the hundreds, while it is said that
fully a third of his cavalry mounts were lost in the first ten days.
Green forage was supposed to have produced the colic by which
the horses died, but the same heat which killed the men was
more likely responsible, for colic often accompanies heat
prostration. Mobility for an army in those days depended upon
live, healthy horses; without them the transport of equipment
and supplies bogged down and the quick-striking cavalry lost
its value. Not for Napoleon were the oil-burning monsters of
Hitler, which provide unlimited horse-power regardless of
weather—as long as the oil supply lasts.

Napoleon’s first brush with the Russians disclosed the dis-
astrous effects of the ten days of heat. Both men and horses
moved sluggishly, causing failure of his battle strategy. Time
after time through the summer this loss of mobility in his army
permitted the Russian forces to escape the traps he set for them.
The Cossack ponies, on the other hand, were inured to such
weather and allowed the Russians to harass Napoleon’s forces
without often being pressed into pitched battle.

To-day we know that severe heat quickly devitalizes people
and animals, lowering their internal combustion rate, reducing
the amount of energy available for action, causing the blood
pressure to fall and the individual to become in every way more
like the easy-going tropical native. The heat did far more during
that summer to drag down Napoleon’s forces than did Russian
arms. Weakened by the long summer, he finally came to actual
defeat on the field of battle and began his ill-fated retreat back
to the Niemen. Benumbing Russian cold then came in November
to complete the destruction of his Grand Army, turning the
retreat of his ragged forces into a pitiful rout from which only
a handful survived. It was severe heat which began the ruin of
his Russian venture and freezing cold which gave it the finishing
touches.

The hand of temperature has been evident at other times
through human history. People have rebelled against despotic
repression during years of cold and have been more inclined to
yield to the grasping power of tyrants when prolonged warmth
has drained away their vitality and energy. The French Revo-
lution itself had this temperature basis. Thermometer records at

151
  Paris are not available for the eighteenth and first half of the
nineteenth centuries, but at Zwannenberg (less than 300 miles
north) monthly means are on record back to 1743. During the
34 years from 1750 to 1783 only 8 scattered years had
mean annual temperatures below normal, and in each by
only a fraction of a degree. In 1784, however, there began
a prolonged cold period which reached ap. all-time low in 1789.
It was in this year that the French Revolution broke out. For
the 33 years beginning with 1784, only seven intermittent
years had temperatures above the average level and then only
slightly so. Thus the French Revolution and period of
Napoleonic conquest took place in the only period of pro-
longed cold in almost a century.

In 9 of the 12 years following 1816, however, warmth
again prevailed. Most of the liberties won during the revo-
lution were lost in these years of shift back toward despotism.
Severe cold and storms returned again for a brief stay over
Europe in 1829 an^ early 1830, which was followed by an
outburst of revolutionary activity over almost the whole
continent. Vigorous but short-lived revolts occurred from
France to Poland. Warmth quickly returned to quell their
ardour, however, with only one year in the next 17 below
normal. Again in 1848 a year of severe cold and storms caused
smouldering discontent to flame forth into another wave of
uprisings over the continent.

The history óf temperature effects antedates by many
centuries the invention of the thermometer and the .existence
of carefully kept scientific records. The high civilization of
early Babylonia flourished at the head of the Persian Gulf
from about 2900 to 1750 b.c.; that of Troy rosé about 2500 b.c.
and declined a thousand years later. The period from 2500 to
1500 B.c. coincides with one of the millenniums of cold men-
tioned in a preceding chapter. It was followed by prolonged
warmth during which little of note was accomplished by man.
About 750 b.c., however, the Assyrian Empire blossomed
forth (750-612) followed by the Second Babylonian Empire
of the Ghaldeans (612-538 b.c.) and the Persian Empire
(53°~33?b-c.)-

The rise of early Greece also began to gain headway about
750 b.c., with her golden age continuing to 390 b.c. Macedonia
rosé to the north as Greece declined, and slightly later Rome
took over leadership from a still more northerly climate. There
were thus two millenniums of ancient grandeur: In the first,
civilization reached its highest development well south on the

152
  Persian Gulf and in the southem iEgean Islands; in the second,
high tide again returned to the people around the Persian Gulf,
but important developments also took place farther to the
north-west—in Greece, Macedonia, and Italy. Each of these
cold periods of high tide in accomplishment were followèd by
centuries of stagnation and confusion during which man seemed
unable to make any real headway. The last of these periods
of heat and futility has aptly been called the Dark Age.

Frigid surroundings are as inimical to human accomplishment
as enervating heat. With the prolonged warmth starting in the
fifth century a.d., the people of central and northern Europe
began a wild ferment of activity. Relieved of the benumbing
cold which legend records for preceding centuries, they now
multiplied rapidly and pushed southward and to the west in
ever-increasing numbers. They early battered down the gates
of Rome and overran the broad empire Caesar’s legions had
conquered. Even the people of Scandinavia blossomed
forth during the warmest centuries of this period, sending
forth the Norsemen and Vikings to conquer and colonize the
coast of Europe as far as Italy and westward to the New
World.

Optimal temperature conditions seemed to prevail farthest
north during the ninth and tenth centuries, for it was then that
the people from Scandinavia colonized Greenland and Iceland
and left their mark on so many points along the coast of Europe.
During this period wave after wave of immigrants from northern
Europe settled in the British Isles and helped give the population
its present varied character. As tempcratures began lo recede
agaiq in the later* Dark Age centuries, the exodus from northern
Europe slowed down, returning cold subdued the Vikings, and
other Powers slowly emerged in middle European latitudes.
Another permanent north-westward shift had taken place, how-
ever, for in the new cold epoch vigorous young nations of central
and western Europe took over from decadent Mediterranean
peoples the torch of civilization.

The pathway of Atlantic storms, which in early times was
down the Mediteranean basin and on across Asia Minor,
shifted far northward to Scandinavia in the warmth of the
Viking centuries, and then settled back across the British Isles
and west-central Europe for the centuries since the time of the
Renaissance. Early in the sixteenth century nations under its
influence began a remarkable period of exploration and con-
quest into all the far corners of the earth. They ruthlessly
exploited any wealth found and later started colonies which

153
  grew rapidly into new centres of population. Historical develop-
ments of this last cold period have dealt predominantly with
the doings of people living in the cooler half of the temperate
zones.

Asiatic history, although less well studied than that of Europe,
has shown similarly timed undulations. Vague records of high
developments in Southern China coincide in time approximately
with the early civilizations at the head of the Persian Gulf,

4,000   to 5,000 years ago. Advanced civilizations existed in
Siam, Indo-China, and India during the early Greek period,
although their architectural remains stand to-day in an en-
vironment of people submerged in tropical lethargy. The Great
Wall of China was constructed through the centuries of Roman
decay in the West to hold back the increasing pressure of
northern Asiatic barbarians. Shortly after the period of Viking
conquests in Europe, Mongol hordes swept down over China
from the north much as the barbarians of northern Europe had
somewhat earlier harassed the Romans. The celebrated Ming
Dynasty brought China one of her golden ages at about the
same time the Renaissance and revival of learning awakened
European peoples.

The sway of temperature, so evident through the intermediate
and more distant past, has again come into prominence in
recent years. Rising warmth over the earth is upsetting the
comparative equilibrium recent generations have enjoyed.
World power seems to be embarking again on its course toward
more northern regions, with the two greatest of the northern
giants now locked in deadly struggle for supremacy.

Personal liberty and the democratie way of life reached a high
peak in early Greece; they were lost in the autocratie despotism
of the Dark Ages, but achieved a slow recovery following the
European Renaissance. It was perhaps at the time of Wilson’s
visit to Europe in 1920 that the democratie ideal of personal
freedom reached its widest acceptance. Self-determination of
national groups and the right to a representative type of govern-
ment was insisted upon by Wilson as a basis for future world
security. For a while it looked as though real altruism
might be given a chance in world affairs through the
acceptance of these principles and establishment of the League
of Nations.

This optimistic high tide soon passed to ebb, however, as the
rise of one dictator after another indicated a very evident turn
back toward despotism. The turn gained initial 'momentum
during the post-war years of European upset and economie

154
  depression, with unseasonable warmth widely prevailing. Con-
ditions steadied down through the more prosperous and colder
last half of the decade. Even more excessive warmth began in
1929, however, initiating the severe and prolonged economie
depression which held the whole world in its grip for several
years. With the discouragement of these hard times, people
again seemed willing to listen to the glowing demagogie promises
of would-be dictators.

It was during this period of severe ebb-tide in the morale of
western nations that Japan thought she saw her chance for
imperial expansion in the Oriënt. Her great dream of empire
had blossomed under the stimulus of subnormal temperatures
many years before. Nipponese thermometer records go back
only to 1879 (at Nagasaki). Up until 1899 temperatures there
were above the long-term average, but from 1899 to 1914 every
single year was colder than normal. During this period she embarked
upon her career of imperial expansion, fighting Russia for
control of Southern Manchuria and in 1914 grabbing all German
possessions in the Far East. Some of the latter she was forced to
give up in the Versailles peace settlement. Again in 1925 she
demanded valuable rights and concessions in China, but was
baulked by vigilant Western powers.