The number of deaths which have occurred this year over India from Heat Apoplexy" cannot fail to direct particular attention to that rather singular disease; though the account of four ship Captains in Calcutta alone having succumbed on one day to, ahall we say—tho epidemic—was an exaggeration On the whole, the word epidemic suits perhaps as _well as another, since we have never heard of any very sativiactory explanation of the malady when it comes on the publican force, as the French say. It is easy enough to comprehend heat apoplexy in detail, as when, for instance, a stoker in the Red Sea is taken out of the engine room so utterly exhausted by fervent heat that life gives way under the intolerable burden imposed upon it, or we can understand a roan exposed to the midday rays of an Indian Sun in June falling dead or insensible from coup de soleil, but it is not quite so easy to account for the mortality from this cause when the sufferers are to be numbered by the dozen, and are in the ranks of people who need neither go into engine rooms, uor yet expose themselves to the cun unless at their own pleasure.
Some suppose that drink is at the bottom of most of the cases of heat apoplexy we hear of, but this is evidently a mistake,'
liar instance of the stoker that. These seafaring people are temperate by force of circumstances, if not by force of will, and at sea, at any rate, their practice is to drink little else but oatmeal and water even when engaged in their fiery duti However a very little drink goes a long way towards producing heat apoplexy when a man takes his drink in the daytime and exposes Himaalf to the sun afterwards, and, though speaking unprofessionally, we have " very shrewd suspicion that nil, of the heat apoplexy we hear of la due to this very cause other. Men become. exhausted. by driving or walking about in the sua on their Dusiness or pleasure, They take a poy," perhaps two or three, to restore their auimation, and without what we call intemperance, the result may be—death. Or they cannot sleep under the manifold inflictions of mos: quitees, creaking punkabe, prickly heat a Toile. they drink brandy and water, possibly in a quantity which would scarcely affect their Heads in " temperate climate; succeed in obtaining the sleep they desire, but never wake up again till crack of doom. But though alcohol may be a predisposing cause of heat apoplexy, it do not follow at all that the teetotallers are We have known total abstainers to succumb to heat apoplexy, coup de soleil, or whatever we like to call it, with no better struggle for life than the intemperate can make, but teetotallers have this advantage over men who drink wine and spirits even moderate that they never can expose themselves to the sun ofter drinking liquor of any kind. In some respects the total abstainer is at a disadvan. tage. If we consent to this theory, and we
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