THE DANGERS AND DISEASES OF AUTUMN by A Massachusetts Physician

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 6, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 39.

THE DANGERS AND DISEASES OF AUTUMN.

By A Massachusetts Physician

SOME of the dangers which are especially incident to late summer and early autumn, and which result in an increased prevalence of certain diseases at this season, are as follows:—

1. The long-continued heat of the summer has brought about a relaxed and debilitated condition of the system, which renders it less able to resist the attacks of disease than at other seasons of the year. As cold weather is tonic and bracing, so hot weather is relaxing and debilitating, especially if the heat is accompanied by unusual dampness, as has been the case the past season.

2. Heat and moisture produce organic decay, with its accompanying fermentative and putrefactive changes. Fruits and vegetables are now ripening, and ripeness soon passes into rottenness. Unless carefully guarded against, the air is full of foul odors, and filth diseases are at their height.

3. Unripe or overripe fruit, and vegetables out of their proper season, or either partaken of intemperately, have a tendency to produce irritation and inflammation of the digestive organs. As autumn comes on, there is a change of type; the diarrhea and cholera morbus of summer give place to dysentery and inflammation of the bowels.

4. The hot days, followed by cold nights and heavy fogs, which prevail at this season, are especially dangerous, as the system, unnerved by the heat of the day, is thereby rendered incapable of resisting the influence of cold and dampness at night, when wrapped in slumber.

The results of these dangers are seen in the diseases which prevail most extensively at this season. Malarial fevers are most commonly met with from June to November, and their severity increases as the season advances, until checked by the cold of approaching winter. Hay fever, which results from the irritation of the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract by the pollen of certain plants and grains, prevails chiefly in August and September.

Inflammation of the bowels caused 608 deaths in Massachusetts in 1885, and of these 304, or exactly one-half, occurred during the months of July, August, and September. In the same year, of 253 deaths from dysentery, 189, or nearly three-fourths, took place during the same period. Typhoid fever was the cause of 768 deaths, and of these 307, or nearly 40 per cent., occurred during the months of August, September, and October.—A Massachusetts Physician, in Congregationalist.