OLD PEOPLE AND HIGH ALTITUDES.
THE London Lancet has sounded a note of warning against the dangers of high altitudes for elderly people. If at a height of more than 4,000 feet to 5,000 feet above the sea-level, a certain amount of strain is put on a normal heart, and by a rise of pressure indirectly also on the large peripheral arteries, must not this action be multiplied in the cases of heart troubles or in the cases of arteries with thickened or hardened walls? It is specially the rapidity of the change from one altitude to another, which must be considered as a call made upon the contractibility of the small arteries on the one hand, and on the amount of muscular force of the heart on the other hand, and if the structures in question did not respond to this call, rupture of an artery or dilation of the heart might ensue. In the case of people totally unaccustomed to high altitudes, it is desirable to take them by degrees, in two or three stages, with a stay of one or two days at the intermediate places.—Scientific American.