The week has been less uniformly hot than the last
; Wed- nesday was damp, and almost cold ; indeed, we heard of fires being in demand in some families on the evening of that day ; but Thursday and yesterday again were sultry, and the news from New York shows that "sunstroke" was a formidable disease there in the middle of July, 300 deaths having occurred from it in three days, or at a considerably higher rate than summer cholera has yet reached in London. Consequently, Englishmen have begun very actively their usual remedy,—making demonstra- tions against the Sun in the columns of the Times. One gentle- man suggests a yard of calico round the hat and falling grace- fully behind over the back of the neck, to which he would add "a cabbage leaf or a water-lily leaf. inside the crown." Of course, if Englishmen feel no objection to eccentric clothes, a turban would be a far more effective remedy against the sun than a chimney-pot hat with calico drapery round it and a cab- bage-leaf inside, which seems to us a cruel weight to the head. But we believe that the Pall Mall is quite right in asserting that sunstroke is not a material blow directly aimed by the sun at the bead, but a result of general exhaustion, towards which the weakness produced by excessive heat is only one of the principal contributing causes. A gentleman with a cabbage leaf in his hat and a calico blind behind him, if he wearied and overheated himself generally, which this heavy pro- tective apparatus would very much tend to ensure, would be just as likely to get a seizure as if he had gone out with only his hair and a light cap on. If the disease itself does come on, the true remedy, as we happen to know, is that adopted by the Indians of the Pampas,—cold water thrown over the whole head and shoulders, applied constantly, with rubbing, for an hour or two.
