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It is a malady which, as I have said, is dramatic and painful to witness.... A heat-stroke station was prepared at the water's edge containing a couple of baths and an ice chest, and patients were put into the chill water as soon as possible. They were slapped and punched and laved till they began to turn blue and the temperature fell.
Perspiration was so profuse that clothes became wringing wet like bathing suits, even if you were sitting still. A kind of air hunger ensued. The few birds in the groves sat with their beaks wide open. It was then that the ambulance wagons began to roll in with their burden of heat-stroke cases, and continued until after sunset.
A single bad heat-stroke case would often use up the whole day's supply to the hospital. That was why ice was an imperative necessity. It meant so many lives saved. In India ice is manufactured by machines in quantity wherever it is required. After soda water, the sick Tommy requires certain delicacies in food. Eggs and chickens and fruit and vegetables were necessary.
For excessive and prolonged heat and the hot season lasted seven or eight months rouses a defensive mechanism of inertia whose aim is to preserve life. You saw that in the earliest cases of incipient heat-stroke. A man felt suddenly all the power go out of his legs. He wanted to lie down, and this was the best thing he could do. Mental exertion became almost impossible.
Poisoning, as by hydrocyanic acid, cyanide of potassium, inhalation of carbonic acid or coal gas, oedema of glottis following inhalation of ammonia. Rapid onset of some acute specific disease, such as pneumonia or diphtheria; collapse from cholera. Heat-stroke, lightning, shocks of electricity of high tension. Mental or physical shock. Exertion while the stomach is overloaded.
To gain some idea of heat-stroke it is necessary to grasp the conditions that produce it. A typical hot day begins with a dawn that comes as a sudden hot yellow behind the motionless palms. A glittering host of dragon-flies rises up from the swamps, wheeling and darting after the mosquitoes. In the growing light mysterious shapes slink past.
There was also an ill-defined syndrome, termed variously Mesopotamitis or acute debility, or the Fear of God. Officially one described it as the effects of heat. But of all these the most pitiful was heat-stroke. I do not know of any other malady so dramatic, or so painful to witness, as heat-stroke, with the exception, perhaps, of acute cholera.
When a dripping orderly came to rouse you to see some case, you understood perfectly the attitude of mind that has produced the idea of Kismet. Why move? If the man dies, it is Allah's will. It is Allah's will that he is sick. Let him remain in the hands of Allah. It was during the afternoon and evening that heat-stroke occurred in the main when the humidity of the air began to go up.
We had a number of cases of heat-stroke, and the hospital facilities on a crowded transport can never be all that might be desired. The first military burial at sea was deeply impressive. There was a lane of Tommies drawn up with their rifles reversed and heads bowed; the short, classic burial service was read, and the body, wrapped in the Union Jack, slid down over the stern of the ship.
This would have saved endless transport difficulties, if a light railway had been constructed. But no doubt the military situation rendered the carrying out of such an idea impracticable. Heat-stroke in Amara was common enough, but it did not seem so fatal as at Basra. This, perhaps, was due to the air, which was drier and fresher. The supply of ice was also more adequate.
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