Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/536

528 during calms the atmosphere for that city contains an excess of carbonic acid gas and a consequent deficiency of oxygen. The devitalizing effect of the former gas upon life processes and the importance of the latter to them are facts too well recognized to need discussion here. That they are demonstrated by the conditions stated earlier in this paper I shall maintain until some more tenable hypothesis is brought forward.

Some interesting facts not already alluded to are suggested by this study, and in conclusion I shall mention two of them very briefly.

First, there would seem to be reason to infer that the influence of calms upon children is more marked than that upon adults. The basis for this belief is found in the fact that the absentees from school were increased three-fold during their prevalence, while no one of the classes of adults was affected to anything like such an extent.

Second, that women seem to be more sensitive to such influence than men. Evidence of this are to be found in the study of arrests for assault and battery where the sexes were tabulated separately.

In explanation of my own conception of the whole problem of weather influences, I would say, in closing, that we cannot suppose peculiar meteorological conditions to be the immediate cause of many of the abnormalities of conduct which vary with them. I have determined that suicide is much more frequent when the barometer is low than when it is high, yet would not wish to assert that low barometrical conditions ever drove a man to self destruction. The only thing supposable is that during such atmospheric conditions, the general emotional states are of such qualities that other things are more likely to do so.

This would be just as true for any of the other abnormalities of conduct studied. We can on the strength of the whole series of studies claim to have demonstrated that the metabolic processes of life to some extent vary with the weather states, and that these variations in metabolism make themselves evident both through physiological and psychological manifestations. More than this we do not at present claim.