Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — Climate and Consumption. [ARTICLE]

Climate and Consumption.

An English medteal journal, PuN»e JTeollA, has the following: At this date, when wo are in the habit of gathering around us all friends within reach, how many families are there who sadly miss some absent member whe is seeking, far away amongst strangers in a foreign land, a cure or palliation of the dread disease, consumption! Would that we could prognosticate, with any degree of certainty, the return of the parent, the husband, wife or child, in something like restored health! But, |n too many cases, those who have been lured Into visiting the south of Europe, merely because the sky is blue and serene, and the sun shines, discover too late that their hopes of restoration to health have been misplaced, and, instead of a refuge, they And a grave. To speak plainly, they would have done better had they stopped at home. For some reason or other, a common impression seems to have beenme deeply rooted in the British mind thatconsumptfon is a disease peculiar to our own country, or, at any rate, that it is much more severe here than in more highly favored lands where the sun shines often, and where fogs are comparatively unknown, But such is not the fact. There is not a single country or locality south of the latitude of Greenwich in which the disease does not exist to a greater extent, and with greater fatality, than in England. Heat is injurious in all cases of actual consumption, and various causes, such as great variations of temperature and malaria, are at work in the Over-praised health resorts of the south of Europe, Algeria and Madeira. The only countries where consumption is unknown amongst the natives are Iceland and Lapland. It is also comparatively rare in Sweden, Denmark and well sain Canada—*lt es those countries which present climatic characteristics entirely opposite those of the much-vaunted places where thousands of English men and English women go, every year, to—die. Unfortunately for those invalids who would wish to try a change of climate, and who are sensibly impressed with tire fact that Mentone. Nice, Naples and Rome in Europe, and Algeria in Africa, are not altogether the desirable places of resort for phthisical patients that they are supposed and represented to be, the ratio of deaths from consumption, as compared with those from other diseases, is 1 in 2.33 in Naples, 1 in 8.4 in Rome, and 1 in 8.33 in London. The climate of the countries in which the greatest immunity from eonsumption ex, rets is so rigorous that a consumptive invalid would be prevented, to a very great extent, from taking outdoor exercise in winter. Consequently, when every argument for and against travel in search of health for consumptives has been gone into, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that they would have a better chance of recovery at home, while they would then, under any circumstances, not be deprived of the comfort apd consolation derivable from the tender nursing and the kind sympathy of relatives ana other friends. The practice of sending consumptive persons abroad has become almost a mischievous monomania; to say the least, it is often a delusion and a snare. In Leamington, Cheltenham, Tunbridgewells, Buxton, or Harrogate, a phthisical patient would, other things being equal, have a much better chance of recovery, or, at any rate, prolongation of life, than at Nice, Mentone, Naples, Rome or Pisa; and, in every respect, the former are superior to the latter places as winter resideuces for English consumptives.