Cornwall as a winter resort.

Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cornwall as a winter resort. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    16/26 (page 12)
    6°. And then again we have the freedom from such winds as afflict the South of France, the Bise and the Mistral, which make the cloak the constant winter garment of a dweller in Pau, and demand the use of a handkerchief or muff to the mouth (when a respirator is not used) to soften the keen air ere it reaches the lungs. Highly important comparative figures are given by Mr. Wilson Lloyd Fox, f,R.m.s., in the Eeport of the Eoyal Cornwall Polytechnic Society for 1881, touching the period of extreme cold experienced in January of that year. While Kelso fell to a minimum of -16° Scarborough to 10'5°, Cheltenham to - 3*3°, the lowest point at Scilly was 29°, at Falmouth 22-8'', and at Penzance 21° Moreover, during that month the thermometer fell below the freezing-point on fewer occasions in the Cornish centres than anywhere else in the kingdom, at Scilly only five times, and only thrice to the minimum of 29°. In the same period the minimum of Toulon was 21°, of Biarritz 18°, Lyons -5-4°, Vienna 2-4°, Berlin - 2-2°, Brussels 2*3°, Paris 7-5° One of the most remarkable testimonies to the value of Falmouth as a health-resort will be found in a letter by Sir Edward Sieveking, M.D., pu.blished in the British Medical Journal of August 31, 1889 (p. 498); equally noteworthy indeed, as a commendation of the locality, and as a candid admission of the general want of information in the medical profession touching its advantages. Sir Edward, who has spent'some time at Falmouth, one of the most delightful parts of Great Britain that it has been my good fortune to visit, observes: Before I came here I inquired of my friends what they knew of Falmouth, and the reply was almost invariably a confession of ignorance. Of course nobody doubted that it was a most relaxing and depressing locality, and this repu- tation clings to it, so as to surround Falmouth with a halo of a most objectionable character. . . . The healthiness of the locality is best shown by the mortality being 10 per thousand. For the healthy there is every possible attraction —^geology, botany, mineralogy, marine zoology. The joys of the sea, the exquisite colouring of the rocks, and hills, and bays, give occupation to the philosopher, the artist, and the sportsman. The invalid finds every comfort required for mind and body, and, though I am far from asserting that the place is