The climatic treatment of consumption : a contribution to medical climatology / by James Alex. Lindsay.

  • Lindsay James Alexander.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climatic treatment of consumption : a contribution to medical climatology / by James Alex. Lindsay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans. Clearly, then, temperature is not a material factor in the production of the disease. As little is relative humidity a gauge of the incidence of consumption. The idea that damp per se is one of the main causes of its production is very deep-rooted and widespread, but it is nevertheless wholly erroneous. The Hebrides, though constantly swept by the moist breezes arising from the Gulf Stream, enjoy a remarkable immunity from consump- tion. The Shetlands, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, sharing parallel meteorological conditions, are simi- larly exempt. The sea-air is laden with moisture, yet sea-faring peoples everywhere suffer far less from the disease than the populations of neighbouring continents. The remarkable rarity of consumption in the navy as compared with the army is a fact quite incompatible with the prevalent notion that breathing moist air predisposes to the malady. The eastern counties of England are much drier than the south-western, yet the latter have a slightly lower mortality from consumption. It is needless to mul- tiply proofs that damp per se has either no influence upon the production of consumption, or else that its influence can be contravened by other factors. Equability of temperature was formerly thought to be a vital point in the climatic environment favourable for cases of consumption, but this idea must share the fate of other prejudices on the same subject. We shall see that combined equability of temperature B 2