A comparative enquiry as to the preventive and curative influence of the climate of Pau and of Montpellier, Hyères, Nice, Rome, Pisa, Florence, Naples, Biarritz etc., on health and disease with a description of the watering places of the Pyrenees and of the virtues of their respective mineral sources / by Alex. Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alex.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A comparative enquiry as to the preventive and curative influence of the climate of Pau and of Montpellier, Hyères, Nice, Rome, Pisa, Florence, Naples, Biarritz etc., on health and disease with a description of the watering places of the Pyrenees and of the virtues of their respective mineral sources / by Alex. Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    tory irritation, and in producing sensations of bien-etre, which the others could not boast of. And now it is no longer a contested point. The scientific attention, directed of late years to the subject of climate, has, with tolerable accuracy, assigned to the leading localities of Europe, to which invalids had been in the habit of resorting, their distinct positions in reference to their influence on the human frame in sickness and in health. But although the subject of climate has been thus studied by competent persons, and tolerably accurate de- ductions have been the result, such at least as are useful guides in practice; still it is singularly unaccountable, how little this knowledge seems to operate on persons in search of climate, and how little masters of the subject, even medical men of considerable reputation prove them- selves to be. Thus in England, for instance, if a disease, after being subjected to lengthened and unavailing medical treatment, seems to owe its want of success to the influences of a hostile climate, physicians often recommend the invalid to travel; but leave to his caprice the choice as to whither he shall go; or if they designate one, it is, indifferently, the south of France, Nice, Naples or Rome, etc., without distinguishing betwixt their varied, and often opposing, properties. They, as well as their patients, seem to think that a change of latitude only is necessary, and that it requires simply a pilgrimage of a few hundred miles to the south, in order to produce a certain cure, or, at least, an amelioration of their symptoms. We shall, in passing, give one instance to show how erroneous and how dan- gerous this opinion is. The climates of the south-west