The principal health-resorts of Europe and Africa for the treatment of chronic diseases / by Thomas More Madden.

  • Madden, Thomas More, 1838-1902.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principal health-resorts of Europe and Africa for the treatment of chronic diseases / by Thomas More Madden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    malarial exhalation, is safficient to explain the remarkable insalubrity of this town, where fevers, dysentery and oph- thalmia are endemic. The mean annual temperature of Alexandria is about 10° lower than that of Cairo. During my visit in September, the mean daily temperature was 87°, and that summer the thermometer had repeatedly risen to 115° in the shade. At night the dew-fall far exceeds that occurring in any part of Europe; so much so, that a few minutes' exposure in the evening is sufficient to wet a thick coat through. The characteristic of this climate, however, is the humidity of the atmosphere, in which respect the entire Delta contrasts remarkably with the dry climates of Upper and Middle Egypt. In lower Egypt, says Dr K. E. Madden, the mummies go to pieces on exposure to external air; and in Alexandria, where the air is excessively moist, I observed several mummies melt away in a magazine where I kept them, and decomposi- tion took place after an exposure of forty hours to the humid atmosphere, though the same bodies had resisted corruption in a dry air for perhaps forty centuries.' The Rev. Dr Barclay, in his valuable work on the climate of Egypt, says—How far Alexandria during the months of March and April may be a more suitable residence for those whose complaints require a climate at once warm, equable, and moist, I leave it to gentlemen of the medical profession to judge; but I do think myself fully warranted to denounce it as a most unsuitable place for bronchitic patients. During all the time I was there I felt as if inhaling steam ; my breathing was excessively affected, and my whole system was languid and relaxed. The effects, however, by the * Travels in Turkej^ Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, by R. R. Madden, M.D., vol. ii. p. 76.