The cyclopaedia of practical medicine: comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc., etc (Volume 1).
- Date:
- 1849-59
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The cyclopaedia of practical medicine: comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc., etc (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![contemplating; the rather because it affords one of the most powerful means of improving the general health, and obviating the disposition to tuberculous disease, which we possess. But here it is proper to observe that the best directed change, or succession of changes, of air, will produce little permanent benefit unless strict attention be paid to regimen, more especially as regards diet. Too much is generally expected from the simple change of air, while little atten- tion is paid to the various circumstances compre- hended under the term regimen, although these are equally essential to the restoration to health as the measure from which so much is anticipated. It should be strongly impressed on the minds of such persons as seek benefit from change of air, and more especially upon dyspeptics, the most numerous class of all, that, without adhering to the regimen laid down for them, they will derive but little advantage from the most favourable change of air. Many may, indeed, find their limbs stronger and their general health improved, and even the more urgent symptoms of their dis- ease may cease to prove troublesome ; yet all these improvements will too often prove but fleeting, and their return to their usual avocations will soon be followed by a return of their old complaints. The restricted limits of this article will not allow us to particularize all the diseases in which change of air proves useful; there are few, indeed, to which it is not applicable at some period of their course. The good effects of this remedy, when well directed, in the morbid states of the mucous membrane of the respiratory organs, are well known ; and they are scarcely less remark- able in disorders of the digestive organs, and of the uterine system. In the functional derange- ments of the nervous system, also, whether origi- nating in the diseases just alluded to, or the conse- quence of sedentary and confined life, change of air will be found a powerful means of restoring the tone of the system. In all these cases, indeed, it is a remedy for which we have no adequate substitute. [In all diseases in which the affection appears to be kept up by habit, in other words, by accus- tomed associated actions, and especially in those that implicate the nervous system, the beneficial effects of change of air are proverbial, and are acquiesced in by all observers. It is probable, that a great portion of the salu- tary effects ascribed to the waters of fashionable summer retreats is dependent upon change of air, and other extraneous circumstances. Long before the citizen of one of the Atlantic towns reaches the Alleghany springs of Virginia, he has an earnest of the advantages he is about to derive from change of air; and many a valetudinarian finds himself almost restored during the journey. rig as it is, through the mountain regions which have to be crossed before he reaches the White Sulphur, in Greenbrier county. Many S too, cannot drink the water with impu- nity, and are consequently indebted for their im- piovement chiefly to change of air, but somewhat, also, to varied scenery and society, absence from cares of business, and to greater regularity of living, j^erhaps, than they have been accustomed to. In making these observations, it is not designed to affirm that mineral waters, as in the ease of the valuable spring in question, may not occasionally be important agents in the cure of diseasej hut. taking invalids in general, we are satisfied that more is dependent upon change of air than upon the administration of the waters. The inhabitant of one of the Atlantic cities, and of most of the districts to the cast of the Blue Ridge, removes from a hot atmosphere to one which is compara- tively cool, and where all the diseases that arc common to hot and malarious climates are ex- tremely unfrequent, and many of them unknown. The advantage is obvious. He escapes the dis- eases which might have attacked him had he remained through the summer in his accustomed locality ; and hence the wealthy families of Lower Virginia are in the habit of spending those months in the mountain regions in which they are espe- cially liable to disease in their own malarious dis- tricts. We can thus understand the reputation acquired by the inert Bath and Matlock waters of England, the latter of which has scarcely any solid ingredient ; and yet what crowds flock to these agreeable watering-places ; to the former, for the perpetual amusements, that keep the mind engaged, and cause it to react beneficially on the corporeal or mental malady ; to the latter, for the erfjoyment of the beauties of nature, for which Derbyshire is so celebrated. It is obvious, that were such waters bottled, and sent to a distance, so that the invalid might drink them at his own habitation, the charm would be dissolved. The garnitures—more important, in this case, than the dish—would be wanting, and the banquet would be vapid, and without enjoyment or benefit. Less than twenty years ago, amidst the bubbles that were engaging the minds and the money of the English public, it was proposed to carry sea-water, by means of pipes, to London ; in order that the citizens might have the advantage of sea-bathing without the inconvenience of going rhany miles after it. Had the scheme been carried into effect, the benefits from metropolitan sea-bathing would not have exhibited themselves in any respect comparable to those of the same agent employed at Brighton or Margate. (Dunglison's Elements °f Hygiene, p. 157. Philad., 1835.) It would seem, therefore, that a mere change of the physical circumstances of the atmosphere in which we arc habitually placed, is advantageous to the economy, and that the vital forces act with increased energy, whenever we leave a locality to which we have been long accustomed, and where the functions are executed under the influence of unvaried excitants, and pass to one differing essen- tially from it. Nor is it always necessary that this difference should be extensive. Sir James Clark remarks, (The Sanative Influence of Cli- mate, &c, 3d edit. p. 315: Lond. 1841,) that notwithstanding the uniformity of temperature which prevails among many of the West India islands, the effect of a change from one to another is often very remarkable in improving the health, — a fact frequently observed on a large scale, among the British troops stationed in the West Indies ; and he considers, that one of the most powerful means of diminishing the sickness among the troops, in that climate, would be to remove them frequently from one healthy island to an- other. The moral and ] V.ysical effects of change of air.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21116805_0068.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
