Health resorts for tropical invalids in India, at home, and abroad / by W.J. Moore.

Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health resorts for tropical invalids in India, at home, and abroad / by W.J. Moore. 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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    resorts have a tendency to foster a delusion that such a locality or such a climate is a panacea for a certain class of diseases. The result is, that persons make desperate efforts to reach the desired climate, and then, throwing aside all medical directions, do as they like, and fruitlessly expect to be restored to health by the mysterious influence of climate alone. Even English people who do not travel abroad as invalids, often do their best when abroad to become so. Their reckless exposure to the fierce rays of the southern sun is proverbial in the remark of the in- habitants of continental cities, that ‘ only mad dogs and Englishmen are seen in the streets at middayand many Anglo-Indians, appearing to think that after an Indian sun they may brave any solar heat, are often among the most incautious. Again, the British traveller when streaming with perspiration will walk straight out of the sun into an icy cathedral or draughty gallery, and sit down to undergo the dangerous process of cooling himself, which not unffequently, by the sudden check to the action of the skin, results in bowel complaint or fever. Instead of practising that moderation in eating and drinking more essential to health the warmer the climate may be, he often feeds voraciously on board ship, and essays every novel dish at table d'hote, while he temporarily quenches and permanently in- creases his thirst with bottled ale, or with brandy and soda. It is the same with the women. They do those things which they ought not to do, and when they do not recover rapidly, or when they become laid up with fever or dysentery, instead of blaming themselves, they blame the climate. Temptations of the table will probably first assail the invalid from the East on enter- ing the cooler atmosphere of the Mediterranean, or