On the therapeutic influence of the southern climatic sanatoria, particularly with reference to chronic tuberculosis of the lungs / by Dr. Rullmann.

Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the therapeutic influence of the southern climatic sanatoria, particularly with reference to chronic tuberculosis of the lungs / by Dr. Rullmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    denied that in many instances a dry, moderately warm air, by its secretion-diminishing and general vivifying effects, and by promoting nutrition, may have a favourable influence on the course of those diseases; and there are medical observations on record, according to which a relatively dry warm climate has afforded special service as a remedial means. That in the adoption and estimation of the several southern climatic sanatoria the high degree of moisture is no longer in practice considered to be the principal point, is proved by the fact that of all the climatic sanatoria of the French coast physicians now give the preference to the drier Hyeres; in like manner Algiers, which, in comparison to the other places on the shores of the Medi- terranean, presents a very slight degree of atmospheric moisture, is preferred by many physicians to all the Italian and French climatic sanatoria. Moreover, the air of Egypt, of the suitability of which as a winter residence for patients labouring under chronic affections of the lungs we have the most positive proofs, is drier in winter than that of any other similar sanatorium; compare the meteoro- logical observations of Coutelle, Destouches, Reyer, Uhle. Indeed, in Egypt patients are even recommended to make excursions to the desert, with its fine, moderately warm, but dry, air, and often to sojourn there; and it is in that country precisely the districts ad- joining the desert, or easily accessible to its air, which are thought most suitable for permanent invalid residence. These are Cairo, to whose gates the desert extends, and the narrow valley of the Nile, above Cairo to Nubia, the so-called Upper Egypt, which is com- pressed between great desert plains. But the damp Delta, and the still damper sea coast, with Alexandria, are avoided by invalids. When we ^end patients affected with pulmonary tubercle in summer to high mountains, we can certainly not reckon upon much moisture * It is an error to suppose that the patients frequenting the Nile, in Upper Egypt, are, by constantly remaining on ship-board, always exposed to a damp atmosphere, and that thus the beneficial influence of the climate upon them is to be explained. The air in Upper Egypt is to be considered dry, not merely on the shores of the Nile, but also on the river itself. Uhle, who made all his hygrometric observations on board-ship, states that the air on the Nile between 24° and 22 of Northern lati- tude is one of the driest of those as yet examined. See Uhle, Der Winter in Oberagypten.