Health resorts during sick leave / by Robert Temple Wright.

  • Wright, Robert Temple, 1843-1902.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health resorts during sick leave / by Robert Temple Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Chota hazaree is served in the bed-rooms at any hour the pa- tient likes, the other meals are in the dining room at ten, half- past one, and seven o'clock. The charge is twenty-five shillings a day for board, lodging, and medical attendance if the patient is alone. If he occupies a double-bedded room with his wife or friend, the charge Is seven- teen shillings a day each. All the hotels charge sixteen shillings a day each, but the Palais is much cleaner, quieter, and more com- foi'table. Medicines, wines, and washing are extra. The Dhobies at Cairo wash pretty well, charging 3s. Qcl. a dozen for ordinary things, but special extra prices for ladies' garments. Cairo is very like Calcutta, only the houses have no veran- dahs. It is more expensive than any Indian city, and the food there is not nearly so good, but after India one can put up with it a little while as it does one good. The air feels dry, very like the air in the Indian plains in the cold weather, but more brac- ing, as thei'e is always a slight breeze from the desert, from which indeed Dr. Gi'ant's house is separated by less than a quar- ter of a mile of houses. A sanatorium was started once actually in the desert close to the Great Pyramid, eight miles from Cairo, but life there was found so intolerably dull that people would not staj' in it. Dr. Grant's house is close to the gardens and the opera. A cafe is near at hand, but it has no music, so the house is quiet at night, while visitors are disturbed at Shepherd's hotel by a cafe cliantant, and at the New hotel, by dogs which congregate and howl in an open space at the back. Invalids should not reach England till after the vernal equinox, for the gales at that time are bitterly cold and very apt to produce congestion of the liver. If they choose to stay at Cairo, Dr. Grant says the heat does not become unpleasant tiU the end of April, and an American gentleman reported that he felt a temperature of 110 ° F. in the shade at Cairo in 1876 much less oppressive than that of 95 ° F. at New York in 1875, the air of Cairo being so dry that, even its summer heat was more tolerable than that of America.