Davos as a health resort : a handbook / containing contributions by A.F. Bill, M.D., A. Brecke [and others] and introduction by W.R. Huggard.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Davos as a health resort : a handbook / containing contributions by A.F. Bill, M.D., A. Brecke [and others] and introduction by W.R. Huggard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    359/370 (page 309)
    necessity taught to be scrupulously careful of his own personal well-being. He learns the importance of weight and temperature, and sometimes in an evil hour begins to study his complaint, a laborious and unwholesome research which leaves him sadly discontented to know so much and understand so little. He yields times without number to the temptation to converse on the subject which is uppermost in his mind. As to any social instinct, his duty to his neighbour hardly extends beyond the safe disposal of his sputa. In varying degree he tends to be- come captious, querulous, selfish, cowardly, hypochond- riacal. Hence to bring him under an influence which re- vives the lessons of his schooldays is no slight gain. But there is secondly an entirely opposite danger in the case of those who from the outset flatly refuse to fall into line with any confessed system. Those who of all others most need the restraint of a sanatorium are the most resolute in declining it. The most ardent apostle of types and stages must admit that there are many to whom it is not given to lead the classified life. This stubborn humour may prove a valuable asset to the patient, if he can be induced to interest himself in some healthy form of life. The mis- take lies in seeming to do too much for him. In the pursuit of sport for pleasure he will often make as good a recovery as a more orthodox patient. There have been of late years many articles in maga- zine and newspaper concerning Alpine sports. Some of these articles are only thinly disguised advertisements: but there is nevertheless such a sufficiency of more gennine literature by able exponents, whole-hearted lovers of the sport of which they write, as renders any detailed des- cription within the limits of the present endeavour as superfluous as it would be presumptuous. The subject is