CHAP. 1.—WHEN IS A CHANGE OF CLIMATE ADVISABLE?
In these days when the slow coach of our fathers has long been discarded, and steam and lightning are our draught horses, the advantages to health of a change of climate should be considered by every one. It is an easy, a pleasant, and a sure remedy in many a painful disorder. Need I fortify such an assertion by the dicta of high authorities? One is enough. “It would be difficult,” says Sir James Clark, M.D., whose name is familiar to every physician in connection with this very question, “to point out the chronic complaint, or even the disordered state of health which is not benefitted by a timely and judicious change of climate.”
Let me run over this catalogue of maladies and specify some in which “fresh fields and pastures new” are of especial value. All anticipate the first I mention—pulmonary consumption,—that dreaded scourge which year by year destroys more than did the cholera in its most fatal epidemics. Even those who lay no claim to medical knowledge are well aware how often the consumptive prolongs and saves his life by a timely change of air; they are not aware—few doctors with their diplomas are aware—how much oftener this fortunate result would be obtained were the change made with judgment, and the invalid to lend his own energies in this battle for life which his constitution is waging against disease. How to make this change with judgment, and how to employ these energies, these chapters are intended to inform him.
The watchword of the battle is: Courage. It is, indeed, not rare to see those who should have been left at home to die surrounded by home comforts, exiled by their wearied physician, or dragged by the ignorant solicitude of friends, late in their disease, to some strange land, there to meet their inevitable fate, deprived of the little luxuries so useful to them, served by unsympathizing strangers, far from the old, familiar faces. There are others who go early enough, and are earnest in their efforts to husband their flagging powers. But they have chosen a climate ill-adapted to the form of their complaint, they know not the precautions they should take, they have omitted provisions of essential value, in fine, they “die of medicable wounds.”
These examples should not discourage others. The medical science of to-day gives its strongest endorsement to this maxim: Consumption is cureable, IF TAKEN IN ITS EARLY STAGES. And in its cure, change of climate is an essential element. Nor does science hesitate to go farther. Even when the lungs are decidedly affected, even when the practised ear of the physician detects that ominous gurgling sound in the chest which reveals the presence of a cavity in the lungs, it still says Hope. We know that even then there is a good chance for life in many cases. Often the disease has invaded but a very circumscribed portion of lung and all the remainder is healthy; sometimes having gone thus far it seems to have spent its malignant powers, and rests for years, or disappears altogether; often under the genial influence of appropriate climate and regimen, the ulcer heals and health is restored.
Bronchitis is another complaint which calls for change of air. There are persons who contract a cough regularly at the beginning of every winter, which disappears only with the warm spring days. They hawk, and expectorate, and have pains in the breast, and a sore and tickling throat all the cold months. This is bronchitis, chronic bronchitis. Clergymen are very liable to it from neglect of precautions in using the voice. It is quite common among elderly people, and often paves the way for their final illness. In young persons it portends consumption. Nothing so effectually dispels it as a winter in a warm climate. I speak now from my own experience.
There is a disease not less common, hardly less formidable, often more distressing, more repulsive, than consumption. It is scrofula—that taint in the blood by which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto and beyond the third and fourth generation. It often throws around its victims the charms of a strange beauty and a precocious, spiritual, intelligence. But the wise physician regards with anxious forbodings these signs so prized by loving friends. Here, too, a total change of air, diet, surroundings, is urgently, often imperatively, demanded.
One of the banes of our raw, damp atmosphere is rheumatism. It is painful, it is common, it is dangerous. In recent years we have learned that a fatal complication is alarmingly frequent in this complaint—organic disease of the heart. In examining for life insurance, we enquire particularly if the candidate is rheumatic. If the answer is affirmative, three times out of four we detect some unnatural action in this great centre of life. Now, it is well known how beneficially a warm, equable climate acts on sufferers with this malady. Let them, therefore, be warned in time to seek this means of prolonging life.
There is a complaint which makes us a burden to ourselves, and too often a nuisance to our companions. It is not dangerous, but is most trying. I mean dyspepsia, a hydra-headed disease, wearing alike to mind and body. The habits of our countrymen and countrywomen predispose them to it. In our great cities it is exceedingly prevalent. It, too, is always relieved, often completely cured by traveling—and often nothing but this will cure it.
The same may be said of those states of nervous and mental exhaustion, consequent on the harrassing strain of our American life, our over-active, excitable, national temperament. This exhaustion shows itself in the faltering step, the care-worn expression, the disturbed nutrition, in palpitation, in irritability, in causeless anxiety, and a legion of similar symptoms. Doctors call it paresis, and say that it is a new disease, a visitation of nature upon us for our artificial, unquiet lives.