A Guide-Book of Florida and the South for Tourists, Invalids and Emigrants

by Daniel G. Brinton

I conclude therefore that the most equable climate of the United States is on the south-eastern coast of Florida.

I shall dismiss the second condition in a few words. Moist warmth is soothing; dryness is irritating; every one who has worn a poultice knows this. A moist, warm air, moderately charged with vapor, or even approaching a saturated condition, is therefore, as a rule, most agreeable to the air passages, and the general comfort. In winter, all along our southern seaboard the air is moist; it is sufficiently warm and moist both, nowhere but in southeastern Florida, as the table of winter temperatures shows us.

A moist atmosphere is not always a rainy one. A rainy climate, no matter what other conditions it may have, is a detestable one. Southern Florida has a hot and rainy season from May to September. Everything moulds, and drips, and steams. The rainfall averages every year from forty-five to sixty inches. But nearly all of it falls in the summer months. In December, January and February, two, two and a half, and three inches a month are an ordinary average. This means that the weather is much more generally fair than foul.

The third condition is the prevalence of moderate and regular winds. I have already hinted about the Texan “northers.” Similar windstorms occur throughout the Gulf States. I have felt them disagreeably at Key West, though there the tepid waters of the Gulf of Mexico temper their blasts. Sometimes they blow violently for thirty-six or forty-eight hours. On the southeastern coast of Florida they are both warmed by the Gulf, and lessened in violence by the woods of the peninsula. The winds there are in winter usually north, northeast, and northwest. In summer a breeze from the sea sets in about ten A. M., which often reduces the temperature about six degrees in ten minutes, without causing other than a pleasant sensation. At night a land breeze blows off the land.

The occasional cold winds in winter are an objection from which no part of our southern country is wholly free. Moderate winds are essential to the purity of the atmosphere, and these generally prevail along the Gulf.

The fourth condition of climate is a vital one. I have witnessed the results of months of care destroyed by a single attack of intermittent fever. I have already stated that miasmatic fevers are extremely common in the interior of Florida during the summer and early autumn, but they do not occur on the sea coast during the late autumn and winter.

This is especially true of southeastern Florida. Portions of our army were stationed there during all seasons, for a number of years, and the testimony of the army surgeons is unanimous and most favorable. And let me here remind the reader that the surgeons of the United States Army are thoroughly educated physicians, of unequaled experience in all the variety of climate which our country presents, and who, having no quarter sections to sell, or other axe to grind, give their evidence with the utmost impartiality. Here is one quotation from a report to the Surgeon General, dated at Fort Pierce, on Indian river: “This post has a climate, in every respect, perhaps, unsurpassed by any in the world.” And these are the words of Dr. R. F. Simpson, U. S. A., writing about Fort Dallas, on the Miami, the very spot I have been maintaining approaches nearest the model climate for consumptives: “I have been on duty at most of the posts in Florida, but none compare with this for salubrity.”

The sea coast of south-east Florida, therefore, fulfils the four conditions which make up the best climate for a consumptive. I have other testimony about it well worth presenting. It, too, comes from the same unimpeachable source,—the medical statistics of the United States Army. I preface it by a fact of general interest about the whole of Florida. All know how terribly arduous must be campaigning through the swamps and everglades of that State. Yet the yearly mortality from disease of the regular army there, was only twenty-six per thousand men. The average of the army elsewhere was thirty-five per thousand, while in Texas it rose to forty, and on the lower Mississippi to forty-four per thousand.

But the character of disease interests us most just now. We are inquiring particularly about throat and lung complaints. These army statistics are here of immense value. They specify the diseases of each station. I have taken these four: Consumption (phthisis pulmonalis), bronchitis, inflammation of the lungs (pneumonia), and pleurisy; and have ascertained their relative frequency at various points in the South. Here are the results (omitting fractions): In Arkanzas, each year, one man in every sixteen came under the surgeon’s hands, with one or other of these diseases; on the southern frontier of Texas, also one in sixteen; at Baton Rouge, La., one in seventeen; on the western frontier of Texas, one in nineteen; on the west coast of Florida, one in twenty-one; on the east coast of Florida, one in thirty-nine!

This is confirmation strong indeed. Even in the favored northwest, we may look in vain for anything equal to it. The sick reports of St. Paul, Minn., show one in every nineteen, yearly treated for these complaints.