Doctor Solly has an extensive practice in Colorado Springs and the neighbourhood, and is reputed to be, I should think justly, the first medical man there. What he says, therefore, on the advantages of the Sanitarium deserves every attention, the more so that he honestly points out, in more than one place, the individual conditions which are more likely to receive harm than good from a residence on such high, dry table-land.
I will now proceed to make extracts from the combined book of Mrs. Dunbar and Doctor Solly, and as, in a medical point of view, it explains much, I will first set out the preface to Doctor Solly's work in extenso.
"A committee appointed by our citizens having requested the County Medical Society to select one of their number to write an article, for general publication, upon the qualities of this locality as a health-resort, the choice fell upon me, and the following pages have been written to comply with this request. The opinions therein expressed are set forth upon my individual responsibility, and not as being the combined outcome of the views of the County Society at large. I am, however, indebted to my colleagues for several valuable suggestions and points of experience, but with respect to a subject so complicated as Climatic Influences the saw applies 'Tot homines, tot sententiæ.' Nine years ago I resigned the practice of medicine in England to try the influence of the Colorado climate upon my health, with satisfactory results, and the opinions and statements here advanced are founded upon my experience and observation as a practitioner of medicine in this locality for the last nine years. The article being limited did not permit the publication of clinical records or extended discussion of the many interesting problems referred to, but is put forward as an effort to assist physicians and their patients in answering the often recurring question of the wisdom of a change to Colorado, from some safe standpoint and not merely from hearsay reports unsupported by evidence or reasonable inference. Viewing this subject of Climate as resting upon a scientific basis, and not alone upon empirical knowledge gained in particular regions, I have followed the plan of first stating the facts and opinions that are generally known or accepted concerning the features and essentials of climates in general, and their influence upon the healthy body; secondly, giving the general features of elevated climates and their effects both in health and disease, and finally, comparing these general effects with the special effects observed in this particular locality. Thus I have endeavoured to show good reason for the faith that is in me, by connecting this fragmentary study of climate with the whole great subject of climatology."
"S. Edwin Solly."
"Colorado Springs, 1883."
Colorado Springs is thus described by Mrs. Dunbar.
"Pike's Peak Range is the most eastern spur of the Rocky Mountains, taking its name from the Peak itself, which rises high above the rest, viz. 14,150 feet above sea level. This eastern sentinel of the vast Rocky Mountain system has its advance-guard directly in front. Cones, peaks, and great shapeless masses of rock, terminating to the south in Cheyenne Mountain, and in the north in a long chain of lower mountains. Twenty-five miles north from base of Pike's Peak, a ridge of hills, 8000 feet high, called the Divide (the water-shed between the Arkansas and Platte river), shoots out into the east for seventy-five miles, its blue-black outline cut sharply on the northern sky. Nearly 100 miles away the sharp eye will detect the outline of the Spanish Peaks almost upon the New Mexico line.
"Out from this semi-circle of hills and mountains stretch the great plains beyond the distant eastern horizon; not suddenly and in one smooth slope, but foothills and small broken mesas end in scattered and irregular bluffs, these gradually blending and losing themselves in the billowy rolling country, which makes up the eastern plains of Colorado.
"On one of these small mesas, close to the foothills and within the first line of bluffs, is situated Colorado Springs, on a level with the summit of Mt. Washington, in New Hampshire, 6000 feet above the sea.
"Neither nature nor art could design and lay out a more finished and beautiful spot for a town. Nature has made the grading perfect for streets and sidewalks, for drainage and for irrigating ditches. The whole town appears perfectly level, but the mesa has just enough descent towards the south and east to take water from the main irrigating ditch as it enters the town from the north-west, and carry it freely throughout the whole city on each side of every street; four of the main streets and avenues have twelve miles of open boxed ditches about two feet wide running in absolutely straight lines. The lawns and gardens are graded and laid out to correspond with the grade of the ditches, from which they are flooded once a week by a box ditch running under the sidewalk.
"The town was founded in 1871 by a colony composed mostly of gentlemen from Philadelphia who were then projecting and building the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad from Denver. The town plat is three miles long and two wide, laid out in blocks four hundred feet square, separated by streets one hundred feet wide, and every third street an avenue one hundred and forty feet wide. These streets and avenues are bordered by rows of flourishing cottonwoods, twenty-five feet apart, that greedily drink the water running over their roots through the spring and summer. The grass on the sides of these small irrigating ditches is green all summer and sprinkled with bright blossoms, and, with the grateful shade of the cottonwoods, makes pleasant walks through the city, which is full of beautiful homes.