Doctor Smith remarks,[[10]] “that incipient and tubercular phthisis, usually attended with more or less hemoptysis, is one of the most common pulmonary affections known in Lima and other parts of the coast of Peru.
“Besides, it is a disease almost certainly cured if taken in time, by removing the coast patient to the open inland valley of Jauja, which runs from ten to eleven thousand feet above the sea level.
“This fact has been known and acted upon from time immemorial by the native inhabitants and physicians, and I have,” observes that physician, “sent patients from the capital to Jauja, in a very advanced state of phthisis, with open ulcerations and well marked caverns on the lungs, and have seen them again after a lapse of a little time, return to their homes free from fever, and with every appearance of the disease being arrested; but in many instances it would, after a protracted residence on the coast, again become necessary to return to the mountains, to prevent a recurrence of the disease.”
We thus learn from the preceding extract, that the influence of the atmosphere in the mountains of Peru will remove pulmonary consumption in its first stage, and arrest its progress when far advanced. That such is the fact, I can also myself vouch from my own experience during a residence of sixteen years in that country.
Dr. Jourdant remarks,[[11]] “that consumption is very rare in high elevations, which is not to be attributed to the latitude of the place, but to its elevation; that Mexico and Puebla, which are almost free from this disease, are in the same latitude as Vera Cruz, where it prevails; and that the condition of the patient who suffers from consumption is considerably relieved in elevated districts, which he attributes to a less amount of oxygen in the rarified air.”
From these facts we can assert with safety, that those who unfortunately suffer from incipient tubercular phthisis, will almost with certainty obtain a cure in the mountainous districts which extend at a higher or lower elevation from the province of Cordova to the valley of Rimac, whilst, on the other hand, those in the later stages of that malady will find it will be arrested, and that their lives will be prolonged for years.
It becomes a matter for most serious consideration, whether it would not be well for patients suffering from pulmonary complaints to seek the renovation of their health in these salubrious regions, in preference to the Island of Madeira, Italy, and the South of France, where these diseases are known to originate, and where hundreds have gone to without obtaining any advantages, and many with positively evil results.
“There is something,” says Mr. Burkhardt,[[12]] “like the sound of a death-knell in the physician's mandate sending the sick patient to those places and scenes where so many fellow-sufferers have preceded him, in vain search for health, and found—a grave.”
The invalid will not find this in these healthy districts. In the mountains of Cordova, as well as on the Andine Heights, the patient will find his disease alleviated, and in time removed, (let him come from what quarter of the globe he may) by the hand of Nature. There pulmonary complaints are never known to originate, and there those who suffer from it, on the borders of the Parana and the River Plate, seek and find a permanent cure for their ailments proceeding from all affections of the lungs. “He will not have before his imagination the phantoms of numberless victims, his predecessors in the same hopeless career, to cast the shadow of death upon a being already depressed in mind by disease and loneliness, and pining after the familiar sights and sounds he may perhaps never hear again.” There, on the contrary, he will be in the midst of all that is grand—a thousand magnificent objects will excite his attention, and divert his mind from his unhappy malady, on which he will not dwell, but, on the contrary, on well founded hopes of a perfect recovery and a speedy return to his family and friends.
We believe, that when the benefits to be derived from a residence in the climate of these mountains are more generally known in Europe, very many who suffer from pulmonary complaints will visit these regions for a renovation of their health and system.