‘From an examination of the mean distribution of the winds, according to the cardinal points of the compass, indicated by carefully-kept registers for a considerable series of years, we find that they show northerly winds prevailed in summer, southerly in winter, easterly in autumn and winter, and westerly in spring and early summer; and when we recall to the reader what has before been said with regard to the usual want of force of the winds at all times at Pau, he can easily figure to himself how the heats of summer being modified by the northerly wind, the cold of winter shorn of its intensity by the southerly, and the usual biting keenness of spring softened by the prevalence of westerly winds, the climate should act beneficially on the irritable air passages and on the lungs of invalids either predisposed to active disease or which are already a prey to it.’
At another place Dr. Taylor gives a table of death-rates, from which Pau would seem to be at the top of the list for least mortality—as, for example, while in Pau 1 in 45 died annually, in London it was 1 in 40, in Nice 1 in 31, Rome 1 in 25, Vienna 1 in 22½, etc.; and he adds this important statement (p. 94):—
‘In the department of the Basses Pyrénées, in a period of seventeen years, 1777 persons died from 90 to 95, 649 from 95 to 100, and 168 above 100 years of age. In Pau itself, during a period of twenty years, 390 persons died from 80 to 85, 161 from 85 to 90, and 103 from 90 to 100 and upwards. By the last census, there were in Pau several persons ranging from 100 to 104 years of age, and in the department also several centenaires who are described as being still very healthy.’
But I must refer to Dr. Taylor’s work for more information on this and other matters relating to Pau. Besides containing general information relative to the town itself, it deals in its last half with the climate of other places, and particularly affords information relative to the different places of resort in the Pyrenees.
Another book (already referred to, p. 53), by Dr. Frederick H. Johnson, entitled, A Winter’s Sketches in the South of France and the Pyrenees, is similarly devoted to Pau and the Pyrenees, and is written in an interesting, graphic manner.
Mr. C. Home Douglas, in his little work called Searches for Summer, takes a rather different view of the climate of Pau from Dr. Taylor, although opening his observations by saying:
‘Passing from Biarritz to Pau, as we did in the beginning of May, seemed almost like returning to the still sunny climate of the south of Spain. The fresh strong Atlantic breeze—invigorating, doubtless, to many constitutions—gave place to such gentle and balmy air as we used to open our windows to at Malaga.’
Mr. Douglas, not confining comparison to London, compares the temperature of Pau with that also of other places in Great Britain, showing that the sunny temperature of Pau is 4°·1 below that of Helstone in Cornwall, and is under that of Torquay in Devonshire and Valentia in Ireland during the same winter months, and quotes Dr. Otley to the effect that there is greater daily range of temperature at Pau than in England, adding that the nights must be colder at Pau than in the west coasts of Britain, and expresses the opinion that ‘no one who cannot stand severe cold ought to think of going to Pau for the winter; better go to Easdale in Argyllshire. No one so constituted should think of going till March at soonest; April, in my opinion, is early enough.’
Mr. Douglas writes as a meteorologist, and his little volume is a valuable contribution to the consideration of the temperature of the various places of health resort therein mentioned; but the facts stated by Dr. Taylor, even though one is inclined to look with suspicion on medical advocates of special places, show that the value of a place for an invalid may not wholly depend on the records of the thermometer.