CLIMATE AND HEALTH. 3 i 7 



quality and energy of the other meteorological influences. There 

 is another fact which has come under my personal observation 

 which must be taken into consideration. It is that life in those 

 elevated nonmicrobian regions is not without its drawbacks. 

 Whether it is due to the increased action of the heart in the 

 rarefied atmosphere, the constant hammering of the nerves by 

 the winds and the fierce sunshine, or all these and other causes, 

 people in those regions have a thin and tired look, and it is found 

 useful and often necessary, especially in cases of women and 

 children, to visit lower, damper, and more germ-laden regions in 

 order to recuperate. It is important that the air we breathe 

 should contain as few disease germs as possible ; but it is still 

 more important that we should breathe an air and live under 

 such climatic conditions as shall most conduce to such general 

 bodily vigor as will resist the entrance of disease germs into the 

 organism, or destroy them if an entrance is once effected. It is 

 quite conceivable that a dry atmosphere containing few microbes 

 may be too dry for an irritable mucous membrane, and set up 

 catarrhs which may furnish nesting places for disease germs ; 

 while a moister, softer air, though holding many more microbian 

 elements, may be more advantageous, at least in certain cases. 

 In these latter days, in the wonderful strides which have been 

 made and are constantly being made in bacteriology, perhaps we 

 are in some danger of losing sight of meteorology in its relations 

 to health and disease. It seems to me that climatology has here- 

 tofore to a large extent resolved itself into a search for some 

 place where consumptives can not die. There is no such place. 

 There is no place where the ever-present bacillus may not get in 

 its deadly work. The chief question in climatology in its rela- 

 tion to health should be, " In what climate, or by what changes 

 and influences of different climates, can we be best invigorated 

 for good existence in the location where we are obliged to live 

 the greater portion of our lives ? " Many other causes besides 

 tuberculosis men die of. Among civilized people, especially 

 among our pushing Americans, debility, nervous exhaustion in 

 one form or another, from overactivity of brain or body, render 

 multitudes asthenic and vulnerable to the invasion of disease. 

 We say that such cases need to be "toned up." This is un- 

 doubetdly true, but there are many cases in which the first step 

 in " toning up " should properly be to tone them down. By that 

 I mean that it is necessary to diminish the unnecessary expendi- 

 ture of energy which has become a fixed habit of life. We all, as 

 a rule, are too prodigal of our resources, and squander vast quan- 

 tities in excess of what the occasion requires. It is amazing to 

 see people, intelligent about ordinary things, traveling for their 

 health at a rate that suggests that they have been shot out of a 



