326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was agony, when the same air could be had in his bedroom, with 

 pleasure and safety, by bundling him up and opening the windows 

 and keeping them open. It is against the law to live in cellars, 

 but we make cellars of our rooms by keeping them filled with 

 impure air. I do not inveigh, as it is the fashion to do, against 

 the temperature at which our American houses are kept; a 

 higher temperature is a necessity of our climate ; but some one 

 has yet to secure a fortune and the blessings of mankind by 

 devising a system which will keep our houses always filled with 

 living, moving, fresh air, and that will oblige everybody to attend 

 to this matter as he ought. 



And here I wish to enter an earnest protest against the prac- 

 tice of sending patients, often far gone with consumption or other 

 wasting disease, away from friends and the comforts of home, 

 without knowledge of what would be best for them, in a fruitless 

 search for health, when, in their enfeebled state, better conditions 

 could be instituted at home where at least they could die in peace. 

 Some, not too far gone, do recover, it is fortunately true, but many 

 lie buried there, and more are sent east in long boxes. On my 

 last trip east, a young girl sat in front of me, whose mother's 

 body accompanied her, and opposite me sat a gentleman and his 

 wife whose daughter's body was also in the baggage car. In 

 neither of these instances had the invalids been more than a 

 short time west. Too many such things are happening for the 

 credit of our profession. Send patients, in time, with a definite 

 intention in the change of climate sought, or do not send them 

 at all. 



My object has been to call attention to the many and often 

 difficult questions involved in the therapeutics of climate in its 

 wide and varied significance. Probably no one now lives who is 

 capable of answering all the questions relating to " therapeutics 

 of climate," but they will be answered some day and correctly 

 answered; and when answered it will be found, I believe, as a 

 general thing, that the best climate for consumptives is also the 

 best for other persons in like general physical conditions. Twenty 

 years after our profession more fully realizes the immense value 

 of " climate in therapeutics " and hundreds of capable men have 

 been studying the subject from that point alone, and valuable 

 material has been created to draw upon a climato-therapy may 

 be formulated which will give the divine art of healing a new up- 

 lifting, not less glorious than that which in our day has attended 

 the labors of Pasteur, Koch, Lister, and others whose immortal 

 services have so enriched the world. 



