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On the Curative Influence of the Southern Coast of England, 

 especially that of Hastings. By William Harvvood, M.D. 

 8vo. pp. 326. London, 1828. Colburn. 



The subjects which the present volume embraces are very im- 

 portant, and calculated, we conceive, to excite great interest 

 m the mind of the general reader, to whom the work appears 

 to have been addressed. 



Climate and medicine are each so powerful in their effects 

 on disease, that we are often led to doubt which is the most 

 active in its operation ; and situations, whose position or other 

 local circumstances give to them an atmosphere of any pecu- 

 liar character, are salubrious, or the contrary, though the 

 causes are often concealed from our view, no great difference 

 being found to exist in the chemical constituents of the atmo- 

 sphere, wherever it has been examined. The present state of 

 our knowledge, therefore, confines our investigations of its 

 varied effects on the constitution, almost exclusively to the 

 quantum of heat and moisture which it contains ; but even in 

 these investigations we are far from finding ourselves free from 

 considerable difficulties, since, in opposition to general princi- 

 ples, we have to encounter the powerful influence of habit and 

 peculiarities of constitution ; an atmosphere which, a priori, 

 might have been supposed equally adapted to two individuals, 

 being often found to suit the one, and not the other. It is, 

 nevertheless, well known, that in many of the most formidable 

 of our diseases, in whatever constitutions they may occur, a 

 higher and more equally natural temperature than that which 

 is usually enjoyed during the colder months of the year, is an 

 important desideratum ; and it becomes, therefore, a question 

 of great interest whether, all circumstances considered, it is, in 

 the majority of instances, more safe to endeavour to obtain 

 this equability and elevation of temperature in our own king- 

 dom, among our own comforts and friends, or to lose the ad- 

 vantages of the latter, by retiring to distant parts of Europe in 

 its pursuit. In the former case it becomes an object of no less 

 interest to the invalid to be made acquainted with the situa- 

 tions which are the most likely to afford it, and what are the 

 natural causes on which it may be supposed to depend ; and 

 on this, as on other accounts, we consider the volume before 

 us highly calculated to prove useful. 



The first part of the work relates to the temperature of coast 

 situations, and it enumerates those circumstances which may 

 be considered as affording to sheltered parts on our own 



