NO. 1 AIR AND TUBERCULOSIS — HINSDALE 49 



These hospitals are said to be closed in winter. (Brannan.) Every 

 other country in Europe, with the exception of Turkey and Greece, 

 has one or more seashore sanatoria for tuberculous children, so that 

 there are as many as seventy-five such hospitals on the shores of 

 Europe. The Argentine Republic has two seashore sanatoria, one 

 established twenty-three years ago with three hundred beds and a 

 new one with five hundred beds. 



The plan of treatment at all these institutions is very simple and 

 ought to have been carried out on this side of the Atlantic long ago. 

 The brilliant experience at Sea Breeze, Coney Island, is simply due 

 to a repetition of the methods adopted for decades in France and 

 England. The regime at all these sanatoria is about the same. The 

 patients are kept out of doors all day on the beach or on verandas, 

 which are covered but are open on the front and sides. Four meals 

 a day with unlimited milk are provided. All through the winter 

 the children occupy themselves on the grounds or on the beach ; those 

 confined to bed are on the open porches enjoying the sunshine and 

 the sea air, the best tonics in the world, and developing a ruddy 

 color and better general circulation than they have ever known. 

 Their warm hands in the coldest winter weather is the wonder of 

 all who visit them. At night the windows are wide open and the air 

 has practically the same temperature as at any point on the coast, 

 varying from 12° to 40° F. If the snow drifts in at night, as some- 

 times happens, nobody seems to be the worse. The windows are, 

 however, closed for a half hour morning and evening while the chil- 

 dren are being washed and dressed. 



The surgeons at Berck-Plage, although engaged in active ortho- 

 pedic work, are all firmly convinced that residence at the seashore, 

 with the greater part of the twenty-four hours spent in the open air, 

 does more for the children than could be accomplished even in the 

 best appointed hospitals in the cities.' One of the surgeons at Mar- 

 gate, after fifteen years of constant work in the wards, states his 

 opinion that the knife plays a very secondary part to climatic and 

 general influences. 



For an institution of this kind to attain the highest efficiency one 

 thing seems plain ; the patients must be admitted at a very early age, 

 not from six years old and upwards, but as early as two years of 

 age. In this respect the French and American sanatoria have the 

 advantage of the English. The point has been made that at six years 



* Each year during the early part of August vacation clinics are held, which 

 are attended by large numbers of French and foreign physicians. 



