NO. I AIR AND TUBERCULOSIS — HINSDALE 59 



between June i and December i. But this patient adds the signih- 

 cant remark : " However, it seems ridiculous for me to find fault 

 with Mount Pocono when I did so well there. My cough and expec- 

 toration decreased considerably ; I gained five pounds and grew 

 somewhat stronger."* 



At Rutland, Massachusetts, the site of the Massachusetts State 

 Sanatorium, there were 24 days with fog for the year ending Novem- 

 ber 30, 1907. Nevertheless, out of 4,334 cases of pulmonary tubercu- 

 losis treated since its opening, 43.39 per cent of cases were arrested 

 or apparently cured, and in addition, 47.38 per cent were improved." 



From what has been said, it is, therefore, not surprising that 

 claims are made that there is a noticeable difiference in the character 

 of fogs on the New England Coast.* Dr. Bowditch has described 

 the fogs on the Maine Coast as sometimes " dry fogs." " The light 

 vapory mist which drives in frequently from the sea has no definite 

 sense of moisture as it strikes the face, and in the midst of it the air 

 frequently feels dry. In the vicinity of Mount Desert, the presence 

 of the mountains has, doubtless, an effect upon the quality of 

 the atmosphere, and would partly account for what is often spoken 

 of — the effect of sea and mountain air combined. Its peculiar dry- 

 ness, even though on the coast, has been often so marked that I 

 have frequently thought that certain phthisical patients, who need 

 a dry bracing atmosphere, might improve there, although I have 

 never quite dared to recommend it for such cases." 



SEA AIR FOR SURGICAL TUBERCULOSIS 



Halsted, of Baltimore, however, has recorded a favorable result 

 in a case of tuberculous glands of the neck, treated simply by an out- 

 door life on the Maine coast. The patient was a young lady of 

 seventeen, whose cervical glands were actively inflamed and softened, 

 the overlying skin having rapidly reddened and thinned during a 

 treatment of six hours a day out of doors at a seashore further 

 south. No operation was done, but she was sent to the Maine 

 coast and lived out-of-doors day and night for four months. At the 

 end of this period no one could tell, from the appearances, which 

 side had been affected, and Halsted remarked that, to surgeons whose 

 daily bread not long ago was tuberculous glands of the neck, such a 



* Journal of the Outdoor Life, February, 1908, p. 15. 



^ Eleventh Annual Report, 1907. 



'Vincent Y. Bowditch, Trans. Amer. Climat. Ass., 1897, p. 25. 



