62 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 63 



windows, or by sending him to the islands of the sea, such as 

 Madeira and the West Indies, the medical profession began to be im- 

 pressed with the good results reported from the Rocky Mountains 

 and the plains of the Western states and territories. 



In the rush to the California gold fields in 1849 and in the rapid 

 emigration from Eastern states to Colorado, Utah, California, over- 

 land in the " prairie schooner " and on horseback during subsequent 

 years, the Western country became known for wonderful health- 

 giving qualities. It was not long before Colorado became widely 

 heralded as a health resort for consumptives. English physicians 

 sent their patients to Colorado instead of sending them to Australia, 

 Algiers, or to the Riviera and the results obtained were remarkable. 

 The late Dr. S. E. Solly, who practiced in Colorado for thirty-three 

 years, was sent from London on account of the higher altitude and 

 better air of Colorado, and was one of a large number of English 

 residents who have made their home in that state on account of 

 pulmonary tuberculosis. 



In 1876, the late Dr. Charles Theodore Williams, of London, 

 published his report to the International Medical Congress and in 

 1894 issued his work on Aero-Therapeutics, in which are detailed 

 the histories of 202 consumptives who were sent to Colorado at an 

 altitude of 5,000 or 6,000 feet. They represented a residence of 350 

 years at this elevation and the results were exceedingly satisfactory. 



Jourdanet, a French physician practicing in Mexico, published two 

 works, one in 1861 and one in 1875, which undertook to explain the 

 influence of barometric pressure and, incidentally, why, on the plain 

 of Anahuac, 6,000 feet in elevation, there is an entire absence of 

 pulmonary phthisis.* 



Jourdanet aided the great French physiologist, Paul Bert, in estab- 

 lishing costly apparatus for investigating the physiological action of 

 compressed and rarefied air and Paul Bert's classic work is an 

 accepted authority on this subject. Later studies by Mosso and 

 Marcet ^ should be noted, but it is impossible here to give more than 

 passing notice. They show that a diminution of the barometric 

 pressure increases the respiration rate and the volume of air respired, 

 but if allowances are made for the increase of volume of the air 

 at the lower pressure, the actual volume respired is less. Conversely, 



* D. Jourdanet : Influence de la Pression de TAir, Paris, 1875. Herrera 

 and Lope: La Vie Sur Hants Plateaux, Hodgkins Prize Memoir, 1898. 



"An American Text-Book of Physiology, Phila., 1901, Vol. i, p. 434- 

 Angello Mosso: Man in the High Alps (Der Mensch auf den Hochalpen, 

 Leipsig, 1899), Translation by E. L. Kiesow, 1898. 



