76 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 63 



are certainly convincing as to the effect of high altitude treatment 

 in the cure of pulmonary tuberculosis/ 



Solly said in 1888, " Taking the medical profession throughout 

 the world, it is unquestionable that a large majority of those who 

 have made a study of the subject believe that where a change is 

 made, a change to an elevated country is the most likely to benefit 

 a consumptive." 



Solly lived for thirty-three years in Colorado after having re- 

 moved, as a tuberculous invalid, from England. Every one of the 

 physicians mentioned above went to Denver or Colorado Springs as 

 a tuberculous patient, recovered his health there, acquired a repu- 

 tation and successful practice during fifteen to thirty years of resi- 

 dence and the majority are alive to-day (1913). Those who died 

 succumbed to other affections. 



According to Solly, 76 per cent of all patients, good, bad and 

 indifferent, and 89 per cent of those in the first stage that undergo 

 climatic treatment in Colorado are benefited. Would such patients 

 as we have mentioned have derived equal and as lasting benefit at 

 Alpine Stations, such as Davos or St. Moritz, which have a corre- 

 sponding altitude and an equal barometric pressure ? Judging from 

 recorded clinical experience, we believe that they probably would 

 have done equally well. We can never know absolutely. Would 

 they have done equally well at sea-level or at very moderate altitude ? 

 None of the physician-patients whose names are quoted would admit, 

 it. 



Dr. Solly, with his inimitable humor once remarked, " If I were 

 living in London to-day, I'd be dead." In all human probability most, 

 if not all of them, are fair examples of the curative power of the 

 Colorado climate. 



Of late there have been dissenting voices, challenging some of the 

 cardinal principles involved in the altitude treatment of tuberculosis. 

 Not only altitude, with its concomitant rarefied atmosphere, but even 

 sunlight itself which lightens the heart of every invalid, have both 

 been denied the value so generally assigned them in tuberculo- 



^ Charles Theodore Williams: Aerotherapeutics, or the Treatment of Lung 

 Diseases by Climate. The Lumleian Lectures, 1893 ; Macmillan, 1894, pp. 

 111-179. 



Charles Denison : Dryness and Elevation the Most Important Elements in 

 the Climatic Treatment of Phthisis (Trans. Amer. Climat. Ass., Vol. i, 

 1884, p. 22). 



