Favourite Resort for Consumptive Patients. 85 



breezes of that season, which keep the atmosphere continu- 

 ally at an even temperature; and hence the island is the 

 favourite resort of consumptive patients during the winter 

 season. England, which seems to possess the very unenviable 

 privilege of furnishing to the annual mortality in Europe the 

 most numerous contingent of phthisical patients, provides this 

 island likewise with the greatest number of this, the most to 

 be pitied of all classes of patients. The climate of Madeira 

 will, however, be of little benefit in advanced and decided 

 cases ; although it seems to have a curative effect on young 

 people in the first stage of the malady, as well as in 

 cases where, being hereditary, its presence is merely appre- 

 hended. 



The number of strangers who annually, during the winter, 

 resort to Madeira for the benefit of their health, amounts to from 

 400 to 500, and the money thereby circulated in the island 

 reaches the sum of about £30,000. The number of English alone 

 in the year 1855 was 285. But in the winter of 1856-57, the Eng- 

 lish invalids who came to Madeira scarcely reached 100. The 

 reason of this was another calamity, the cholera, which suddenly 

 made its appearance in Funchal on the 4th of July, 1856. Until 

 this epoch, the island had been spared this devastating scourge 

 of our time. The epidemic is said to have been introduced by 

 a detachment of Portuguese troops, which shortly before had 

 arrived from Lisbon, where cholera was then raging. The 

 circumstances under which this epidemic appeared in Madeira 

 leave little doubt of the correctness of this supposition, and 



