HEALTHFULNE8S. 149 



all these circumstances favorable to contracting rheumatism, statis- 

 tics show that most of the States have more deaths from this cause 

 than Nebraska. Even California has double the number of deaths 

 from this cause. 



It has sometimes been objected that the extremes of temperature 

 and of other conditions in Nebraska, must be unfavorable to health. 

 There is, however, a great difference between an extreme and a de- 

 structive climate. That Nebraska has no destructive climate, is at 

 once apparent, from the great variety of its vegetable forms and 

 the exuberance of its natural animal life. Extremes of climate up 

 to a certain point, while they may be injurious, and even destruc- 

 tive to the weak individuals of a species, rather benefit the normally 

 healthy and strong. There is a greater variety of vegetable and 

 animal life in the extreme climate of Nebraska than in the more 

 moderate and equatable climate of England. It even favors those 

 gradual changes of specific characters that advance the grade of 

 vegetable and animal life. Compare, for example, the extremes of 

 climate in Massachusetts and Nebraska. In the former, a warm, 

 mild day is frequently changed to a cold one by a moisture-laden 

 wind suddenly blowing from the northeast. These winds blowing 

 there from the cold currents of the Atlantic, that come from the 

 Labrador coast, chill the body to an extreme degree, and too often 

 sow the seeds of consumption and other diseases which are the bane 

 of that region. The character, therefore, of the northeast winds 

 renders the climate there a partially destructive one. The north- 

 east wind, on the other hand, in Nebraska, is dry in autumn and 

 winter, and even in spring and summer, until the June rains come. 

 And then they become laden with the moisture of the already 

 warmed up waters of the Missouri and the Platte. Our moist 

 winds here come from the Mexican Gulf, and are south and south- 

 west, rather than north, east and northeast, as in Massachusetts. 

 Our climate is therefore extreme, without being destructive. Its 

 health conditions are the reverse of those in the Eastern States. 

 Our extremes can be comparable to the Turkish bath, which stimu- 

 lates into activity the functions of the body. 



Nearly everyone who comes into the State feels a general quick- 

 ening and elasticity of spirits. The appetite and digestion improve 

 wonderfully. Mind and body are lifted up. All this occurs even 

 with the execrably prepared food eaten in the most of the rural dis- 

 tricts. For in most of the rural districts, hot biscuit, green with 



