466 THE MOUNTAIN. 



residence from a crowded city to the open country, or from a cold, 

 exposed part of the country to a warmer and more sheltered situa- 

 tion ; from a confined, humid valley to a dry, elevated district, or the 

 reverse, would produce very sensible effects upon the human body ; 

 and we find by daily experience that such is the case. 



" The marked improvement of the general health, effected by the 

 transition from the city to the country, even for a short period, is 

 matter of daily remark ; and the suspension, or even cure, of various 

 diseases by a removal from one part of the country to another, is an 

 occurrence that must have come within the observation of every one. 

 It may suffice to mention here, in reference to this fact, intermittent 

 fevers, 'asthma, catarrhal affections, hooping-cough, dyspepsia, and 

 various nervous disorders. These diseases are often benefited, and 

 not unfrequently cured, by simple change of situation, after having 

 long resisted medical treatment ; or they are found to yield, under 

 the influence of such a change, to remedies which previously made 

 little or no impression upon them. If such marked effects result 

 from a change of so limited a nature as has just been noticed, it 

 might be expected that a complete change of climate, together with 

 the circumstances necessarily connected with it, should produce still 

 more important results in the improvement of the general health, and 

 in the alleviation and cure of disease. In this expectation we are 

 also borne out by experience. 



"My own experience has been sufficient to satisfy me, that, for the 

 prevention and cure of a numerous class of chronic diseases, we 

 possess, in change of climate, and even in the more limited measure 

 of change of air in the same climate, one of our most efficient remedial 

 agents ; and one, too, for which, in many cases, we have no adequate 

 substitute. Again, in dyspepsia, and disorders of the digestive or- 

 gans generally, and in the nervous affections and distressing mental 

 feelings which so often accompany these ; in asthma, in bronchial 

 diseases, in scrofula, and in rheumatism, the beneficial effects of cli- 

 mate are far more strongly evinced than in consumption. In cases 

 also of general delicacy of constitution and derangement of the sys- 

 tem in childhood and in youth, which cannot be strictly classed un- 

 der any of these diseases ; and in that disordered state of the general 

 health which so often occurs at a certain period of advanced life, 

 climacteric disease, in which the powers of tlie constitution, both 

 mental and bodily, fail, and the system lapses into a state of prema- 

 ture decay, change of climate becomes a most invaluable remedial 

 agent." 



This comes indorsed by the wisdom of ages. Hippocrates 

 and Galen are here, and much that the tireless efforts of 



