116 ON CHANGE or CLIMATE. 



EFFECTS ON CONVALESCENTS AND ON DISEASE.* 



A DIEEICULTT naturally presents itself in discussing thd 

 effects of the climate on the European constitution, when im- 

 paired by disease or long residence in India, to avoid tech- 

 nicalities, and render a subject, so purely professional, inter- 

 esting, and instructive, to the general reader. With a view* 

 to avoid as much as possible this difficulty, I shall content 

 myself, after premising a very few general observations and 

 hints to invalids on their first arrival, with very briefly stat- 

 ing the results of my experience in the more important In- 

 dian diseases, and, as immediately deduced from this, with 

 making a classification of those which are likely to benefit 

 by immediate change to the hills, as distinguished from 

 others which require the premisal of a sea-voyage. 



Section 1. — Geneeal Obseeyations. 



On change of climate. 



The effects of change of air in disease are too well known, 

 and too generally admitted, to require discussion here. We 

 are as yet totally ignorant of the manner in which the fa- 

 vourable change is operated, and in the present state of our 

 chemical knowledge, unable, as we are, to detect the difference 

 between the heated impure steam of a crowded hospital, and 



* These remarks, with a few additions and corrections, are extracted 

 fi-om a paper read before the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta 

 in 1831. Further experience has fully confirmed the views therein ex_ 

 pressed, and has enabled me to speak with more confidence on certain 

 points. 



