CHAP. II.J HEALTH. 79 



and to a certain extent the anticipation appears to be 

 correct, but it by no means justifies the assumption of 

 general immmiity. Though less obnoxious to specific 

 disease, debility and delicacy are the frequent results of 

 habitual seclusion and avoidance of the solar light. 

 These, added to more obvious causes of occasional illness, 

 suggest the necessity of vigorous exertion and regular 

 exercise as indispensable prophylactics. 



Children.-^, suitably clothed, and not injudiciously 

 fed, children may remain in the island till eight or ten 

 years of age, when anxiety begins to be excited by the 

 attenuation of the frame and the apparent absence of 

 strength in proportion to development. These symptoms, 

 the result of relaxed tone and defective nutrition, are to 

 be remedied by change of climate either to the more 

 lofty ranges of the mountains, or, more providently, to 

 Europe. 



Effects on Europeans already Diseased. To persons 

 already suffering from disease, the experiment of a resi- 

 dence in Ceylon is one of questionable propriety. Those 

 of a scrofulous diathesis need not consider it hazardous, 

 as experience does not show that in such there is any 

 greater susceptibility to local or constitutional disorders, 

 or that when these are present, there is greater difficulty 

 in their removal. 



To -those threatened with consumption, the island 

 may be supposed to offer some advantages in equability 

 of temperature, and the comparative quiescence of 

 the lungs from the reduced necessity for respiratory 

 effort. Besides, the choice of climates presented by 

 Ceylon enables a patient, by the easy change of resi- 

 dence to a different altitude, avoiding the heats of one 

 period and the dry winds of another, to check to a great 

 extent the predisposing causes likely to lead to the de- 

 velopment of tubercle. This, with attention to clothing 

 and systematic exercise as preventives of active disease, 

 may serve to restrain the further progress though it fail 

 to eradicate the tendency to phthisis. But when the 



