chap, in.] SUMMER. 49 



breath. The cases in which Madeira does real good are those 

 in which a person whose lungs are threatened, or incipiently 

 diseased, repairs thither immediately, and follows out ra- 

 tionally the mode of life prescribed by his doctor, is at home 

 by sunset, abstains from going out to parties at night, does 

 not expose himself to the alternations of weather, to ex- 

 citement, or fatigue : then, with God's blessing, the hand of 

 death is often stayed, the constitution is invigorated, and care 

 and time work out what climate had begun. It is marvel-* 

 lous to see how some people will go to Madeira, as if for their 

 health, and live there in a way which must make the best 

 climate in the world useless. 



SUMMEB. 



The summer in Madeira is said to do the invalid even more 

 good than the winter. No one thinks of remaining in Fun- 

 chal during this season. The residents generally move up to 

 the high lands in the beginning of June, and go down again 

 to the town, for the winter, in the beginning of October. 

 Certain it is, that the benefit of a winter in Madeira is often 

 neutralized by the subsequent summer spent in England. 

 This of course must depend in some degree upon the season. 

 Perhaps our changeable climate, even at its best, is irritating 

 to a system spoilt for it by one so much its superior, till the 

 recovery of health is confirmed by a residence in Madeira 

 of sufficient duration to have rendered it proof against sudden 

 changes. There is perhaps no country in the world, enjoying 

 so much warmth in the winter as Madeira, which is also blest 

 by the absence of oppressive heat in the summer *. 



* Prosper Alpinus, lib. i., cap. 6, in his treatise De Medicina JSgyptiorum, 

 tells us that at Grand Cairo, where he practised medicine, though that city is 

 six degrees distant from the tropics, the air in summer is almost insupport- 

 ably hot, and in winter sometimes very cold. 



D 



