THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OP HEALTH 7 



who have had no opportunity of judging its merits. 

 When all is said for and against, it remains true that 

 the British summer, like its winter, makes for health 

 because of its freedom from extremes. The scourge 

 of consumption is almost entirely due to the unwisdom 

 of the people, and not at all to the rigour of the climate. 

 Even to-day, when hygienic knowledge is growing 

 from more to more, how frequently do we find people 

 in railway carriages, for instance excluding the pure, 

 health-giving air, and voluntarily poisoning themselves 

 with the miasmatic exhalations of each other ! How 

 many times have I pleaded for one window to be opened 

 just a little way, only to be told that a draught was 

 dangerous, deadly, and other skittles of the same kind ! 

 These are the people who spend an ocean passage 

 wrapped up as if they were in the Arctic, and never 

 give the lovely health-bringing wind a chance to blow 

 on them. 



It is the principal function of the ocean to give 

 space for the collection by the winds of ozone, of 

 oxygen, and hydrogen, all destroyers of disease germs, 

 all inimical to the waste products of humanity in their 

 original form ; and it is the prime function of the winds, 

 when thus loaded with disease- resisting and disease- 

 destroying germs in the place where alone they may 

 be produced in all-sufficient quantities, to bear them 

 swiftly whither they are most needed. What the 

 chemical process is, by means of which these disin- 

 fecting or deodorizing gases are generated in the wide 

 expanse of ocean, need not here be considered any 

 more than the method by which the wind is raised 

 which conveys them to their destination. It is surely 

 sufficient for our present purposes to admit with great 



