ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY AND OZONE. 467 



rheumatic and other pains, as well as incite mental distress and dis- 

 couragement. 



This fact, concerning which some have been skeptical, is as demon- 

 strable as any general fact of the kind can be, and the opportunities 

 for testing it among the nervous patients in this country are excep- 

 tionally abundant. Sensitive patients are oftentimes prophets of the 

 weather; without error they can predict, even twenty-four hours be- 

 forehand, an approaching northeast storm, and, before a rising thun- 

 der-squall, they are sometimes excessively miserable. There are those 

 who are utterly prostrated before and during a thunder-storm, thrown 

 into vomiting and convulsions ; and these spasmodic disruptions are 

 followed by hours or days of exhaustion. 1 



Now, it is just before thunder-storms that the atmospheric electri- 

 city is so apt to be negative, and during a thunder-storm the changes 

 in the electrical condition are very rapid. 



At the Sussex County Insane Asylum, in England, the chaplain of 

 the institution made for several years a series of experiments which 

 showed very clearly that attacks of epilepsy and mania correspond, 

 in a very large number of instances, to changes in electrical and other 

 conditions of the air, and he believes that electricity is the main factor. 



There is nothing strange in all this, for all naturalists know that 

 many plants predict storms with wonderful precision hours before 

 they appear. Man, with his exalted and complex nervous system, and 

 especially civilized man, is far more impressible than any animal or 

 flower. 



It is not wise nor scientific nor humane to despise these subtile, 

 storm-anticipating pains from which our patients suffer. If these are 

 not real, nothing is real, and all existence is a delusion and a sham. 

 They are as truly realities as small-pox, or typhoid fever, or a broken 

 leg, and should be considered accordingly. When, therefore, the 

 Danbury News man dedicates his almanac to that distinguished col- 

 laborator and weather predicter, the inflammatory rheumatism, he is 

 as scientific as he is funny. 



4. The beneficial effects of sea and mountain air on invalids may 

 be explained in part, if not largely, by the fact that there is more 

 ozone in the sea-air than in the land-air, and more ozone and more 

 electricity in high than in low altitudes. 



In elevated regions the air is, of course, rarer than in low-lying re- 

 gions, and the quantity of oxygen inhaled must, of necessity, be less 



1 These nervous perturbations, in their various degrees, have seemed to me to be 

 sufficiently frequent and distinctive to entitle them to be regarded as a separate disease. 

 To this disease I have given the name Asiraphobia. A brief description of this disease, 

 "with cases and remarks, can be found in Beard & Kockwell's " Medical and Surgical Elec- 

 tricity," p. 604. Strictly speaking, it comes in the category of affections allied to hysteria, 

 like agoraphobia that Westphal has described. Astraphobia is more common in women 

 than in men, though I have seen it in both sexes. The tendency to the disease appears 

 to run in families. 



