182 
There is one most important point which is sure to 
receive very different judgments, and that is how the 
patients are to be amused, and perhaps those who know 
that various investigations give me constant employment in 
my own room, may think that therefore I do not understand 
its importance, whereas on the contrary I should place it 
above all other medical treatment, and appreciate how 
difficult it is to strike the happy mean by which people shall 
be amused by taking part in amusements without these 
being on so large a scale as to cause fatigue. For my own 
part, I often feel that though my devotion to science causes 
me sometimes to risk my health, yet from the health point 
of view I am amply repaid by being enabled, in the non- 
vitiated air of my own room, to ever find new interests and 
never experience ennui instead of requiring to frequent 
crowded salons and theatres, and breathe the second-hand 
breath of 100 to 200 consumptive patients, but the work 
which to me is a source of health, would to an- 
other be a great danger, and so long as we are so 
differently constituted, and in different stages of illness, 
no rule can be laid down for relaxation. And this 
leads me back to the starting point, and I wish to 
lay stress on my introductory remarks being a strong 
warning against the overgrowth of Davos, and do not 
wish them to be interpreted into meaning that Davos 
is ruined, for what is meant is that Davos must not 
grow any bigger. It would perhaps be presumptuous to 
say that it can never grow, for possibly in the next 10 or 
20 years the great smoke producers — at the head of which 
stands the Curhaus, followed by the next largest hotel in 
the village — may have been taught that they have been 
very uneconomical, and that there is no necessity to pour so 
much smoke into the air, and also some earth system may 
have solved the drainage difficulty and allow a limited 
increase. 
