Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/691

Rh maps, furnished by the Signal-Service Bureau to the Colorado State Medical Society, at the time that they gave the series illustrating absolute humidity. This is a series of four maps, representing in color and by seasons the amount of cloudiness existing throughout the United States. They show that Denver was in the region of greatest sunshine for the autumn and winter of the year 1882, while in the spring months of the same year the greatest amount of sunshine was found in lower Arizona, and the country immediately surrounding it.

This clement of sunshine, as affecting the ability of an invalid to lead an out-of-door life, can not be too highly estimated. That most eminent authority, Dr, Austin Flint, in speaking of the good to be derived in cases of consumption from a life out of doors, writes, "It is probable that to this source much of the benefit derived from change of climate is to be referred." Certainly the experience of every practitioner of medicine, who has had much to do with treating the disease, will bear out the assertion of the distinguished writer, and it may safely be said that, cæteris paribus, a patient's recovery will depend very largely upon his ability to lead an out-of-door life.

So well recognized a principle is this, that our medical journals nowadays are teeming with instructions to patients, who, for lack of means or other cause, are unable to take a change of climate, as to how they can best lead out-of-door lives at home, going so far, in some instances, as to advise them to wrap up warmly and sit in an open window, where they can get sunshine and fresh air without a draught.

Finally, stress is laid on the fact that Davos is in a sheltered valley. Without going into details, for it is not necessary to enumerate such places, it may be stated that there are towns situated at various elevations among our mountains and foot-hills, so sheltered as to be very free from winds, and adapted to receiving both the direct and reflected rays of the sun.

If it be admitted, then, that the Davos climate is the ideal one for a consumptive—and the writer of the article referred to, together with many European authorities, seems to regard it as such—we think that we have clearly proved that, as regards the elements of great elevation above sea-level, a minimum of watery vapor in the air, a clear sun, a clean atmosphere free from zymotic germs and fog, and a sheltered position, Colorado fills the bill as completely as does Davos itself.

—It may not be out of place now to refer to the charges that some writers have preferred against this climate. One throws it up against us that we have high winds, which cause our visitors to complain. Another says, "The enormous monthly and also diurnal range of temperature must severely try any man." While a third,