Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/329

Rh quality and energy of the other meteorological influences. There is another fact which has come under my personal observation which must be taken into consideration. It is that life in those elevated nonmicrobian regions is not without its drawbacks. Whether it is due to the increased action of the heart in the rarefied atmosphere, the constant hammering of the nerves by the winds and the fierce sunshine, or all these and other causes, people in those regions have a thin and tired look, and it is found useful and often necessary, especially in cases of women and children, to visit lower, damper, and more germ-laden regions in order to recuperate. It is important that the air we breathe should contain as few disease germs as possible; but it is still more important that we should breathe an air and live under such climatic conditions as shall most conduce to such general bodily vigor as will resist the entrance of disease germs into the organism, or destroy them if an entrance is once effected. It is quite conceivable that a dry atmosphere containing few microbes may be too dry for an irritable mucous membrane, and set up catarrhs which may furnish nesting places for disease germs; while a moister, softer air, though holding many more microbian elements, may be more advantageous, at least in certain cases. In these latter days, in the wonderful strides which have been made and are constantly being made in bacteriology, perhaps we are in some danger of losing sight of meteorology in its relations to health and disease. It seems to me that climatology has heretofore to a large extent resolved itself into a search for some place where consumptives can not die. There is no such place. There is no place where the ever-present bacillus may not get in its deadly work. The chief question in climatology in its relation to health should be, "In what climate, or by what changes and influences of different climates, can we be best invigorated for good existence in the location where we are obliged to live the greater portion of our lives?" Many other causes besides tuberculosis men die of. Among civilized people, especially among our pushing Americans, debility, nervous exhaustion in one form or another, from overactivity of brain or body, render multitudes asthenic and vulnerable to the invasion of disease. We say that such cases need to be "toned up." This is undoubetdly true, but there are many cases in which the first step in "toning up" should properly be to tone them down. By that I mean that it is necessary to diminish the unnecessary expenditure of energy which has become a fixed habit of life. We all, as a rule, are too prodigal of our resources, and squander vast quantities in excess of what the occasion requires. It is amazing to see people, intelligent about ordinary things, traveling for their health at a rate that suggests that they have been shot out of a