Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/568

564 Dr. Wm. C. Bailey, who is doing such excellent work with consumptives at Las Vegas, N. M., informs me that the yearly average of humidity at his altitude is 40 per cent. The average at Denver is about 50 per cent, at 70 degrees temperature. When we consider the great and rapid changes of temperature at such favorable locations, and think of the wide range of relative humidity experienced even in the course of one day, we see at once that the engineer at Limair, starting with his great caverns of air of a uniform temperature, and uniform percentage of relative humidity, has a simple problem to solve in keeping the sanitarium at an equable temperature, and in what is considered the normal percentage of relative humidity. Attempts are now being made to furnish hospitals and large public buildings with these desirable conditions of a dustless, cool air, of uniform temperature and humidity; but while the problem is theoretically possible, the outside conditions are such as to make the undertaking one of such expense as to be impracticable.

The practical side of this question from a therapeutic view-point appeals to those familiar with throat and lung diseases. For hay fever, asthma and all bronchial affections, not tuberculous, these conditions are ideal, and for patients of this class have already given excellent results. We can not imagine conditions better calculated for the preservation of infant health during the hot summer months, when the rapid atmospheric changes of our cities play such havoc with their powers of resistance to intestinal infections.

We now know the relatively minor rôle that the tubercle bacillus plays in the destruction of the consumptive patient, and the great advantage of placing the early tuberculous process in an air free from dust and the secondary bacterial invaders. We know how injurious to some patients are the climatic changes of a sea voyage, or of the seaside resort, and how badly others react to a change of altitude. Here we have an abundance of cool, pure air rapidly circulating in sunny rooms easily kept at constant conditions of temperature and humidity. Consumptives are not taken at this sanitarium, but I think it is only a question of time when those afflicted with tuberculosis of the air passages may enjoy the benefits to be derived at Luray and other caverns of the world by living in houses modeled after Limair.