vapor-bearing strata of air, condensation is produced, rain descends and moisture increases, so that on the ridge at Highlands, at an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet, the record, irregularly kept for the first three months of this year, indicates for fifty days in those months a mean of 80, and for the entire month of April, one

of 90.

Lest any reader who is unacquainted with the subject should be misled by the table which I have given, I will add that a distinction exists between absolute and relative humidity. Absolute humidity is the number of grains of water to the cubic foot of air, while relative humidity expresses the relation of this water to the capacity of the air for retaining it, this being proportioned to temperature. The table is one of relative humidity.

Having had an opportunity to observe through several months a hygrometer that indicated absolute as well as relative moisture, I can testify that the former also is low.

THE REGION FOR CONSUMPTIVES.

While consumptives in the North are rushing to the lowlands of the South, those in the Southern lowlands seek the uplands of Georgia and of North and South Carolina. No inconsiderable number can be found on the Chattahooche Ridge, or in a similar region in South Carolina, or among the mountains of the three States mentioned, who, threatened with death from consumption, fled from the lowlands, and recovered health in these higher regions.

I have seen from Atlanta, at an altitude of 1,200 feet, to Seneca City, S. C., at about the same altitude, consumptives from the extreme North, and from the hot, humid lowlands of the South, alike improved, fully sustaining an allusion which I made to it in a tract on Western North Carolina, which I wrote some ten years ago, and in which I mentioned it as the most healthful part of the Appalachian region. Consumptives that will not improve on the Chattahooche Ridge during the colder half of the year and on the seaward slope from the base of the Blue Ridge during the warmer half, will not be likely, unless in exceptional cases, to improve anywhere.

It would not be difficult to suggest some points in which the climate might be improved. But as a place of resort for invalids

Northeast Georgia is not surpassed, possibly not equalled, by any other region in the United States.

Northeast Georgia has a soil that readily absorbs rain, it offers an altitude of 1,100 or 1,200 feet in the colder, and one of 2,000 or 3,000 in the warmer part of the year; its climate is neither excessively hot in summer nor excessively cold in winter; and it has an atmosphere of considerably less than ordinary humidity. Of a region in South Carolina, hardly as pleasant, Major De Forest, who was military commandant there after the war, writes:Neither in Europe nor [anywhere] along the shores of the Mediterranean have I found a temperature which during the year round was so agreeable."

SMALL RATIO OF CONSUMPTION.

The ratio of mortality from consumption is small throughout this region. This I have verified in the country and in the smaller towns. And for Atlanta, the chief city of the region described, I have the testimony of physicians whose word is conclusive. Dr. Logan came to this city in 1856, and he has practised here the most of the time since. His professional position may be judged from the fact that he was chosen by his brethren in Atlanta to welcome the American Medical Association to the city. Dr. Logan informed me that he had seen not more than a dozen cases of consumption that originated in Atlanta. Drs. Owen and Crawford, physicians of reputation, told my son, the latter that he had seen but one in fourteen, the former that he had seen none in ten years. Many consumptives can be cured in Northeast Georgia, especially if their physicians will warn them to leave home in season, and will instruct them that they are not cured as soon as they begin to feel comfortably well, that the deposit is still in the lungs, and that in order to induce absorption of this deposit, both protracted change of climate and continued use of remedies are necessary.

If any physician wishes further information, I will cheerfully give it. I have also written a pamphlet, giving a somewhat particular description of this country. The writing of the pamphlet was a purely gratuitous work, prompted by a desire to make known in the North a most salubrious region, one eminently as a place for Northern people to settle. As I could not afford to publish the pamphlet, which was an amplification of an article which I

began for the "Investigator," but enlarged too much for its pages, I applied to the managers of the Air Line Road to do so, and to make gratuitous distribution of it. To this they readily consented. Any reader of the GAZETTE will receive a copy on sending me his address.

MORE ABOUT FLORIDA.

Since writing my article on the climatology of consumption. (September Gazette, p. 193), I have seen a eulogy on Florida, by Dr. Frederic D. Lente, representing Florida on the Executive Committee of the Centennial Medical Commission. He says that when the temperature was in the eighties, he heard invalids "complaining from day to day . . was gratified when the mercury showed sixty-nine at the same hours on the 16th, to hear their expression of relief and to see their entire change of manner." One would think that Dr. Lente might have reasoned to the conclusion that a climate where the mercury does not climb into the eighties in the winter might prove still more favorable to invalids, and that he might, without putting a great strain on his intellect, have asked himself the question, whether a temperature usually below sixty-nine in the warmer part of the day might not prove still more beneficial.

Long experience has taught me that most consumptives do best when the weather is cool enough (or nearly so) for frost at night. Even those who are unduly sensitive to cold, and who complain of it in such weather, acquire appetite ånd strength, and experience general improvement. Having received a considerable number of invalids from Florida, I have had opportunities for noting and contrasting the influence of the climate of Northeast Georgia as compared with that of the Peninsular State, and the results have all been in favor of the former.

In the comparison, nothing has been more noteworthy than the diminished hardiness of constitution induced by the climate of Florida, and the increase of vigor conferred by that of Northeast Georgia. Even the very small proportion who had felt an increase of comfort in the climate of Florida found themselves debilitated.

[NOTE.-In Dr. Gatchell's previous article in the GAZETTE, on page 197, 11th line from the bottom, for "mortality from consumption " read "mortality from pneumonia." On page 199, 19th line, for "winters " read "northers."]

THE NEW ENGLAND MEDICAL GAZETTE.

BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1879.

Oliver WendeLL HOLMES a few weeks ago celebrated his seventieth birthday. The daily press teemed with appropriate eulogistic notices and congratulations, as had previously been the case when Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier attained the same age. We are very glad that this custom has been inaugurated, because we hope, Providence permitting, to live the allotted time of threescore and ten years ourselves; and as Dr. Holmes has, in at least one of these instances, expressed his appreciation of the happy recipient of congratulations, we, following his example, desire to put on record our estimate of him.

Candidly, leaving aside his denunciations of homœopathy, we heartily concur with the almost unanimous opinions recently expressed in the newspapers as to the high rank which must be assigned to him. His originality is remarkable. His novels, so different from the common run, all written with a deeper design than merely to while away a leisure hour; his ever-interesting Autocrat series, under the guise of light reading compelling some, who would never think of such diet without the fancy cooking, to swallow sober thoughts which do not seem distasteful even to them after once having been taken in; his poems, which are always so graceful, sometimes bubbling over with wit, sometimes enlivened with sly digs of sarcasm, sometimes filled with pathos, sometimes simply pretty, always appropriate to the occasion, always readable; his lectures on anatomy at the Harvard Medical School, which we, who heard them as students, regarded as coming just about as near perfection as any such lectures could come, the accurate delineation of the structures of the human body, which naturally grows more or less irksome if too monotonously persisted in, being every now and then enlivened by some brilliant sally, which flashed among the dry bones like a streak of lightning in a lead colored sky, relaxing the sober strain of the mind, and enabling it, thus relieved, again to attack the real work with zeal,- all these, coming from one man, certainly show him to be a genius. But who ever knew the mind of a genius to be perfectly rounded, if the normal shape of the human mind is spherical? (In fact, we must confess to a painful consciousness of a slight flattening at the poles in our own case, in another direction, however.)

man.

Dr. Holmes himself, in his well-known lectures on "Homœopathy and its Kindred Delusions," delivered about forty years ago, when we were as yet, to quote Holmes's own words, "scarcely more than uterine possibilities," can hardly speak too highly of the many intellectual and moral qualities of the renowned Bishop Berkeley. He approvingly quotes Sir James Mackintosh's eulogy of him as follows: "Ancient learning, exact science, polished society, modern literature, and the fine arts contributed to adorn and enrich the mind of this accomplished All his contemporaries agreed with the satirist in ascribing 'to Berkeley every virtue under heaven.' Even the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent Atterbury said, after an interview with him, 'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman."" And yet Holmes discovers in Bishop Berkeley this singular weak spot, that he regarded Tar-water as almost a universal panacea for the ails of mankind; and he sarcastically gives an account of the ridiculous Tar-water mania, in order to draw a parallel between it and homoeopathy. Now, would it be very presumptuous to suppose that the great Oliver Wendell had at least one weak spot in his intellectual make-up? For the benefit of those who have not recently reread the lectures already alluded to, we quote a little from near the end: "Such is the pretended science of homoeopathy. . A mingled mass of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, and of artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in practice, if we may trust the authority of its founder, with heartless and shameless imposition. Because it is suffered so often to appeal unanswered to the public, because it has its journals, its patrons, its apostles, some are weak enough to suppose it can escape the inevitable doom of utter disgrace and oblivion. Not many years can pass away before the same curiosity excited by one of Perkins's Tractors will be awakened at the sight of one of the Infinitesimal Globules. If it should claim a longer existence, it can only be by falling into the hands of the sordid wretches who wring their bread from the cold grasp of disease and death in the hovels of ignorant poverty."

Perkins's Tractors lasted about fifteen years: homoeopathy has lasted already not very far from eighty years. Therefore, perhaps we and our colleagues are the "sordid wretches " referred to in the above pretty little quotation. Forty years ago, when Dr. Holmes wrote, homœopathy in this country was so weak that probably not more than one in a thousand of the population had ever heard the word. Now, instead of "the inevitable doom of utter disgrace and oblivion," we are comparatively such a mighty force that— but as our readers are mostly