I now gave the Viburnum every two hours, with directions to take rest for a number of days.

She continued quite well, not meeting with any symptoms other than those she had experienced in her former pregnancies, except that there was no perceptible change in her size or form, as she advanced in gestation.

She made the necessary arrangements to be confined about the 12th of October; but on the 17th of September previous, after washing her kitchen floor, she was suddenly taken in labor, and in about four hours was delivered of a foetus, which, as near as I should judge, could not have been more than three and one half months advanced. From the condition and history of the case, I am convinced that the fœtus was retained in utero from April 25 until Sept. 17 without any perceptible change in its development.

The mother was kept in bed ten days following confinement, during which time the lochia was about the same in quantity and quality as is generally met with in such cases; but her complete recovery was protracted to nearly three months.

I have since met with five or six other cases of the same class, which have yielded promptly to the action of Viburnum.

RAMBLING THOUGHTS ON CLIMATOLOGY.

BY DR. W. B. CHAMBERLAIN, WORCESTER, MASS.

[Read before the Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society, Oct. 9, 1878.] WE often show an inclination to crawl out of a tight place in dealing with our patients, and prescribe a change of climate just as an old-school practitioner prescribes a dose of physic. Like him, we think it the proper thing to do, but if called upon for a reason for the faith within us, we might not find it an easy thing to give. A prominent Boston surgeon has given form to the thought when he says, "This girl has asthma. There must be some place where you can breathe; mouse around and find it." I would start off with this proposition, that when we advise a change of climate, a change of locality of ten miles, or even of only one mile, is often more beneficial than one of a hundred or a thousand miles. I have often observed in my own practice

that persons suffering from certain forms of disease, as throat or lung trouble, living upon a clayey soil, were always benefited by a removal to another part of the city, where the soil was gravelly. To illustrate, I recall the case of a professor of music who had been under old-school treatment for a long time, and was at last told that if he wanted to live through the winter he must go South. By the solicitation of friends he was induced to seek my advice. He was then living on a clayey soil. I recommended a change in certain of his habits, and a removal to another quarter of the city, less than a mile distant, but of a gravelly soil. The improvement in his health was rapid and permanent, and for the past ten years he has attended to the duties of his profession, working about sixteen hours a day.

During the winter of 1866 I was called to see Mrs. M., a widow forty years of age. I found her living in a cellar, suffering severely from both uterine and lung disease. Without entering into particulars, I will only state that during the two preceding years she had had seven abscesses in the left lung, from which had been discharged quantities of pus, varying in each case from a gill to a pint in a few hours. I had her removed from her cellar room to the floor above, which improved the case a little. She was too poor as well as too sick to be moved away. In the spring of 1868 she changed for what I deemed a somewhat better locality. After being many times. better and worse during the next two years, she was able to change again, where the house was high and on gravelly soil. She had not been in the new locality more than six or eight weeks before she was able to speak aloud, a thing she had not done before for four years. In a few months she had so much improved that she was able to take a few boarders, by which means she has been enabled to get a livelihood for the last seven or eight years. She has never since been able to go into the neighborhood where she was first taken ill and remain for two hours, without losing her voice again. She has tested it repeatedly and always with the same result, viz., a temporary loss of voice.

Advising a change of climate and sending patients away for particular troubles is largely experimental. The difficulty of prescribing for such is not only a lack of knowledge of the cli

mate to which we send them, but of the effects of such a climate upon different temperaments and constitutions. The latter will invariably have to be taken into consideration, and requires as much judgment and skill as to prescribe a homoeopathic remedy. In an article upon Scientific Climatology in the "United States. Medical Investigator," Dec. 1, 1877, Dr. B. W. James says, and well says: "A case that would be killed by a residence in Colorado or Minnesota might be cured on the Bermuda Islands or on the Barbadoes or at Madeira, while one that would speedily die with hemorrhage or prostration in Florida or Texas, on account of the moist, warm, relaxing air there, might be greatly benefited in Colorado or some of the valleys of California, or might be so amenable to treatment in a climate like that of some parts of Minnesota as to be cured, and remain so, unless the patient returns to his or her original home."

For reliable data to guide in a suitable selection in each case we need the recorded experience and observation of many physicians. Without this to guide us, there is nothing left but to rely upon experiment. The patient himself can generally tell in a week or two whether or not the change is for the better, often a day or two decides it. A gentleman who had chronic bronchitis had spent three winters in the Southern States, one in Europe, one at the Azores (Fayal), and one in California, in pursuit of health, with only partial success, having been merely able to keep the disease from growing worse. In the early summer after his return from California, while here in Worcester, he had occasion to visit an adjoining town and spend some weeks on business. He had been there but a short time when he found his throat growing better, and after being there a month or six weeks, decided to remain so long as his health improved. The next spring he found himself so nearly well that he bought a farm and settled there, and has become a robust and healthy man. This less than ten miles from Worcester in the unclassical town of Paxton !

This, doubtless, has been the experience of many physicians, and much material might be collected bearing upon this point. I am not aware that any special effort has been made to tabulate the result of such experiments. I have noticed in some journal of late, a proposition to institute "weather provings." What we

want in this connection is a system of climate provings, in which the unfavorable, as well as the favorable, results shall be noted. It would also be essential to have a written record of the exact condition of the patient, both before and after the experiment.

Statistics of climate have also been very unsatisfactory. We have formerly been told that persons suffering with bronchitis and consumption should go West, to some indefinite place; later to Minnesota; still later the endless number of consumptives has been sent to California, more especially to Santa Barbara, well named, for it is one of the most barbarous for lung troubles. Now the journals are full of the praises of Aiken, S. C., and it is particularly fashionable to send such patients as are able there or to Florida, to spend the winter. In the paper already quoted, Dr. James says, "It is time that the habit of sending invalids to a place for mere fashion's sake was broken up, and that a judicious selection of climatic resorts be made by those who have given the matter particular care and study, etc." Let us hope the time is near at hand when physicians will cease to send consumptives from home only to die. Patients should not be sent from home who are not able to travel easily and comfortably.

Men interested to sell lands-unscrupulous speculators — have taken great pains to tell of equable climates. They give a certain number of degrees as the temperature, and say the thermometer rarely varies from this average temperature either way more than 10° or 12°. These statements may, in general, be true between 7 A. M. and 6 P. M., but they carefully forget to tell what many a careful observer has seen, that between 5 A. M. and 7 A. M. the temperature not unfrequently changes between 30° and 40°. I have seen it change 40° between 6 A. M. and 7 A. M. These interested writers upon climate forget to tell that they are afflicted with very heavy fogs and bleak winds; they carefully evade the truth about the cases that are not benefited. If one in a hundred is benefited while there, they have the fact blazoned to the world, under the name of correspondence, through as many Northern and Eastern papers as will publish their one-sided statements. Now the question arises in one's mind as to how we shall get the truth about these matters. We were told that Minnesota had a very dry climate, and so it had when this story was told. We had a very dry climate all over the North during the

war. That period is still spoken of in Minnesota as the three years' drought. Minnesota still has a dry climate, that is, certain portions of the State, especially the high table-lands of what is called the interior, meaning the country remote from the great rivers. The annual rainfall of the valleys, where all thelarger cities are located, is nearly twice that of the high tablelands. This is because the summer showers have a trick of following the river-beds. Consumptives were sent to Minnesota by hundreds, only to die. Most of them went to the cities and large towns along the rivers, and so avoided the dry climate. When winter overtook them, then most of them found they had only left the frying-pan for the fire. The summer temperature of Minnesota is about like that of Pennsylvania, but in the winter it more nearly resembles that of Greenland. Few of us would recommend our consumptive patients to spend the winter in Greenland!

This brings us to the question of one climate for summer and another for winter. And here, I may say, we can condense the whole thing into a nutshell. Any climate which permits persistent outdoor life is the climate for consumptives above all others. Probably no climate can be found which has not some disadvantage. We want to know the drawbacks as well as the advantages of each locality, and then we can govern ourselves accordingly. Those who go from the East to Minnesota generally suffer more or less severely from neuralgia or rheumatism. Catarrh is very prevalent there, while in some parts of the West it is comparatively unknown, Texas, for instance. Mr. Beecher went to California, this season, to escape hay-fever. He says, "Hayfever, in its regular course, was not developed west of Council Bluffs. Yet what provocation did it receive! I rode in dust and cinders, by day and by night; I was out in glaring sunlight, in chill fogs, sleeping in all sorts of rooms and beds. All in vain ! No sneezing, no crying, no irritable membranes, no asthma, no nothing, but good health and spirits, reinvigoration, and an increasing avoirdupois."

By consulting the charts of Walker's Statistical Atlas of the United States, based on the results of the ninth census, we find that the following-named localities enjoy the greatest comparative immunity from consumption, viz. : A small area in the ex