as great, if not greater, chances of recovery than that of either of the former countries, provided a proper locality be selected."

Of Malta he says-"I do not remember ever to have felt the sensation of cold so acutely in England as I have done in Malta during a dry north-westerly or north-easterly wind. In the Naval Hospital in that island the deaths from consumption in 1842 were 30 per cent."

Of Montpelier and Marseilles the same authority says "There is no part of France where the disease is so prevalent among the native population, in the latter especially, where the ravages of the disease among both sexes are very great."

Nice "All practitioners, native and foreign," says Dr. Balbirnie," acknowledge the prevalence of consumption in Italy. More natives die of consumption in Nice than in any town of the same population in England. M. Vallery declares that the climate "hastens the end of persons attacked by pulmonary consumption," and affirms that it is "the last place to which a foreigner labouring under tubercular phthisis should resort."

·Italy-Dr. Pollock says of Lombardy that "a locality equally injurious to persons suffering from consumption could not be found in any part of the United Kingdom or of central Europe." He says that Genoa and Florence are specially unsuitable for the consumptive, the one being liable to sudden gusts of wind and violent transitions of temperature, the other to extreme cold in winter and prevalence of northerly winds. Rome and Naples are equally unfavorable as a residence for the consumptive, and the fact that in the former city there is a consumptive hospital speaks for itself.

Madeira--Dr. Renton declares that of those who are sent to, and remain at, Madeira with suppurating lungs, nearly all die, and in as short a time as they would have done at home, and very probably much quicker. Dr. Mason, who lived at Madeira two years, and spent his time in making minute meteorological observations, arrived at conclusions very damaging to

its reputation as a resort for consumptive patients. He describes the climate as no more to be relied on than any other place for certainty of fine weather; that it was saturated with humidity during the greater part of the year, much more so than even London; its high temperature enabling it to contain a larger amount of moisture, it was even more prejudicial to the human constitution; that its dampness was such that it was impossible to keep iron in any form from being rapidly oxydised; that deliquescent substances were rapidly saturated with moisture; and that consumption and scrofula were frequent among the natives-a point remarked by other physicians.

East Indies-Dr. Green says "I have seen so much misery in private families, and so much harm in the public service, arise from the false views that prevail respecting scrofula and consumption being benefited by a tropical climate that I feel bound to state my conviction that Bengal, at any rate, is most inimical to these diseases. I have seen medical men, clergymen, officers in the service, &c., who have told me, when surprised with the fatal turn of these diseases, that they expected to get well here. I have seen young and beautiful European ladies carried off with appalling celerity. I have seen quite young soldiers who, if they do not quickly die, are sent home wholly unfit for this or any other service. I have visited Penang and Singapore, nor can I think, from my observations there, that they in any way retard the fatal issue of consumption."

Dr. Mason gives it as his conviction "that Nature has adapted the constitution of man to the climate of his ancestors," and entirely condemns change of climate for the consumptive constitution. He contends that change of air at home will effect whatever good climate can effect in consumption. "The population of cold climates evince no peculiar liability to scrofula or consumption, nor do those hot climates evince any peculiar exemption." British soldiers in Canada are even less affected with those diseases than in the West Indies, where consumption is more rapid among them than at home. Consumption is rare in Greenland, Lapland, Iceland, and

Russia-countries which ought to be rife with the disease, if simple inclemency of climate has aught to do with its causation.

The records of the British army show the extra frequency of consumption in southern regions as compared with northern. The proportions of attacks at the various stations is thus given

Jamaica, 13 per 1,000; West Indies, 12; Bermuda, 9; Canada, 6; United Kingdom, 63. And in the United Kingdom the mortality from tubercular disease is not greater in the cold than in the warm seasons of the year.

In short, as Dr. Balbirnie sums up :

"Every end the consumptive patient seeks in going abroad may be obtained at home, without the expense, hardship, peril, inconvenience, and the severance of life's best ties that attend expatriation.

"The grand desideratum in the matter that which gives expatriation any advantage it ever claimed-is not change of climate, but change of habits and of Hygiene. This is the point to be insisted upon when we talk of the agency whereby consumption is to be arrested.

"In whatever place, by whatever system of treatment, a patient is permitted to live more in the open air, and to breathe a purer atmosphere -to take more exercise-to cultivate a healthier activity of the grand excretory functions of the body, the skin, lungs, and bowels-to live freer of disquieting cares and anxieties, and to follow out a more carefully planned diet and regimen than heretofore-there he will run the most certain chances of cure. These are the things implied in a change of climate the conditions on which alone hang the hopes of cure."

From these considerations it will be understood that the soundest and kindest advice it is possible to give patients is, that they should remain at home-that, eschewing all physicquackery, those who possess the means should at once, without loss of valuable time, select some Hydropathic establishment where under skilful treatment their disease may be certainly arrested, perhaps completely eradicated, when taken in its incipient stages. Patients may be assured that the Bath far more than supplies all that change of climate was ever assumed to be capable of yielding—that infinitely greater relief is certain to be derived from it in all diseases, even the most malignant and in their worst stages, than from the most genial climate

and the most artful manipulation of physic; while its curative properties are incomparable.

"It is absurd," says Dr. Tucker, "to send consumptive patients to hot climates when they can have higher temperatures at home, at less expense to their physical strength and pecuniary circumstances. When under the beneficial influence of a Hot-air Bath of a temperature to suit each particular case, they can have in two hours more impurities of blood removed from the system, through the skin, than could be removed in a two months' residence in a warm climate.”—The Reformed Roman or Oriental Baths, p. 30.

Besides, it is totally impossible for any climate, no matter how genial it may be, to do for an invalid what the Bath has proved its capability of accomplishing. A foreign residence, in addition to other discomforts, necessarily involves more or less of physical fatigue, if not of mental anxiety, and this at a time, too, when the patient's vitality should be most carefully husbanded. The Bath, on the contrary, never causes physical fatigue, while its influence on the mental state is most soothing and salutary-it always strengthens and exhilarates.

Wisely guided, then, patients will seek relief at some Hydropathic establishment at home, where they will enjoy home comforts, and have combined with the Bath all the healthgiving resources of scientific Hydropathy. They may repose implicit confidence in the assurance, that by such means alone can predispositions to disease, and disease itself, be successfully encountered, overcome, and cured. Failing Hydropathic means, consumption, like some other forms of disease, is absolutely incurable by art, and patients should reflect on this, for what is curable up to one stage becomes incurable when that stage is passed. Let not valuable time be wasted in the miserable and fatal folly of aggravating disease and lessening the chances of recovery by following the destructive process of physic doctoring—a course against which common-sense and sound physiology alike protest most vehemently.

CHAPTER XXV.

Legislative provision for the voluntary establishment of Baths, etc. -The Acts permissive and inoperative-Sanitary Legislation ought to be compulsory-Duty of the Government.

THE utility of Baths as public institutions has been incidentally referred to, and the Legislature more than twenty years ago acknowledged the duty of making provision for their establishment: In 1846 an Act (9 and 10 Vict. cap 74) was passed for England, to encourage the voluntary establishment of public Baths and Wash-houses, and in the same session a similar Act (cap 87) was passed for Ireland. The preamble sets forth that "it is desirable for the health, comfort, and welfare of the inhabitants of populous towns and districts" that such institutions should be established, and power is given to corporate bodies by voluntary assessment to raise funds for that purpose. In England some Baths were erected under the Act, but the Irish Act has remained a dead letter.

It was not till ten years after the passing of these Acts, that the Oriental Bath was revived by Dr. Barter, and its extension throughout the United Kingdom assuredly has done a great deal to promote "the health, comfort, and welfare of the inhabitants of populous towns and districts," but all that has been done is utterly insignificant in comparison with what remains to be done in order to afford anything like proper bathing accommodation for the great bulk of the population.

In 1866, under the panic of a threatened Cholera invasion, The Sanitary Act (29 and 30 Vict. cap. 90) was passed for the United Kingdom, and under the 23rd section power is conferred on local authorities to provide a proper place and the necessary