Meteorology practical and applied / by Sir John Moore.

  • Moore, John W. (John William), 1845-1937.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Meteorology practical and applied / by Sir John Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    what an important hearing the study of weather-phenomena should exercise on the practice of Medicine. Two thousand two hundred years ago Hippocrates wrote : “ Whoever wishes to study the healing art properly must do this—first, he must attentively consider the seasons of the year,” etc.1 In his other writings, also, he often recurs to this subject. Celsus, again, in the second book of his treatise, De Medicind, says : “ Saluberrimum Ver est: proxime deinde ab hoc Hiems, periculosior HSstas, Autumnus longe periculosissimus ”—a state- ment which to this day is true to the letter as regards Southern Italy, where the words were penned. What can be more graphic than his description of the effects of a north wind, or as we may say of a “ nor’-easter ” : “ Aquilo tussim movet, fauces exasperat, ventrem adstringit, urinam supprimit, horrores excitat, item dolores lateris et pectoris, sanum tamen corpus spissat, et mobilius atque expeditius reddit!” There is reason to believe that the suggestions thrown out by these illustrious Greek and Latin physicians were allowed to remain almost a dead-letter. Certain it is that their doctrines as to the close relation of Meteorology and of Climatology to Medicine became dimmed by the rust of time, and were neglected or forgotten. Within comparatively recent years, however, a keen interest has been awakened in the subject. Every registered medical practitioner who enters His Majesty’s service is required to study the broad facts relating to meteorological observation, and afterwards is called upon to aid in building up a science of climat- ology. Men like Edmund A. Parkes and Ballard in England, Stark and Sir Arthur Mitchell in Scotland, Quetelet in Belgium, Pettenkofer and Buhl in Germany, have studied the weather, and published researches on it and upon its bearing upon health. And now Meteorology, than which no science is more closely analogous to that of Medicine, takes its proper place in the curriculum and in the examination for the Diploma in State Medicine, Public Health, or Sanitary Science, which has been made a registrable qualification under Section 21 of the Medical Act, 1886 (49 and 50 Viet., cap. xlviii.). ^ Hepi 'Kiptiiv, TS&tw, Tiwivv. — “ '\y)TpiKT)v Sorts fiovXerai opOws ^r/retV, rade XPV iroteiv irpwrov pkv t rOvphoOan t&s wpas rod Sreos,” k.t.X. 1—2