Aiken as a health station : a contribution to medical climatology / by W.H. Geddings.

  • Geddings, Wm. H. (William H.), 1838-1892.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aiken as a health station : a contribution to medical climatology / by W.H. Geddings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    AIKEN AS A HEALTH STATION. A CONTRIBUTION TO MEDICAL CLIMATOLOGY, BY W. H. Geddings, M. D., Aiken, S. C. Reprinted in part from the Charleston Medical and Surgical Journal. Few branches of therapeutics are less understood, and no article of the materia medica is prescribed more empirically than climate. From the time that the great physician of Cos published his renowned treatise on air, water, and locality, much has been written on climate; but it has been only in comparatively recent times that an effort has been made to adapt its many varieties to the treatment of those diseases in which they are especially indicated. The time, we trust, has arrived when the patient will demand of his physician some- thing more definite—not to say more rational—than the man- date to go South. That section is very extensive, and pos- sesses many climates, differing widely among themselves, with peculiarities as marked as those which distinguish New York from Newfoundland. In that vast tract there are resorts varying in height from a few feet above the sea level to sev- eral thousand ; dry, cold, and bracing resorts, with a winter mean of 380 F.; and others, moist, warm, and relaxing; moun- tain climates; insular climates,and other varieties too numer- ous to mention. The illness of a member of the writer's family compelled him, some seven or eight years ago, to seek a home in this region, and having selected Aiken as a place of residence, he has made its climate a special study. For the past five years he has made tri-daily observations with improved meteorological instruments, following rigidly the instructions furnished by the Smithsonian Institution, and United States Signal Service. In the following pages he pro- poses to give the result of his labors, trusting that they may aid his brother practitioners in selecting a winter home for such of their patients as they may determine to send South. Our knowledge of the mode of action of even the most generally employed articles of the materia medica is at best but limited, and the achievements in that important branch