Meryon, more natives die
annually of consumption than in any town in England of the same amount
of population. In Genoa, one of the most prevalent and fatal of the
indigenous diseases is pulmonary consumption. In Florence, pneumonia
is marked by a suffocating character, and rapid progress towards its
last stage. In Naples, 1 death from consumption occurs in a mortality
of 2-1/3; while in the hospitals of Paris, where phthisis is
notoriously prevalent, the proportion is only 1 in 3-1/4. In short, in
all the celebrated sanatoria to which we fly for relief, we find the
disease as firmly established as at home.

If we examine the analogies presented by the history of the inferior
animals, we find no argument in favour of a foreign climate. The
fishes, birds, and wild beasts of one region, die in another. 'Man,
although endowed in a remarkable degree, and more so than any other
animal, with the faculty of enduring such unnatural transitions,
nevertheless becomes sensible of their injurious results. For familiar
illustrations of this influence, we have only to look to the
broken-down constitutions of our Indian officers, or to the emaciated
frame of the shivering Hindoo who sweeps the crossings of the streets
of London. The child of the European, although born in India, must be
sent home in early life to the climate of his ancestors, or to one
closely resembling it, in order to escape incurable disease, if not
premature death. Again, the offspring of Asiatics born in this country
pine and dwindle into one or other of the twin cachexiae--scrofula and
consumption; and, if the individual survives, lives in a state of
passive existence, stunted in growth, and incapable of enduring
fatigue. If such extreme changes of climate prove obnoxious to the
health of individuals having naturally a sound constitution, how are
we to expect persons in a state of organic disease to be thereby
benefited? In fact, view the subject in whatever light we may, we must
eventually arrive at the natural and rational conclusion--that nature
has adapted the constitution of man to the climate of his ancestors.
The accident of birth does not constitute the title to any given
climate. The natural climate of man is that in which not only he
himself was born, but likewise his blood-relations for several
generations. This is his natural climate, as well in health as when
his constitution is broken down by positive disease, or unhinged by
long-continued neglec