Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444, page 29 by Various Authors
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re benefit to the consumptive than that of the fens of Lincolnshire, or of the marshes of Holland. Brescia, Pavia, Mantua, and other Lombard towns, also share in this character; and at Verona, Mr B. Honan writes, that of all humbugs, the humbug of an Italian climate is the most intolerable.
At Genoa, although the air is pure and transparent in fine weather, it is liable to sudden gusts of wind and violent transitions dangerous to the invalid.
'In no part of England could a climate be found more unfavourable for consumptive invalids than that of Florence, a town built in a deep ravine, almost surrounded by the Apennines, and intersected by a squalid river.... Extreme cold in winter, great heat in summer, the prevalence of the northerly winds, the chilling effects of which are not always neutralised by the antagonistic winds, rapid and violent transitions, profoundly affecting the system, even in healthy persons; and combined with these violent atmospheric and thermal variations are also, in similar proportions, hygrometric and electric ever-changing influences.' Leghorn, the seaport of Tuscany, is built in a sunk locality, in the midst of a marshy country. Beggars, galley-slaves, assassins, smugglers, these are the picturesque portions of the inhabitants; and the promenade is an arid beach, anything but soothing to the respiratory organs. The English cemetery is a touching spectacle, with its numerous monuments of brilliant marble; among which stands conspicuous the tomb of Smollett.
Of Pisa, the grand central depôt of Italy for foreign consumptive patients, Dr Burgess says: 'The excess of humidity and warm temperature of the Pisan climate depress the vital force, induce an overwhelming lassitude, and are, in my opinion, most unfavourable elements in a climate so generally recommended for pulmonary consumption. Whatever effect the humid mildness of the air may have in diminishing excitability, and in allaying pulmonary irritation in patients of a nervous temperament, it is decidedly inju