uring a
considerable fraction of the year. Here we have a fully developed season
of periodical rains, beginning usually in June and ending in the latter
part of September. The winter is the dry season, being contrary to the
general rule applying to tropical and sub-tropical areas, and forms,
with the mild temperature, the principal ground for the reputation which
that State has as a resort for special classes of invalids.[B]

The sudden and extreme variations of temperature in this eastern
climatic tract, whether from local disturbing causes, as is not
unfrequently the case, or otherwise, are usually accompanied by cold
draughts of air, chilling and generating all manner of ills, of which
rheumatism and consumption are the separate and highest types.

While it is generally understood that the prevailing winds of the whole
continent embraced within the limits of the United States are uniformly
from the west, still, over this eastern division, counter-winds of a
lower character disturb, modify, and elevate the course of this great
westerly current, giving rise to the exceeding variability of the
surface winds, which, as is well known, may blow within the brief space
of twenty-four hours from all directions of the compass, at almost any
time and point whatsoever.

Changes of temperature, while essential in some circumstances to health,
may be, if of a certain specific character, infinitely damaging, and
such are the cold humid winds from the northeast with easterly
inclinations. These are the dreadful scourges of all the Atlantic slope
above the Carolinas, and there is scarce any portion east of the
Mississippi Valley free from their occasional visitation. In the extreme
southern limits, along the Gulf, and on the Peninsular State, the
poison, so to speak, of this wind, is so far modified by the greater
temperature of these localities as measurably to disarm it of danger;
yet, even in those latitudes, it is to be (during and after a prolonged
storm) avoided by all, and especially weak and enfeebled constitutions.

The cases of consumption found in these warmer climates have been cited
as disproving the heretofore accepted theory that this disease was
limited in range to the middle and eastern portion of the Union; and it
has been further assumed that the liability to its attack was as great
there as at any point further north.

These conclusions have little foundation in fact, as is well known by
all who have taken pa