ould 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 depot 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 injurious in those
of a feeble and lymphatic habit.... The delusion of an Italian
climate, as regards the cure or prophylaxis of tubercular consumption,
is in no part of that country, so delightful to persons in sound
health, more clearly portrayed than at far-famed Pisa. The stagnant
life, the death-like silence, the dreary solitude of this dull town,
whatever utility these elements may have in allaying the restless
irritability of nervous and excitable patients, always produce serious
evils upon those consumptive invalids of a melancholy turn of mind, or
whose spirit is broken by hope deferred. Brooding over their
melancholy condition, in a foreign land, away from the comforts of
home, without the solace and cheering influence of friends and
relations, they soon break down and perish.' M. Carriere and Sir James
Clark consider the climate of Rome adapted only for consumptive
patients in the first stag