Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/200

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
190
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

being worth going every day to see. The air is pure, dry, and balmy, from the all-encompassing pine woods, through which radiate many walks and diversified drives in all directions. There are half a dozen different kinds of churches, and several considerable hotels. The "Piney Woods Hotel" and the "Mitchell House" are large, new, and first-class. The former has a frontage of over four hundred feet, is three stories high, and with broad piazzas front and rear. It will accommodate three hundred guests, has all the modern accommodations and improvements, except an elevator, and is so thoroughly well kept as to lead to the remark, which I heard frequently made, that the "Piney Woods is the best hotel South." There are lesser hotels and numerous boarding-houses, of the merits of which I know nothing, but heard them very well spoken of. The weather in Thomasville I found mild and agreeable. It rains there often, and sometimes hard, but the sandy ground quickly dries. The average winter temperature is given at 54*55° Fahr., but it is not to be inferred that they have no cold weather there. They have at times heavy frosts and ice, and report a fall of snow once in the last fifteen years. But the "cold spells" are short, and the prevailing warm and sunny weather invites to out-of-door life, which is the main thing, for, as Dr. Felix Oswald says, consumption is a "house disease."

I do not suppose there are any magical healing powers for pulmonary invalids in the Thomasville atmosphere, but I should hesitate to say that it may not be very favorable to them. An old physician of the place, Dr. T. S. Hopkins, after twenty years' medical experience in the pine forests of Southern Georgia, speaks as follows upon this point in the "Atlantic Medical Register": "Having for many years, in my travels through this section of country, noticed the almost entire absence of consumption among the people, I addressed letters to a large number of physicians practicing in the district, asking them to report to me the number of cases of consumption coming to their knowledge during the previous years. I received replies from twenty engaged in active practice, and representing a population of fifty thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven. The total number of cases reported was three. I have no reason to doubt the honesty of this report. A climate in which the disease so rarely occurs is certainly worthy of a trial by those who have it." As for myself, I can by no means report "cured" at Thomasville; but my case was undoubtedly improved there. And, as I might have died in New York, just according to the danger of this contingency, Thomasville must be entitled to the credit of saving my life. At any rate, the trial was a good thing, and I esteemed myself fortunate in the place selected.

In the matter of recreations, which is of considerable hygienic importance in a sanitary resort, Thomasville is quite undeveloped. There are several well-equipped livery establishments, and there is a