The Louisiana cotton-boll. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], Attakapas, La.) 1872-1883, 1874-09-16
CAMP CURE.
Physical Benefits of Summer Camp
Life

The Physical Benefits of Summer Camp
Life.
An article in Lippincott for the cur
rent month, by DR.. Weir Mitchell, treats
OF the growing habit among us Of sum-
ne travel from a medical point of view,
and offers a hint or two we'll worth the
! consideration of over-worked men in
cities. DR.. Mitchell draws attention to
the "curi0us lowering of tone" which
we all know so we'll during the break
ing up of winter, jocularly named
spring fever, and which he attributes
not only to the effect of the ]preponder-
Il C of the steady labor of the year
which is compressed into the winter
months and "a malarious element, pres
ent and in force W n large part of the
country, but to other elements than ma
Iaria, less understood, but as wide
spread and potent" Admitting the
facts of the case, which neither doc
tors nor teachers of any sort can help
nor hinder, the work of the country has
to be done, the unwise haste in the do
ing of it, the exhausted erYou condi
ton which the people who have done it
bring to meet this spring influence and
the heat Of the summer-the sole ques-
ton remaining is, as he states, how the
supply of strength is to be reinforced
before the working season sets in again.
This kA believes is only to be Ctfectu-
ally done by "long rest and a healthful
change for a time in the mode of living.
The evil that was made by artificial
ways of life" he says, sis but awkward
ly helped by urging tired nerve centers
to their work with tonics or stimulants,
and is rather, as I suppose, to be cured
by q prompt reversal of all our comfort
able manners of eating, sleeping, and
being housed" Nor does he mean by
this the usual summer horrors to which
two-thirds of us fly, of "eight by ten to
sleep in, and the delights of unlimited
clearinghouse gossip" but an actual
return to outdoor life, camping by e
beach or forest stream, the fire of logs
chopped by our own hands, the food
which we had first killed and cooked.
Upon nervous diseases and thei
causes, DR.. Mitchell has long been a
final reference he is especially well
come, therefore, when he offers so
agreeable q cure. This partial return
to barbarism is, also, he declares, a
safeguard against the colds and catarrhs
which are produced by the constant
changing of Onr atmosphere, by going
in and out of our overheated houses.
"Not only are the well better for such
steady exposure, but cases of chronic
throat trouble, catarrhal disorders, and
chronic bronchitis rapidly disappear
under the mild and natural treatment
of the camp-cure, and the relief from
dyspeptic troubles is quite as sure"
The last two years have witnessed so
marked a reform in the popular
methods of spending the fortnight or
months holiday, which almost every
man can now claim, that we have hopes
this authoritative sanction of camp life
may yield wholesome fruit, The aver
age American is a practical, sbrewd
fellow under all his ambition to live up
to the requirements of the fashion,"
aVb Yay " 10 sIuDnaor-hiG two weeks
chance of health and pleasure and three
months salary sweltering among the
yulgarly fashionable mobs in mammoth
where he finds neither restnor en-
ioyment. He begins to discover at last
that "good society" has been seeking
quiet and s~eclusion during the summer
Sunday, and seeks it himself n~owusuaIly
in a lonely village on the coast or home
lv farmhouse, where he can wear his
flannel shirt all day, squid for blue-fsh,
wade through the marshes for snipe,
and come back at night half famished,
TO find wife and babies tanned and tired
and happy, ready for supper and sleep, J
such as they never knew in town. Still
better than even this would be genuine
lamp life, which, fortunately, is within
he reach of men whose holiday only
over two, or at most three.
weeks. DIR. Mitchell mentions the
woods Of Maine and the Adirondacks,
nd the boat journeys along the shores
# Lake Superior, or down the Penob-
colt, Allegash or st. Johns. His list
have been much longer. The
and Bald Eagle ranges, spurs of
he Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, offer
VildeTnesses, mountain streams, and
anne of still easier access. A little
more remote are the Cheat river hills
n Virginia, and the wild land, a won-
Ierful succession of heights andgorges,
C~hristiansburg and Lynch
'urg ; and but little further still, the
FOUNTAINS of North Carolina, almost
Unknown to tourists. rs
If any worn-out worker, with brain
r body, can furnish himself with a tent
nd mule and set out on an exploring
ourney in the pure air of the heights
the Black and Unaka mountains, from
1ur to six thousand feet above sea lev
|, among the iife-giving odors of pine
nd balsam, he will find new physical
ansations and ideas coming every hour
!, displace some old ache and gnawing
He may discover none of the .
onders of form or color, nor hear any
the secrets of nature, which, we are !:
Id, lie open to the dweIler in camps. !
he may carry to the woods neither ,
ie eye OF u poet nor of a scientific I
But the sheer novelty of rushing ,
and breathless precipice, Of .
sars, rattlesnakes, deer and trout, of :
10 awful silence under midnight skies. !
the curious calm beauty under the !
agUst sun, of the stretches of gray =
oss, blue with myosotis, of seas OF .
sing mist beneath his feet, he, lifted :
, into the sky, of contact with the !
,or, dirty, unworldlys mountaineers, =
ii utterly Danish day-book or brief
ON his mind, and restore his "nerve-
nters" in a different fashion fromdaily n
at the bars ut Cape May, or c
nging about John C~hamberlin's sta 0
es at Long Braneh.-M Y. Tribune. n
a
Occupation. i