The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-09-11
CAMP CURE.
The Physical Dement'S of Summer Camp
Life.

The Physical Dement'S 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-
ner travel from medical point of view,
and offers hint or two well worth the
consideration of over-worked men in
cities. DIR. Mitchell draws attention to
the .curious lowering of tone' which
we all know so we'll during the break
ing. up of winter, jocu1arly named
spring fever, and which he attributes
not only to the effect of the preponder-
ance of the steady labor of the wear
which is compressed into the winter
months and ''a malarious element. pres
emit and In force over a large part of the
country, but to other elements than ma
LARA, 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 nervous 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 he believes is only to be effectu-
ally done by sslong rest and healthful
change for 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 suppose, to be cured
by 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 sea
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, DIR. Mitchell has long been
final reference he is especially well
come, therefore, when he offers so
agreeable 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 our 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
cd
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, shrewd
fellow under all his ambition to live up
to the requirements of the fashion,"
and he begins to suspect that it does
not "pay to squander his two weeks
chance of health and pleasure and three
months salary sweltering among the
vulgarly fashionable mobs in mammoth
hotels, where he finds neither restnor en-
joyment. He begins to discover at last
that 'good society" has been seeking
quiet and seclusion during the summer
Sunday, and seeks it himself now usually
in lonely village on the coast or home
ly farmhouse, where he can wear his
flannel shirt all day, squid for blue-fsh,
or 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,
such as they never knew in town. Still
better than even this would be genuine
camp life, which, fortunately, is within
the reach of men whose holiday only
lie, -
weeks. DIR. Mitchell mentions the
woods of Maine and the Adirondaeks,
and the boat journeys along the shores
of Lake Superior, or down the Penob-
scott, Allegash or st. Johns. His list
might have been much longer. The
Muncy and Bald Eagle ranges, spurs of
the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, offer
wildernesses, mountain streams, and
game of still easier access. A little
more remote are the Cheat river hills
in Virginia, and the wild land, won
derful succession of heights and gorges,
between Christiansburg and Lynch
burg and but little further still, the
mountains of North Carolina, almost
unknown to tourists.
If any WORKOUT worker, with brain
or body, can furnish himself with tent
and mule and set out on an exploring
Journey in the pure air of the heights
of the Black and Unaka mountains, from
four to six thousand feet above sea lev
ell, among the life-giving odors of pine
and balsam, he will find new physical
sensations and ideas coming every hour
to displace some old ache and gnawing
anxiety. He may discover none of the
wonders of form or color, nor hear any
of the secrets of nature, which, we are
told, lie open to the dweller in camps,
as he may carry to the woods neither
the eye of a poet nor of a scientific
man. But the sheer novelty of rushing
waterfall and breathless precipice, of
bears, rattlesnakes, deer and trout, of
the awful silence under midnight skies,
of the curious calm beauty under the
August sun, of the stretches of gray
moss, blue with myosotis, of seas of
rising mist beneath his feet, he, lifted
up into the sky, of contact with the
poor, dirty, unworldlyS mountaineers,
wall utterly Danish day-book or brief
from his mind, and restore his sfnerve-
centers" in different fashion from daily
tipping at the bars at Cape May, or
hanging about John Chamberlin's sta
bles at Long Branch.--N. y. Tribune
The Tigers" Lair.
Olivia, writing to the Philadelphia
Press of Morrissey's Club House, at
Saratoga, says: 'FThe fascination of
the salon centres in the queer looking
tables which surround the room on
three sides. Here the foreigner sees
the element of his beloved trente-et-
quarant, rouge-et-noir, and English
hazard, whilst the American indulge in
his native faro until his purse is as lean
as Pharaoh's kline. All games known to
the civilized world can be INDUCED in