Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1880-10-13
Hygiene at the Seashere.

DR.. Boardman Reed of Atlantic City,
has written a most useful paper upon this
subject. He says people visit the seashore
for various reasons, but mainly for health
or pleasure. The pleasure-seekers really
require more attention from the local prac-
titloners than the health-seekers, simply
because they violate more flagrantly all
hygienic laws. But even the invalids who
visit this great sanitarium in such numbers,
both in summer and winter, do not always
take the best care of themselves. In the
first place many make an unfortunate
choice of location. Patients with soften
ing tuberculous deposits insist upon spend
ing not only their days, but their nights
also, down very near the beach instead of
being content with the more moderate
stimulation of the milder AIR square or
two back in the town. Sufferers from
chrenic malaIial poisoning, on the other
hand, frequently select as dwelling place
some shady bower in the centre of the
Island, instead of sunny spot close to the
beach where the chlorine and Iodine CON-
pounds in the ocean spray could, undiluted,
exert their antiseptic and undoubted anti
malaria vi:iE-s, not 10 speak of that mys-
terious chemical aseai, ozone, OF which we
hear so much and know SO little, but which,
whatever Its therapeutic power, is thought
TO be most abundant near the salt water.
Supposing favorable location to have
been secured, there are numerous points
upon which most invalids need minute
instructions, either from their own medical
advisers or from competent resident phy-
sician. First in Importance perhaps is the
diet. The weak stomach which neither
auinine, gentiar, malt, nor any other pro-
product of pharmaceutic art could compel
to welcome a hearty meal at home, soon
acknowledges the superior tonic powers of
salt air. The appetite becomes uncontrol-
able. The patient now felicitates himself
and receives the congratulations of his too
indulgent friends upon his rapidlylmproving
health. But the appetite is stimulated
more than the digestive powers, and unless
restrained, the result is bilious attack If 1t
be in the winter time the patient may es-
cape with a headache, furred tongue, COM
piete loss of appetite, and the cessation of
all Improvement. Then deciding that the
place no longer agrees with hun, he returns
nome, ptIudpo HtliC bOiSci eioA IN S&AiAo.
If it be in the summer, the same over-eating
NAV produce diarThea or cholera morbus,
lust as it would any where else, and the
patient, when the local Esculapius has
matched him up sufficiently, goes back to
the city roundly denouncing the seashore.
So with exercise. Persons debilitated by
disease and foul urban air feel themselves
stimulated here to perform extraordinary
feats in walking, bathing, dancing, etc. By
such excesses they rapidly dissipate their
newly acquired strength, anu are left more
prostrated than before.
The item of bathing well deserves a
chapter to itself. Next to imprudence in
eating and drinking, bathing too long, at
the wrong time, or in the wrong way, causes
more mischief here than any other one
agency. Ii is obvious enough that invalids
too weak to react from the shock OF the
breakers. and from the chill of contact
with water twenty or thirty degrees colder
than their bodies must suffer severely from
bathing in the ocean at all even if they do
not stsy in half an hour to an hour, as
some misguided ones do.
But the great luxury, and, when scien-
t;fically employed, most valuable therapeu-
tic agent, the indoor sea- water bath, is now to
be enjoyed at several places on the Island.
II is especially advantageous in the winter
and spring months, but even In midsummer
affords the benefits Of sea bathing 10 thous-
.pas who dare net venture into the sssan.