"A Winter Climate for Invalids"

Transcript

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Homosassa down as far as the Ten Thousand Islands, a
Region included between the twenty-sixth and twenty-eight
degrees of latitude, the invalid will find a winter climate
presenting the essentials, as I have stated them, of equability
of temperature, purity of atmosphere and comparative dryness.
The mean temperature for the five cold months for a
Period of five years, at the United States Signal Station at
Punta Rassa, about two hundred miles south of Cedar Keys
and one hundred north of Cape Sable, is shown in the
following table:
[table of temperature in Punta Rassa]
Another table shows the maximum and minimum tem-
reratures for the same months in the years 1878 and 1879:
[table of temperature in Punta Rassa]
Here is shown a winter temperature which, with its
well-known equability, renders out-door life agreeable, and
dwelling apartments can always be kept open to the free
admission of air. The winter temperature is rarely so low
as to require even the open wood-fire. The skies, from sun-
rise to ver the tops of the pines and palms to the dip of a red
sunset into the warm waters of the Gulf, are almost always
bright and blue, checkered only by white flying clouds.
The balmy breezes blow mildly and almost without ceasing,
excepting during an occasional lull of calm at the sunset
hour, so that the advantage to health of continuous and
moderate air movement prevails.
As to purity of atmosphere the situation and surround-
ings are extremely favorable. The breezes blow from

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either the vast area of waters of the Gulf or from over great
forests of pine, palm and cypress, with their ozonizing influ-
ences. It is due to these agencies and to the remarkable
dryness that an aseptic condition of atmosphere exists.
I have seen venison, game birds and other meats remain for
many days, or even for weks, hanging unprotected in the
ppen air, free from taint, and becoming merely hard and dry
without decomposition.
No claim for the sanitary merits of the Gulf Coast of
Florida will create so much surprise as that of the compara-
tive dryness of its atmosphere. The natural and popular
inference that it has a moist climate must be from a con-
sideration of its vast traverses and surroundings of water,
fresh and salt, and not from the trustworthy reports of the
Signal Service or from personal observation. I am not able
to give a reasonable explanation of the cause of the remark-
able dryness of the atmosphere, admist such a realm of
waters; but that the climate of this coast is comparatively
dry and bracing can be proved by the records of official
observation and attested by the permanent residents of the
region. The following table, from official data, of relative
humidity of some winter resorts of Europe and America
shows particularly well for Punta Rassa, on the Gulf Coast
of Florida, during the five cold months:
[temperature chart of five cold months]
Data supplied by the United States Signal Service
prove that during the five cold months the relative humidity
of Florida, as taken at a number of widely spirited stations
of observation, is less than that of what is popularly called
the "dry winter climate of Minnesota."

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