EGYPT AS A WINTER RESORT. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THIS handbook is a humble endeavour to answer the queries of some of my esteemed medical friends in England and in the United States, who tell me they are sometimes at a loss to know what manner of patients they ought and ought not to send to Egypt. But, apart from the actual needs of invalids and their professional advisers, there is a large class of visitors who either accompany delicate friends abroad, or flee from their own homes merely to escape cold weather and bask in the sunshine. It is obvious that a health-resort which provides a suitable climate for invalids and a sufficiency of interest and occupation for healthy individuals will become more and more popular. The national interest which England has taken in Egypt since 1882, the growing prosperity and e B civilization which have attended the efforts of her officials on the spot, and the improved facilities for travelling obtained by Messrs. Cook, have all tended to make Cairo and the Nile a very favourite winter resort. Some six thousand visitors come to Cairo during the winter months, and of these about twelve hundred proceed up the Nile in steamer or in dahabiyeh. To show that the climate deals fairly with these masses of visitors, it may be mentioned that the writer, in a medical experience of six winters, has lost only two patients who came to Egypt for their health. Both these were patients far advanced in consumption, who ought never to have left their homes, one an Australian, who reached Cairo at the beginning of 1888, and died there in February; the other, an American, who died in December, 1888, a few hours after reaching Cairo. This experience is not only a personal one, for the death register shows that there have been only nine deaths among British visitors in Cairo during the six years ending June, 1889. Of these nine, seven arrived here ill of incurable diseases; the eighth was thought to be robust, but died of uræmic poisoning during her first week in Cairo; and the ninth caught a chill while out sketching, and died of double pneumonia. But the writer's object is not to try and prove that Egypt is the best health-resort in the world, but to give reasonable information about its climate to those who have practically decided against the respective merits of sea and mountain air, and are in search of pure dry desert air where rain is almost unknown, and where fog, strong winds, and cold are never felt. At the outset it must be remembered that where the air is extremely dry, there the difference is the greatest between the maximum and minimum temperatures, for the sun's heat reaches the earth without difficulty by day, and again by night it disappears into space. Patients, therefore, can bask in Egypt in the temperature of an English summer by daylight, but must be prepared for autumnal cold after sunset. The summer months in England under favourable circumstances are well suited to those of feeble constitution, who can surround themselves in their own homes with modern luxuries, with the comforts which none but the English thoroughly study, and with all the pleasures of friends and family. But when the autumn cold requires such a one to take active outdoor exercise, for which he is not sufficiently robust, and when the absence of sunshine induces a depression of spirits in addition to his physical delicacy, he begins, if he is wise, to think of deserting his home comforts and of seeking a more cheerful climate like many migratory birds, |