world. Less frequently have joy and
thankfulness been expressed for the health,
and the consequent vigour of mind and
body, to which our maritime situation
greatly contributes.

Even when the result is acknowledged,
the cause is not always fairly appreciated.
We are aware that invisible atoms floating
in the air, breathed in or absorbed by the
human body, will, after a time, ferment, as
it were, and leaven the whole system, till
their power is manifested by such terrible
disorders as small-pox, cholera, or plague.
Everybody knows that divers diseases are
catching, although mortal eye cannot see
how they are caught. But everybody does
not know that certain invisible particles
suspended in certain regions of the atmosphere,
breathed in and absorbed by the lungs and
the skin, are antidotes to disease. Instead
of poisoning the bodily system, they purify
it. They are medicinal in lieu of being
deleterious. By inhaling them you may
catch a sound constitution, just as by
imbibing the above-mentioned miasms you
may catch a pestilence.

Now, these health-conferring particles
are especially given out by the sea. They
are contained in various proportions (but
always contained in some proportion) in
sea air, sea produce, and sea water. We
can, therefore, insure their beneficial effects
by taking up our residence at some favourable
spot upon the coast, in order to inhale
sea breezes, adopt a full proportion of sea
diet (fish and the edible sea plants – it is
wrong to call them weeds), and frolic in
sea baths. It is this fact which induces us
to devote a few columns to Berck-sur-Mer,
or Berck-by-the-Sea.

This Berck is a village lying on the coast
of the Department of the Pas-de-Calais,
France, and is reached from the Montreuil-
Verton railway station on the line from
Boulogne-sur-Mer to Paris. By a lucky
accident, namely, the residence at
Montreuil-sur-Mer of a benevolent, far-sighted,
and persevering physician, Dr. Paul
Perrochaud, Berck has become a sanitary
resort to which hundreds of the rising
generation will owe, not merely restoration
to health and strength, but life itself.

Although sea-bathing for amusement and
cleanliness has been practised from time
immemorial in all hot and temperate
countries which are fortunate enough to have a
sea, sea-bathing as a "cure," or mode of
medical treatment, is an English invention
of recent date. Indeed, so long as scrofula
was a "king's evil," to be cured "presto!"

miraculously, by a royal touch, what need
was there to weary one's patience and shock
one's nerves by long exposure to blustering
winds, monotonous and even distasteful
food and drink, cold dips, and buffetings
with chilly waves? But faith in the
touching remedy, as a royal road to health,
has died out.

We have already recorded how Dr.
Russell, in a book published in 1750,
addressed to the Duke of Newcastle, and
entitled, De Tabe Glandulari, seu de Usa
Aquae Marinas (On Glandular Disease, or
the Use of Sea Water), gave the sea its
vogue, which has ever since gone on
increasing.*  He explained its virtues, and
made it the fashion.

Russell could hardly guess at the time
that his ideas, based on popular instinct,
would be confirmed by modern science.
Such, however, has been the event; and
now, with the increasing spread of
knowledge, the sanitary properties of the sea
are as anxiously sought in France as ever
they were in England. In the paper
referred to we have already recorded
how Dr. Paul Perrochaud, in combination
with M. Frère, after successful experiments
on several little patients, obtained
the means of placing, as a further trial, in
a private house on the beach at Berck,
as many scrofulous children as could be
attended to by the person who undertook
to board and lodge them. In 1858 and
1859, more than fifty children, of both
sexes, sent to Berck, were completely cured
of the scrufulous affections under which
they were suffering.

This result led to the erection, on the
beach of Berck, of a wooden hospital for
scrofulous children, containing one
hundred beds. Such good success followed
its establishment, that there now stands on
the beach beside it, a noble building of
brick and stone, called L'Hôpital Napoléon,
capable of accommodating with ease
five hundred and four children, without
reckoning eighty infirmary beds. At the
present writing it contains something more than
three hundred patients: all poor children
sent from the Children's Hospitals in Paris.
The snug and comfortable wooden hospital,
which has done such good service, to our
great delight is suffered to remain.
Instead of being pulled to pieces and removed,
now that it is superseded by its stately neighbour,
it is to make itself useful in another

* See Sands of Life, ALL THE YEAR HOUND, First
Series, vol. v. p. 585.