a Sanitarium at the Victoria Park. Then let
it not be called a Sanitarium. The public
has made sad confusion among some of its
vowels since it began to talk familiarly upon
questions that affect its health. "Sanitary" and
"sanatory" have been used as synonyms, but
they are two words with distinct meanings.
"Sanitary" is derived from a Latin noun, meaning
healthiness, and signifies that which
maintains health; "sanatory" is derived from
a Latin verb, which means to heal, and signifies
that by which health is restored. Sanitary
principles are applied to society at large;
sanatory regulations are enforced on behalf
of its sick members. An establishment for
invalids, therefore, is to be called a Sanatorium:
a Sanitarium would be a place of
refuge for sound men who found it impossible
to keep their health intact among open drains
and balls and supper parties.

We have already said that we admire
heartily the scheme of Mr. Paxton. We cannot
but believe that there are many sick
among us whose restoration to a state of
health would be assisted greatly by a change
of climate, and who, from the peculiar nature
of a case, or from the want of sufficient means,
cannot afford to travel. Such patients might
lodge in a Sanatorium, have the advantage of
residence and exercising ground in a climate
suitable to their disordered functions, and at
the same time remain under the careful
discipline of their own medical attendant.
Patients who go abroad for benefit of health
too often forget that change of climate can do
little more than place them under circumstances
more favourable to their efforts by fit
regulation of their time and diet, and by use
of prescribed remedies, to re-establish health.
They embark for Rome or Nice, throwing
the doctor overboard, expecting climate to
do all: climate then fails, and as a remedy,
it comes to be pronounced a piece of quackery.
As a specific, as a sole remedy, no doubt it is,
on the whole, as much a quack remedy as
Morison's Pill; that pill contains ingredients
of use in their right place. Quackery consists,
not in any thought or thing, but in the method
of employing it.

We say, then, that the Sanatoriums proposed
by Mr. Paxton, though not wanted by the
healthy, and of use only to some among the
sick, are institutions which may be established
as most valuable auxiliaries to the doctor.
They will not supersede all travel among
invalids; although we call it travelling "for
change of air." it is not change of air alone
by which the patient who can travel receives
benefit. In the first place, he gets a sea
voyage, and there are not a few sick men and
women whom that mode of travelling improves
in health. The sea-sickness is often a
curative process. The rolling of the ship,
causing a constant action of the muscles of
the body, has been called a sort of exercise,
taken unconsciously, which gives the system
strength and tone. Then there is the novelty
of circumstance; there are the chances and
changes of the voyage to amuse the mind.
Travel involves, then, change of scene, a
constant invitation of the mind to look without,
and to forget to pore over the body's
ailments. Sights are strange, and sounds are
strange; the English ear is plunged into a
bath of French or Italian chatter. Settled
abroad, the patient's climate is not shut up in a
glass house, with a collection of plants soon
familiar; he wanders under open sky, in town
streets, among picturesque and novel costumes,
over hill and dale, by sea and river side. He
takes the diet of the country, so far as it suits
him; eats the birds and fishes, or the fruits,
perhaps, of the climate he has sought. To
be sure, cooks might supply each Sanatorium
with an ordinary of the dishes of
the climate, for those patients not under
peculiar regimen; but the house and the
glass building, with the flowers, the food and
air of Italy, walked into from a street-door,
perhaps, in Piccadilly, must inevitably want
a very large number of those accessaries to
travel, which are to many invalids the most
important elements of cure. Not even ten
miles of panorama in the hall, starting from
London Bridge, exhibited before the neophyte,
would be a substitute for the preparatory
journey. A "Madeira Sanatorium" near
Regent's Park, would poorly imitate the ripple
of the waves and the warm sea-breezes of that
very wholesome island. This is not said, however,
with the least feeling of discouragement
towards the proposition made by Mr. Paxton.
His project is no complete substitute for foreign
travel, no encroachment upon foreign inn-keepers,
or invasion made on our domestic
doctors. It simply professes, that if change
of climate be auxiliary to medicine in certain
cases of disease, that change can be provided
here in England, here in London, for those
patients who either are past bearing the
fatigues of travel, or are too poor for the
expense of travel, or who cannot travel without
losing the advantage of that medical
assistance in which they have most reason to
repose their trust. This proposition could not
have been made fifty years ago, or if made,
the necessary arrangements could not have
been carried out. It is made now, when it is
strictly practicable, and deserves of all men
serious attention.

What sort of proposition was made fifty
years ago, we desire now to show; a proposition
founded very likely on a sound idea,
supported certainly by eminent and able men,
but worked to death by its projectors. It is
a little more than fifty years since Dr.
Beddoes was at work upon the notion of his
Medical Pneumatic Institution. "A temporary
institution might," he conceived, "be so
contrived as greatly to assist in deciding how
far elastic fluids will be of service in diseases.
Among the peculiar advantages of such an
institution, persons of information appear to
have been most struck with the following:—