I Have Described The Agreeable Side Of This Climate; And
Now I Will Point Out Its Inconveniences.
In the winter, but
especially in the spring, the sun is so hot, that one can hardly
take exercise
Of any sort abroad, without being thrown into a
breathing sweat; and the wind at this season is so cold and
piercing, that it often produces a mischievous effect on the
pores thus opened. If the heat rarifies the blood and juices,
while the cold air constringes the fibres, and obstructs the
perspiration, inflammatory disorders must ensue. Accordingly, the
people are then subject to colds, pleurisies, peripneumonies, and
ardent fevers. An old count advised me to stay within doors in
March, car alors les humeurs commencent a se remuer, for then the
humours begin to be in motion. During the heats of summer, some
few persons of gross habits have, in consequence of violent
exercise and excess, been seized with putrid fevers, attended
with exanthemata, erisipelatous, and miliary eruptions, which
commonly prove fatal: but the people in general are healthy, even
those that take very little exercise: a strong presumption in
favour of the climate! As to medicine, I know nothing of the
practice of the Nice physicians. Here are eleven in all; but four
or five make shift to live by the profession. They receive, by
way of fee, ten sols (an English six-pence) a visit, and this is
but ill paid: so you may guess whether they are in a condition to
support the dignity of physic; and whether any man, of a liberal
education, would bury himself at Nice on such terms.
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