And first, as to climate.  Considering that the cholera, from which Munich suffers more at every visitation than almost any other European city, and typhus, which is always at home within its limits, are not, properly speaking, climatal diseases, it would seem at first sight unnecessary to consider the situation of Munich in this respect.  But while the principal object of the present paper is to indicate the causes of the above-mentioned plagues, the fact should not be lost sight of that nearly all known diseases flourish in this unfortunate city, many of them owing to its exceptionally bad climate, while the sudden and extreme changes of temperature which occur in every season of the year have a tendency to aggravate those ills which find their sources in more preventable conditions.

Munich stands upon a high, barren plain, sixteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, exposed to the full power of the sun in summer, brooded over by chilly fogs in spring and autumn, and swept the whole year through by all the storms that accumulate upon the mountains filling the horizon to the south and east.  The air is mountain-air, minus the aroma and stimulus of evergreen forests, and plus the miasma of miles of marsh and peat-land and the foulnesses of the city exhalations.  It is the thin air of a high elevation, pleasantly bracing to persons so fortunate as to possess nerves of iron and lungs of leather, but extremely irritating to sensitive brains and delicate chests, and too exhausting, after a time, in its demands upon the most abundant vitality.  It is the boast of certain physicians in Munich that consumption is rare in that city, but the weekly report of deaths would seem to contradict this assertion.  Certain it is that diseases of the throat and lungs are very common, especially during the spring, and that all the rest of the year the whole population suffers more or less from catarrh.  Perhaps if there be less of consumption than one would expect to find in such a climate, it is because those who would otherwise be its victims are carried off early by acute inflammation of the implicated organs.  “Of course, if these die in the beginning, they cannot die at a later period,” as a recent medical writer has wisely and wittily pointed out to certain amateur statisticians who would fain reduce the mortality of Munich by leaving out of view the immense percentage of infant deaths.

The evil effects of the harsh air are increased by the clouds of dust which the wind is continually raising in the broad graveled streets—­dust the more irritating to eyes, nose and lungs because largely composed of lime, and which dries with marvelous rapidity after the frequent heavy showers and protracted rains for which this region is also remarkable.  It is the last resort of the citizens of Munich, when driven out of every other defence of their climate, to say, “But it is a good climate for the nerves.”  One would like to know for what nerves and