Recommendation of Meran as a Healthful Summer Resort

Appendix.

Notice.

The Allgemeine Zeitung contains in Nos. 275 to 277 of its extraordinary supplement an article entitled: “Views of South Tyrol,” in which a summer stay in Meran is urgently recommended. At the outset it states: “It seems by no means inappropriate at this juncture, when physicians throughout a large part of Southern Germany are beginning to dispatch their chest patients and sufferers of gout to Meran with great success, to direct general attention to this interesting locality of our fatherland, which in many respects rivals Nice and the Hyères Islands, and unquestionably possesses paramount advantages for Germans. For apart from the fact that travel to those destinations is more arduous and also more costly, with sensitive patients the unfamiliar mode of life alone suffices, if not to destroy, then at least to diminish other favorable impressions. Furthermore, excessive distance from home, amidst foreign nationalities, exerts a distressing effect, particularly upon patients inclined toward hypochondria; and however beneficial on the whole the mild air of Nice may be for the lungs, it is proven that at certain seasons, as on all seacoasts, fevers prevail there which completely debilitate the body. All too many examples corroborate this experience. Meran, on the other hand, is situated in a thoroughly healthy district, enclosed toward the north by high mountains that rise like a wall against the immense glaciers of the Tyrolean Alps, arresting and breaking their influence—which proves disastrous to many another fertile valley—to the great benefit of the beautiful Adige Valley.” And following a description of the district and the advantages that a stay in Meran affords over many other places, the conclusion observes: “So much has recently been said in the most widely read newspapers regarding the vast benefit of sea-bathing, securing for it a well-deserved reception in society; let it not be held against us, therefore, if we endeavor here to place the Meran ‘air bath’ with all its pleasant qualities in the proper light, so as to win for it similar acclaim, for these lines are composed in the spirit of all those who this summer had occasion to enjoy its beneficial effects.”

May the residents of Meran rejoice in this appreciation of their region, yet may they also feel prompted thereby to attend to the comfort and accommodation of their spa visitors with Swiss diligence, though without Swiss extortion!