Madeira has at once gained credit for comfort and has lost reputation as a sanatorium, a subject upon which fashion is peculiarly fickle. During the last century the Faculty sent its incurables to Lisbon and Montpellier despite the _mistral_ and the fatal _vent de bise_. The latter town then lodged some 300 English families of invalids, presently reduced to a few economists and wine-merchants. Succeeded Nice and Pisa, one of the most wearying and relaxing of 'sick bays;' and Pau in the Pyrenees, of which the native Béarnais said that the year has eight months of winter and four of inferno. Madeira then rose in the world, and a host of medical residents sounded her praises, till Mentone was written up and proved a powerful rival. And the climate of the hot-damp category was found to suit, mainly if not only, that tubercular cachexy and those, bronchial affections and lung-lesions in which the viscus would suffer from the over-excitement of an exceedingly dry air like the light invigorating medium of Tenerife or Thebes. Lastly, when phthisis was determined to be a disease of debility, of anæmia, of organic exhaustion, and of defective nutrition, cases fitted for Madeira were greatly limited. Here instruments deceive us as to humidity. The exceeding dampness is shown by the rusting of iron and the tarnishing of steel almost as effectually as upon the West African coast. Yet Mr. Vivian's observations, assuming 100 to be saturation, made Torquay 76 and Funchal 73. [Footnote: Others make the mean humidity of Funchal 76, and remark that in the healthiest and most pleasant climates the figures range between 70 and 80]. Moreover it was found out that consumption, as well as intermittent fevers, are common on the island, so common, indeed, as to require an especial hospital for the poorer classes, although the people declare them to have been imported by the stranger. I may here observe that while amongst all the nations of Southern Europe great precautions are taken against the contagion of true phthisis, English medicos seem to ignore it. A Pisan housekeeper will even repaper the rooms after the death of a consumptive patient. At Funchal sufferers in every stage of the disease live in the same house and even in the same rooms.