To ask why moving to a sunny climate was the tonic to illness in days gone by?

[ArmsClary]

Have just Googled but to no avail.

I've re-read a few children's classics with DD during lockdown and on two occasions, in two separate books, an unwell parent was advised to up-sticks and move abroad as part of their recovery.

I'm sure I've come across it before on other occasions.

Was this is a common thing back then? I think both books are set in the early 1900s.

Would be interested to know the medical reasoning behind this if anyone knows the background

I have asthma and sinus problems among other chronic health conditions and I found I was spending a fortune on salt lamps, salt inhalers, saline nasal rinses and the like so I moved to the coast to get some of the sea air for free, obviously that's not the only reason I moved but it was a factor. I am a bit healthier here than I was in the city I lived in before.

Sunshine, vitamin D, heat. There are lots of chronic illnesses that can be helped with sunshine and heat. Heat is a natural pain reliever.

Think about an English winter, most people get colds, flu, stomach viruses. For people with compromised immune systems living in a hot climate where your not exposed to so many viruses has many health benefits. Of course people in hot climates still get sick, but not as much as you would in a cold damp winter climate.

It still happens today, not quite the same but children from the area around Chernobyl are sent to 'clean' areas, including the UK for a long holiday.

Eastern Europe has lots of spas from the Soviet days but now catering to tourists instead of TB patients from Moscow.

The dead see has benefits for some diseases and hotels may have a medical centre attached.

Thanks all for the responses, these are fantastic.

I suppose if I'd considered it a bit more I really should have realised As I'd mentioned in OP though the parents' illnesses are only ever vaguely alluded to.

In book one, which I think is a Noel Streatfield, I think the dad might have had some sort of mental breakdown...the second book, which I've completely forgotten, mentions the mother as being frail and having 'bony arms' which could be any number of illnesses.

Both returned fully recovered though so there was obviously something in it

I imagine that the clean air act of 1956 would have had a lot to do with it. Air quality in cities up until then was notoriously bad, with the great smog of 1952 killing 4000 people.
Couple that with no central heating - most people would have had a range or open fire, poor sanitation and TB being rife, then it’s no surprise those who could afford to move, did so. Those who couldn’t had an average life expectancy of about 40 (uk citizen born in 1900)

In the What Katy Did series..isn't that why Clover and Phil moved out to the mountains, for Phil's lungs?

My grandma (born 1913) grew up in an industrial city in the north of England and had chronic chest infections as a child and young adult. She was advised by her doctor to move south and preferably somewhere near the sea with plenty of good fresh. When she and my grandad got married they moved and although she did sometimes get chest infections after that she lived to the grand old age of 92. She reckoned that she'd have died much younger if she hadn't moved.

If you wander around the cemetery at Menton in the South of France, loads of the graves are of British people who died at a relatively young age, after moving there for their health (often TB).

Until very recently, my in laws spent two months in Spain each winter "for their health". I gather that the Spanish hotels in the South are full of older people from Northern Europe trying to avoid the flu season.

Once I retired from school teaching and was able to take holidays in term time I vowed to go somewhere warm every year in the early Spring and mid Autumn. But even I was amazed at how much better I felt for the fresh air, warmth and sunshine boost. Top tip: the Algarve and Morocco are warm and pleasant, are relatively cheap out of season and with manageable flight times. Madeira is wonderful but more expensive.

I read so many of these types of stories as a child, I was absolutely convinced I would get measles or some other illness and then be sent to the seaside to recover. I was really looking forward to it! Then my mother explained about vaccinations and modern medicine and I was extremely pissed off 🤣

Apparently there was so much arsenic in the dyes used for middle class Victorian wallpapers, that invalids who spent all their time in a bedroom often got worse. Removing the invalid from their bedroom to spending a lot of time outdoors at the seaside could therefore result in quite 'miraculous' recoveries.

stodgystollen
We have salt rooms now and they are fantastic even for healthy people. You come out and you feel like you can actually breathe even if before you thought you had no issue with breathing.

Coal open fires, or log ones come to that, hardly heat a room - you get an area next to the flames which is warm but most of the heat goes up the chimney and the draught of cold, damp air is drawn in to the room.
There is some heat if it burns constantly and heats up the wall around the fire but it would have been v hard to be cosy in in cold, damp Britain.

I feel so much better in the summer. I wish I could live somewhere with a mild climate. It’s so good for my mental health. Perhaps that was some of it. Just getting away from the gloomy cities could help with healing.

At Christmas in Denmark people attach an extra Christmas charity stamp (julemærker) to the envelopes of their Christmas cards, the money raised going to support a children's charity which was founded in 1904 to provide care for poor, mainly urban children with TB. Several "Julemærkhjem" were built, originally as sanatoriums, and some still exist.

This magnificent building is beside the fjord at Kolding and is now the Kolding Fjord Hotel, but it is one of the original facilities. The Danish Nursing Museum is also located in the same park in some of the other buildings from the home.

In book one, which I think is a Noel Streatfield, I think the dad might have had some sort of mental breakdown

The Painted Garden? The dad had what would now be called PTSD, I think. And they went to visit his sister in California. It was published in 1948, when almost everything in Britain was rationed or in short supply, and very few people travelled abroad, so it would have seemed a great adventure to NS's UK readers.

sea, not see - I can spell

@ShonkyCat

In Germany you can still get prescribed a "Kur" which is a stay in a sort of wellness hotel often in the mountains or near the sea depending on what ails you. A friend of mine took her daughter, who has asthma, to the North Sea coast for a fortnight on one of these. If your doctor prescribes it, your health insurance will pay for it.

In Italy too, you get sent to the Terme, there are different ones for different ailments, ranging from respiratory illnesses including asthma, to skin conditions and oedema/circulatory problems. I had a summer job in one, whether it was the properties in the waters or not you were often in a rural/alpine retreat with plenty of clean air and outdoor sports and facilities (plus the full board provided), so there was definitely a benefit for most users.

I think to a certain extent we still have the same idea now.

Lots of older people go away for the winter months to get away from the cold and damp.

Knew a retired couple growing up who would leave in September and go to Southern Spain. Come back for Christmas with their family then disappear again to some sunny destination and come back in March. This was in the 60s

They said there pension went further as they weren’t paying for heating, lighting and all the household expenses that came with living in a northern town during the winter and food and booze very cheap. It also meant that they felt better in a lighter and brighter country.

@UserEleventyNine

In book one, which I think is a Noel Streatfield, I think the dad might have had some sort of mental breakdown

The Painted Garden? The dad had what would now be called PTSD, I think. And they went to visit his sister in California. It was published in 1948, when almost everything in Britain was rationed or in short supply, and very few people travelled abroad, so it would have seemed a great adventure to NS's UK readers.

Yes - wasn’t it after running a child over?!

My gran's family lived in one of the slums in Birmingham. They were advised to smoke to keep the damp air from their lungs...... (late 20s-30s). Assume moving somewhere sunny was the healthy version of this. (There was no money to move away for 6 months.)

Wow yomellamoHelly

I watched a documentary a few years ago that explained how many toxic materials were used in fancy wallpaper and paint in grand houses. Quite often, the beneficial effects of taking the sea air were because they were being removed from the toxic environment of home. The wallpaper was literally killing people.

A lot of the big hotels on the south coast used to be sanitariums/ TB hospitals. Many famous figures lived in, moved to or visited for short times these places for health reasons, and then fell in love with them and made them into holiday destinations (that and the railways of course). Once foreign travel became easier then people emigrated to warmer countries instead, again often for health reasons. A lot of pensioners suffer with contains which are exacerbated by our cold wet winters still.

Going to a warmer places with fresh air would have been good to cure illness such as TB.