1887’s Appleton’s illustrated hand-book of American winter resorts for tourists and invalids is a whirlwind tour through all the places you can go and die of consumption in the America of yesteryear:
Out west in scenic California the land and times were much, much different than today. Appleton’s guide takes visitors on a botanical tour of “cacti of the most curious sort,” and it also explains why I saw so many Eucalyptus trees while living there in 2000-2004: “But the people plant a little shoot of the Australian blue-gum (Eucalyptus globulus), and in two years it becomes a shade-tree 15 or 20 feet high.” Fashion and comfort were obviously not commodities in the near horizon if Eucalyptus shade-providing trees were the amenities.
Be sure to head north to Santa Barbara and buy a horse for only $20 so you can tour the beaches. Cure your rheumatism at the Hot Sulphur Springs with sulphureted hydrogen, iron, aluminum, and potash. The dry air the guides associated with relief for consumptive illnesses was and is the same dry air responsible for horrendous wildfires that we see in the news every summer.
Appleton’s illustrated hand-book of American winter resorts for tourists and invalids
(Thanks, ButIfAndThat, via Submitterator!)