Climatic therapy
With climatic therapy , also outdated climatotherapy , the natural climatic environmental stimuli of particular areas are used in a natural way to accelerate healing. Stays at the sea, in the middle and high mountains, are particularly beneficial for respiratory and skin diseases .
The following effects are assumed:
- Seashore: ( Thalassotherapy ) aerosol effect of the sodium chloride-rich , clean air have a soothing effect on the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract. Irritant effect on the skin (stimulates blood circulation, stimulates the metabolism), UV radiation (vitamin D production).
- Low mountain range: air purity. Geopsychic effect through the landscape (liberating positive mental attitude ), through mild, low-irritation summer climate
- High mountains: low air pressure, low humidity, air purity and intense UV radiation.
The most widespread form of climatic therapy from the middle of the 19th century until around 1950 was the so-called air cure , especially in connection with an altitude climate. In Switzerland, the doctor Alexander Spengler is considered a pioneer of this form of therapy. He suspected beneficial effects of the special high mountain climate in Davos with tuberculosis . He noticed that the local population there had been spared tuberculosis, but this has been attributed to the lower epidemiological risk in these areas since the tuberculosis pathogen was discovered. Spengler came to Switzerland in 1849 and after studying medicine (Zurich) became a country doctor in Davos. The medical historian and spa doctor Conrad Meyer-Ahrens (Zurich) pointed to the successes of Dr. Lucius Rüedi with children with tuberculosis in the high valley of Davos. Two severely lung patients who had been treated unsuccessfully in the Silesian fresh air sanatorium Görbersdorf spent the first winter in Davos in 1865, where they allegedly recovered from tuberculosis. In the decades that followed, many lung patients came to the Alps for spa stays. Davos, Leysin, Arosa and Montana became important climatic health resorts for lung patients. The sanatoriums built there flourished until the development of the TB vaccination, tuberculostatics and antibiotics in the 1940s. The development of drug therapies for tuberculosis led to mountain sanatoriums being converted into (spa) hotels and sanatoriums increasingly being devoted to other areas, such as general rehabilitation , the treatment of allergies and asthma. The positive effects of a vacation stay and their influence on pathological processes can hardly be distinguished from a specific medical effect. In the meantime, medical indications are being overlaid by tourist aspects and economic interests of the health resorts.
swell
- Birte vom Bruck: Davos / Switzerland: Alexander Spengler - pioneer of climatic therapy. Dtsch Arztebl 2004; 101 (6) (pdf)
- Klaus Strömer: Dermatological rehabilitation: There is no adequate substitute for climatic therapy. Dtsch Arztebl 1996; 93 (30) (pdf)
literature
- Wolfgang Menger : Climate therapy on the North and Baltic Seas. G. Fischer, Jena 1997, ISBN 978-3437311208 .