are sufficiently vigorous to respond to the increased demands on them. For anaemia, pulmonary tuberculosis, pleural thickening, deficient expansion of the lungs, neurasthenia, and the debility following fevers and malaria, mountain air is invaluable. But where there is valvular disease of the heart, or rapidly advancing disease of the lungs, it is to be avoided. Light, especially direct sunlight, is of primary importance, the lack of it tending to depression and dyspeptic troubles. Probably its germicidal power accounts for the aseptic character of the air of the Alps, the desert and other places.
Sir Hermann Weber has defined a “good” climate as that in which all the organs and tissues of the body are kept evenly at work in alternation with rest. Thus a climate with constant moderate variations in its principal factors is the best for the maintenance of health. But the best climate for an invalid depends on the particular weakness from which he may suffer. Pulmonary tuberculosis stands first in the importance of the effects of climate. The continuous supply of pure fresh air is the main desideratum, a cool climate being greatly superior to a tropical one. Exposure to strong winds is harmful, since it increases the tendency to cough and thus leads to loss of body temperature, which is in its turn made up at the expense of increased metabolism. A high altitude, from the purity and stimulating properties of the air, is of value to many mild or very early cases, but where the disease is extensive, where the heart is irritable, or where there is any tendency to insomnia, high altitudes are contra-indicated, and no such patient should be sent higher than some 1500 ft. Where the disease is of long standing, with much expectoration, or accompanied by albuminuria, the patient appears to do best in a humid atmosphere but little above the sea-level. The climate of Egypt is especially suitable for cases complicated with bronchitis or bronchiectasis, but is contra-indicated where there is attendant diarrhoea. Madeira and the Canaries are useful when emphysema is present or where there is much irritability of constitution. Bronchitis in young people is best treated by high altitudes, but in older patients by a moist mild climate, except where much expectoration is present.
The influence of atmospheric conditions on the functions of the nose is very marked. Within the ordinary ranges of humidity and temperature the nasal mucous membrane completely saturates the air with aqueous vapour before it reaches the pharynx. In cold and dry mountain climates there is a very free nasal secretion, far beyond what is needed for the saturation of the air; and at low levels the reverse action takes place, the nose becoming “stuffy.” The mechanism on which this depends is found in the erectile tissue, and anything favouring the engorgement of the veins, such as weak heart action, chronic bronchitis or kidney troubles, &c., leads to a corresponding turgidity of the nose and sinuses. In addition to barometric and other influences, it has been found that light produces collapse of this tissue, smoke having a similar effect. On this latter effect probably depends the fact that many asthmatics are better in a city like London than elsewhere, the smoke relieving the turgescence of the inferior turbinals of the nose. In the treatment of pathological nasal conditions, all cases of obstruction from whatsoever cause are best in a dry atmosphere, and where there is atrophy and a deficient flow of mucus in a moist atmosphere. If the mucous membrane is irritable a dry sheltered spot on a sandy soil and in the neighbourhood of pine trees is by far the best.
Scrofulous children, namely, those in whom the resistance to micro-organisms and their products is low, pre-eminently require sea air, and had better be educated at some seaside place. Where the child is very delicate, with small power of reaction, the winter should be passed on some mild coast resort. Gouty and rheumatic affections require a dry soil and warm dry climate, cold and moist winds being especially injurious.
For heart affections high altitudes are to be avoided, though some physicians make an exception of mitral cases where the compensation is good. Moderate elevations of 500 to 1500 ft. are preferable to the sea-level.
In diseases of the kidneys, a warm dry climate, by stimulating the action of the skin, lessens the work to be done by these organs, and thus is the most beneficial. Extremes of heat and cold and elevated regions are all to be avoided.
CLIMAX, JOHN (c. 525–600 A.D.), ascetic and mystic, also called Scholasticus and Sinaïtes. After having spent forty years
in a cave at the foot of mount Sinai, he became abbot of the
monastery. His life has been written by Daniel, a monk belonging
to the monastery of Raithu, on the Red Sea. He derives his
name Climax (or Climacus) from his work of the same name
(Κλῖμαξ τοῦ Παραδείσου, ladder to Paradise), in thirty sections,
corresponding to the thirty years of the life of Christ. It is
written in a simple and popular style. The first part treats of
the vices that hinder the attainment of holiness, the second of
the virtues of a Christian.
Editions.—J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, lxxxviii. (including the biography by Daniel); S. Eremites (Constantinople, 1883); see also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897); Gass-Krüger in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie, Bd. 9 (1901). The Ladder has been translated into several foreign languages—into English by Father Robert, Mount St Bernard’s Abbey, Leicestershire (1856).
CLIMBING[1] FERN, the botanical genus Lygodium, with about twenty species, chiefly in the warmer parts of the Old World, of interest from its climbing habit. The plants have a creeping stem, on the upper face of which is borne a row of leaves. Each leaf has a slender stem-like axis, which twines round a support and bears leaflets at intervals; it goes on growing indefinitely. It is a favourite warm greenhouse plant.
CLINCHANT, JUSTIN (1820–1881), French soldier, entered
the army from St Cyr in 1841. From 1847 to 1852 he was
employed in the Algerian campaigns, and in 1854 and 1855 in
the Crimea. At the assault on the Malakoff (Sept. 8th, 1855)
he greatly distinguished himself at the head of a battalion.
During the 1859 campaign he won promotion to the rank of
lieut.-colonel, and as a colonel he served in the Mexican War.
He was made general of brigade in 1866, and led a brigade of the
Army of the Rhine in 1870. His troops were amongst those
shut up in Metz, and he passed into captivity, but soon escaped.
The government of national defence made him general of division
and put him at the head of the 20th corps of the Army of the
East. He was under Bourbaki during the campaign of the Jura,
and when Bourbaki attempted to commit suicide he succeeded
to the command (Jan. 23rd, 1871), only to be driven with
84,000 men over the Swiss frontier at Pontarlier. In 1871
Clinchant commanded the 5th corps operating against the
Commune. He was military governor of Paris when he died in 1881.
CLINIC; CLINICAL (Gr. κλίνη, a bed), an adjective strictly
connoting association with the bedside, and so used in ecclesiology
of baptism of the sick or dying, but more particularly in medicine
to characterize its aspect as associated with practice on the
living patient. Thus clinical experience is opposed to what
is learnt from laboratory research or theoretical considerations.
The substantive “clinic” is technically employed for a medical
school or class where instruction is given in practical work as
illustrated by the examination and treatment of actual cases
of disease.
CLINKER. (1) (From an old Dutch word klinkaerd, from
klinken, to ring), a hard paving brick, a brick with a vitrified
surface, or a fused mass of brick; also the incombustible residue
of coal, which occurs, half-fused into hard masses, in grates or
furnaces; a fused mass of lava. (2) (From clinch, or clench,
a common Teutonic word, meaning “to fasten together”), a
term appearing usually in the form “clinker-built” as opposed
to “carvel-built,” for a boat whose strakes overlap and are not
fastened “flush.”
CLINOCLASITE, a rare mineral consisting of the basic copper arsenate (CuOH)3AsO4. It crystallizes in the monoclinic
- ↑ The word “climb” (O.E. climban), meaning strictly to ascend (or similarly descend) by progressive self-impulsion, with some apparent degree of laborious effort and by means of contact with the surface traversed, is connected with the same root as in “cleave” and “cling.” For Alpine climbing, &c., Mountaineering.
