GERMLESS REGIONS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 29, 15 November 1935, Page 8

GERMLESS REGIONS

the two polar zones. Ihe vision of Arctic holiday resorts with ski-ing, big hotels and sanatoria, conjured up by Professor F. Debenham, was one of the main topics of conversation among the scientists assembled at Norwich recently for the British Association’s meeting (says a writer in the “Daily Telegraph.”) Professor D’ebenham, in his presidential address to the Geographical Section, said that even before the war there were pleasure cruises to the north. It was just as feasible that these cruises would; develop into summer holidays on land in the Arctic. “Nor is it too wild a forecast,” he continued, “to ,say, that in time there may be a Brighton in Spitzbergen—a resurrection, in fact, of the Smeerenberg of two centuries ago, when each summer a large township established itself in Spitzbergen for the whaling The .township will be a city of rest and holiday instead of a city of greasiness and blubber.” Professor Debenham, who was with Scott on his second Antarctic expedition, told me after the lecture that 'he did not think his vision of the future was at all fantastic. “The Arctic is more suitable and accessible for .a, holiday resort than the Antarctic,” he said, “and: the weather there is not at all what it is popularly supposed to be. Spitzbergen during the summer has a dry exhilarating atmosphere and from June to August the temperature ranges up to 60deg. In winter, of course, there are six months of darkness and the place would probably have to close down.” g In his paper, Professor Debenham said that the Polar regions were definitely the most healthy part of the earth’s surface, for the simple reason that the ordinary disease-bearers, whether rodents or insects or minute bacilli, find the conditions either impossible for existence or inhibitive. “It seems likely that residence in a territory free from germs or the conditions for their transport must be better than residence in an Alpine region, which is surrounded by, and is merely above, zones teeming with possibilities of disease,” he added. I' asked a prominent medical man who is here, for the meetings his opinion of Professor Debenham’s suggestions.

“Undoubtedly cool dry air has curative properties in cases of pulmonary trouble,” he said. “That is Avhy we send people high up in the Swiss mountains. While the Polar air during the summer might prove especially beneficial—-although avc should like to experiment first—there Avould obviously have to be fully-equipped sanatoria and easy and frequent means of transport. But the idea is certainly Avithin the hounds of possibility.”,