Article September 29, 2003 Issue

Health—out from under the weather

By J. Thomas Black

YOU HAVEN'T HEARD of Abner Pratt? He was once the chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and was appointed United States Consul to the Sandwich Islands—now known as Hawaii. Mr. Pratt was so enamored with Hawaii that in the early 1860s, in his hometown of Marshall, Michigan, he built an approximation of his island residence and called it the Honolulu House. To the point of this article, the story goes that Pratt passed away because he was inclined to illness by his habit of wearing tropical island clothes during the severe winters we have here in Michigan.

That reminds me of a friend who vacationed in Hawaii. While there, he developed what he called "a doozy of a cold." He remarked of the experience, "So much for health theories based on climate."

In the Northern Hemisphere, the season is fast approaching when the successors to the press that told the news of Justice Pratt's demise will be reporting on the latest rounds of flu shots, and detailing the extent to which winter's seasonal illnesses are affecting people in different states and provinces. What to do? We cannot all winter in Hawaii, Arizona, or Florida, though apparently that isn't a solution anyway.