Nikola Tesla: Colorado Springs Notes, 1899-1900 Page 132

had been carried on to ascertain whether there are any Roentgen rays emitted by the sun or produced in other ways by the sun's rays but the results were negative. Similar experiments, I am told, were conducted for a long period on Pike's Peak but no action on a photographic film, which was the means of these investigations, was noted, at least not such as might be attributed to Roentgen rays. I think though that rays of this kind must be ultimately demonstrated to exist in the radiations of the Sun as well as of most other sources of intense light and heat. It is possible that such rays are, in a measure, active in arresting the process of decay caused by the bacillus. I conclude that, since the bacillus of tuberculosis is an organism developed under exclusion of light, such rays of short wave length, made by any means to penetrate the tissues and reach the affected parts of the same, must needs be inimical to the development of the microbes not used to such rays. Though this conclusion might not prove true, still there is a good foundation for it, and I am hopeful that with the apparatus I am now perfecting for other purposes as well as this, it will be possible to produce Roentgen rays of great intensity which will furnish the long sought for means of successfully combating these dreaded deceases of the internal organs. Whatever be the cause of the marvelous improvement noted in patients it is a fact that most people afflicted with these ailments, and often pronounced beyond medical help, recover and get soon seemingly quite well here. A short while ago I was induced by a friend to go to a dinner he gave in my honor where I met a number of more or less interesting people. The conversation during the entire evening was an animated one and the entertainment highly enjoyable. Everybody seemed to be in high spirits and excellent health. But my pleasure was spoiled in the end when I learned before parting, with painful astonishment, from a friend who is a very skilled and competent physician, that of the two dozen people I met scarcely one individual had more then one whole lung left, the majority of them being in fact “much farther gone” as he said, so that they would infallibly die in a very short time if they would leave here. I soon learned that there were thousands of consumptives in the place, about the only healthful people being coachman, and I concluded that while this climate is certainly in a wonderful degree healthful and invigorating, only two kinds of people should come here: Those who have the consumption and those who want to get it. That the sun's light and heat exercise a highly beneficial effect on these sick people may be inferred with certainty from its effect upon people who are quite well. It is curious to note how agreeable and indispensable the sunshine becomes here after a while. Even healthful people become sad and unstrung when the sky gets clouded and dark. I have however, observed such an effect before but it is quite natural that it should be so here where the sun shines constantly day after day. I do not suppose that in London or even in New York, where the weather is comparatively fair much attention is paid as to whether the sky is clear or clouded, but here every laborer laments when the sun does not shine. Despite the beautiful spectacle offered by the parting sun one feels sad when its disk sinks behind the mountains and one is thoroughly glad to see it rise again. These feelings are experienced, of course, everywhere, but somehow they are of greater intensity here than elsewhere. Considering the elevation, the small density and exceptional purity and extreme dryness of the air, the scantiness of the vegetation and particularly the scarcity of protecting timber, the vastness of the practically desert prairies over which the wind can sweep unimpeded, the geographical position of the country and other causes and conditions determining the character of the climate it is not difficult to guess the general nature of the weather in Colorado. Nevertheless it is a surprise to learn that the climate is mild in an extraordinary degree, the storms coming but seldom

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