It is alleged that magic mists which shroud the mountaintops pervade the air with health-restoring powers. "During the entire journey," wrote Trudeau1 in his autobiography reminiscing about his historic move to the Adirondacks, "I had felt gloomy forebodings as to the hopelessness of my case, but, under the magic influence of the surroundings I had longed for, these all disappeared and I felt convinced I was going to recover."
The "magic influence" indeed worked wonders for Trudeau, who lived to see his humble establishment at Saranac Lake, NY, grow and develop into a modern sanatorium—the first of its kind on the North American continent and a model for others to follow.
One of Trudeau's patients was Robert Louis Stevenson, who spent the fall-winter of 1887-1888 at Saranac Lake; there he wrote some of his best essays. To his physician's disappointment, none of the latter dealt with the writer's immediate