A healthy island

The first tourist guidebook to the island of Sark, as far as I know, was written by a doctor, G W James, in 1845. The guidebook is understandably short, the island being so small; but the author, being a doctor, devotes an eighth of it (14 pages) to medical matters.

Sark, on the face of it, was not an exciting place to visit: “To those whose minds are only kept in motion by the aid of others, or by the attractions of the billiard-table and news room, Sark might, after a cursory view, prove a source of ennui.”

But Dr James offered some reassurance to nervous visitors to so remote a destination: “It may here be …