The Mountain is R. M. S. Jackson’s intriguing work on the benefits of a life attuned to nature. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Jackson, a doctor and health enthusiast from Cambria County, Pennsylvania, established a sanitarium called the Allegheny Mountain Health Institute. In this book, he urges his readers to abandon the mobs of the cities and frivolities of leisure for the health and happiness that he attributes to the powers of the Allegheny Mountains. The Mountain is an exemplary study of the Alleghenies, combining an examination of the natural environment with Jackson’s own philosophy on the rewards of discovering a “rejuvenescence in Nature.”
