(Ever wondered what made Sullivan fixated on Nilgiris. Many of colleagues had been to the hills but none was keen to recommend them. Then what was the clincher for Sullivan. Evidently, the health factor. Sullivan was himself a not too healthy man. But what convinced him of the healthfulness of the Nilgiri air was the experience of a French Naturalist with a long name, Jean-Baptiste Louis Claude Théodore Leschenault de La Tour, who accompanied Sullivan on his second visit to the hills. The story in Sullivan’s own words).
” M. Leschenault , French naturalist, came to me at Coimbatoor, in November 1818, with fever; he was confined to his bed, and in a very dangerous state, until January, when he proceeded to Pondicherry. He returned in April, in a most miserable state of weakness and suffering, hardly able to walk, without appetite, and with his skin the colour of saffron. He accompanied me (obviously carried by palanquin) up the hills in May; and I never saw so great and so rapid a change in any man. He was able to take constant walking exercise; his appetite and strength were completely restored in less than three weeks, so that he was able to go from stage to stage on foot. Dr. Jones, the assistant surgeon here, was one of the party: he had been a fever subject for four years, and in the months of February, March, and April, the attacks were repeated and violent. The hill-air completely set him up, and he has had no fever since”
Nilgiri Documentation Centre