1. Pulmonary phthisis is a combination of multifarious variable phenomena, and not a morbid unity.
2. Hence there does not and cannot exist a specific medicine against it.
3. Therefore neither iodine nor its tincture, neither chlorine, nor sea salt, nor tar, can be considered in the light of anti-phthisical remedies.
4. _There are no specifics against phthisis, but there are systems of treatment to be followed in order to conquer the pathological states which const.i.tute the disorder._
5. In order to cure consumptive patients, the peculiar affections under which they labor must be studied, and appreciated, and counteracted by appropriate means.
6. The tubercle cannot be cured by the use of remedies, but good hygienic precautions may prevent its development.
7. The real way to relieve, cure, or prolong the life of consumptive patients, is to treat their various pathological states, which ought to receive different names, according to their nature.
8. Consumption, thus treated, has often been cured, and oftener still life has been considerably prolonged.
9. Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated above.
10. The old methods, founded on the general idea of a single illness called phthisis, are neither scientific nor rational.
11. The exact diagnosis of the various pathological states which const.i.tute the malady will dictate the most useful treatment for it.
PREVENTIVES OF CONSUMPTION.
If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first cla.s.s residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair, we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping, they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,--which they cannot look into as they can their watch or old boots,--first try to patch themselves up, instead of employing a professional "cobbler of poor health and broken const.i.tutions."
Before me are Wistar"s, Wilson"s, and Gray"s Works on Anatomy. I have read them, or Krause"s, more than twenty years. They contain all that has been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is "Physiology," which treats of the offices or various functions of the system. I do not comprehend it all. "Great ignoramus!" n.o.body is perfected in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature, and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases safely.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CORRECT POSITION.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: INCORRECT POSITION.]
Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive of it. I should wrong you, and endanger your lives by the deception thus put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to the ma.s.ses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.
Among the preventives of this fell destroyer I enumerate,--
_First_, Plenty of G.o.d"s pure, free air; and _second_, sunshine. These are indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.
A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.
"Madam," I said, "I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no sunshine permeates by day;" for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked astonished at my Oedipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.
"Yes, sir," she finally answered, "he always sleeps in a room where the sunlight don"t enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am discouraged."
Such stoicism was unpardonable, but I said in reply,--
"Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come back and a.s.sure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him."
She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her mind,--
"Put a plant into his room--plant into Johnny"s room."
The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.
It is a daily occurrence for physicians to see patients who are dying by inches from the above cause; nor are they the low foreigners alone, but, like my stoical one hundred and eighty pounder, of American birth, and without excuse for their ignorance.
Do not sleep or live in apartments unventilated, or where the life-giving sunshine does not penetrate during some portion of the day. It is living a lingering death. If the patient is scrofulous, let him or her employ such remedies as are known to remove the predisposition, or seek aid from some physician who has cured scrofula. The regular pract.i.tioner seldom desires such cases. One who has devoted much time to scrofula and chronic diseases should be preferred. I think chronic practice should become a separate branch in medicine as much as surgery is fast becoming. Take the disease in season. Do not neglect colds, coughs, and catarrh.
Persons of a low state of blood, who are weak and debilitated, should wear flannels the year round--thinner in summer than in winter; keep the feet dry--avoid "wafer soles,"--and the body clean, but beware of what Artemus Ward termed "too much baths." Employ soap and a small quant.i.ty of water, with a plenty of dry rubbing, till you get a healthy circulation to the surface.
Mothers, see to the solitary and other habits of your daughters. Fathers, instruct your sons in the laws of nature, and of their bodies. Do you understand?
See our youth swept off by the thousands annually, for want of proper care and instruction!...
A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.
"_Wasp Waists._"--This is what I heard a fine-looking though tobacco-sucking gentleman utter, as with his companion he pa.s.sed two young and fashionably dressed ladies on the street recently.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE.]
So I fell into a reverie, in which I called up the image of a fat, jolly old lady whom I knew as my "grandmarm." She had a waist half as large around as a flour barrel.
"O, horrid creature!" exclaims a modern belle.
But, then, my grandmother could breathe! You cannot--_only half breathe_!
And my "grandmarm" had a fresh color to her cheeks and lips, and a good bust, till she was over sixty years of age, and she lived to be almost a hundred years old. You won"t live to see a third of that time. Did our grandfathers or mothers die of consumption? O, no. Still they lived well--mine did. When I see a modern mince pie, it quickly carries my mind back to childhood days, when I think of a little boy who thought grandmothers were gotten up expressly to furnish nice cakes and mince pies for the rising generation.
O, but she was jolly--and so were her pies!
An Irish blunderer once said, "Ah, ye don"t see any of the young gals of the present day fourscore and tin years ould;" and probably we should not see many of our present "crop" if _we_ should survive that age.
Drs. A., B., and C., tell me how many ladies who visit your offices can take a full, deep breath. "Not one in a score or two!" So I thought.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A CONSUMPTIVE WAIST. CAUSE, TIGHT CORSETS.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: NON-CONSUMPTIVE WAIST. NEVER WORE CORSETS.]
Lungs which are not used in full become weak and tender. Do you have sore places about your chest? Practise inflating your lungs with pure air through the nostrils,--where G.o.d first breathed the breath of life,--and give room for the lungs to expand, and the "sore places" will all disappear after a time. See my article on breathing. Put it into steady, moderate practice, and the result will be beneficial beyond all conception.
CONSUMPTION IS CURABLE.
"Is it true that consumption of the lungs is ever cured?" is a question which is often seriously asked.
"O, yes," I reply.
"What are the proofs?"