726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the sound organ. Still, the actual waste of tissue is never perfectly 

 rej^aired, and fragmentary lungs, supplying the undiminished wants of 

 the whole organism, must necessarily do double work, and will be less 

 able to respond to the demands of an abnormal exigency. But the 

 lungs of a young child of consumptive parents are sound, though very 

 sensitive, and, if the climacteric of the first teens has been passed in 

 safety, or Avithout too serious damage, the problem becomes reduced 

 to the work of preservation and invigoration : the all but intact lungs 

 of the healthy child can be more perfectly r.edeemed than the rudi- 

 mentary organs of the far-gone consumptive ; the phthisical taint can 

 be more entirely eliminated and the respiratory apparatus strengthened 

 to the degree of becoming the most vigorous part of the organism. 

 The poet Goethe, afflicted in his childhood with spitting of blood and 

 other hectic symptoms, thus completely redeemed himself by a judi- 

 cious system of self -culture. Chateaubriand, a child of consumj^tive 

 parents, steeled his constitution by traveling and fasting, and reached 

 his eightieth year. By a relapse into imprudent habits, the latent 

 spark, which under such circumstances seems to defy the eliminative 

 efforts of half a century, may at any time be fanned into life-consum- 

 ing flames, but in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases it will be found 

 that the first im2:)rovement followed upon a change from a sedentary 

 to an out-door and active mode of life. Impure air is the original 

 cause of pulmonary consumption ("pulmonary scrofula," as Dr. Haller 

 used to call it), and out-door life the only radical cure. The first symp- 

 toms of consumption are not easy to distinguish from those transient 

 affections of the upper air-passages Avhich are undoubtedly due to long 

 confinement in a vitiated atmosphere : hoarseness, and a dry, rasping 

 cough, rapid pulse, and general lassitude. Spitting of blood and pains 

 in the chest are more characteristic symptoms, but the crucial test is 

 the degree in which the respiratory functions are accelerated by any 

 unusual effort. A common catarrh will not prevent a man from run- 

 ning up-stairs or walking up-hill for minutes together, without anything 

 like visible distress ; subjected to the same test, a person whose lungs 

 are studded with tubercles will pant like a swimmer after a long dive, 

 and his pulse will rise from an average of 65 to 110 and even 140 

 beats per minute. Combined with a hectic flush of the face, night- 

 sweats, or general emaciation, shortness of breath leaves no doubt that 

 the person thus affected is in the first stage of pulmonary consump- 

 tion. If the patient were my son, I should remove the windows of his 

 bedroom, and make him pass his days in the open air as a cow-boy or 

 berry-gatherer, if he could do no better. In case the disease had 

 reached its deliqicium period, the stage of violent bowel-complaints, 

 dropsical swellings, and utter prostration, it would be better to let the 

 sufferer die in peace, but, as long as he were able to digest a frugal 

 meal and walk two miles on level ground, I should begin the out -door 

 cure at any time of the year, and stake my own life on the result. I 



