THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. n 



exorcised demon returns with seven accomplices, and Nature has to 

 resume the original struggle with diminished chances of success 

 shorn of just as much strength as she had to expend in comhating the 

 additional enemy. The exorcist then repeats his dose, but finds that 

 he has to increase the quantum : the exhausted system at last ceases 

 to react against the provocation, and in order to obtain temporary re- 

 lief the patient must resort to stronger and stronger stimulants. 



There is a more excellent way : trust in the wisdom of Nature, 

 and a careful husbanding of the vital forces by continence, for in- 

 stance. Sexual excesses, combined with mal-nutrition, are such potent 

 allies of pulmonary consumption that Dr. Zimmermann calls tubercles 

 " Thranen der Armuth unci Reue nach innen geweinV ("tears of pov- 

 erty and repentance wept inward"). That dreadful disease known as 

 " galloping consumption " often results from the co-operation of the 

 three chief enemies of the human organism : impure air, intemperance, 

 and incontinence. The causes of all violent (or painfully suppressed) 

 mental emotions should also be avoided. Give gambling-houses a 

 wide berth. Deprecate quarrels, especially quarrels with superiors. 

 Suppressed wrath has often resulted in fatal haemorrhages. Consump- 

 tives need all the sleep they can get, and must abstain from night- 

 work and nocturnal revels. They should also avoid crowded assem- 

 blies, not because of the excitement and the temptation to late hours 

 only, but on account of the danger of infection. For consumption 

 is a contagious disease, though not in the conventional sense of the 

 word. The matter is this : the germs of tuberculosis have no direct 

 effect on the respiratory organs of a healthy person, though cases are 

 on record where the constant breathing of a tainted atmosphere has 

 communicated the disease from husbands to wives, or from patients to 

 nurses. But, after a tubercular diathesis has once been fairly devel- 

 oped, the diseased lungs become extremely sensitive to the contagion 

 of all pulmonary diseases ; the tubercle-seeds, as Dr. Koch's theory 

 would explain it, fall upon a receptive soil the sores of the half- 

 healed vomicce. Dr. Koch, of Breslau, traced the propagative prin- 

 ciple of the tubercle-virus to the development of microscopic animal- 

 cula, and I predict that similar parasites will yet be discovered in the 

 morbid secretions of the upper air-passages. This sensitiveness con- 

 tinues after the idiopathic symptoms of the disease have been brought 

 well under control ; and observation would show that a ten minutes' 

 interview with a sufferer from catarrh, or a short visit to a reading- 

 room, where swollen-faced children are hacking and coughing, suffices 

 (often before the end of the first day) to prove the contagiousness of 

 those affections. 



But, if the danger is recognized in time, the virus can be worked 

 ff^J out-door exercise. Catarrhs can thus be nipped in the bud. I 

 speak from personal experience : I have tried the experiment at all 

 times of the year, and always with the same result, even in one case 



