612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the sunlit fields, imbibing vitality at the fountain-head, for the same 

 sun that evolved the fern-forests of the Miocene alluvium has still 

 means of his own for quickening the vital energy of the most complex 

 organisms. That tonic catholicon operates even through the triple 

 teguments of a French uniform. After the tedium of a long voyage, 

 and the delay in the Vera Cruz harbor-barracks, the French troops in 

 Mexico suffered from a form of asthma that resisted all medication, 

 but a six days' march through the hills of tbe tierra templada brought 

 permanent relief, except to a few invalids who had been transported 

 in closed ambulances. At first, though, the remedy is apt to aggravate 

 the evil. After a couple of sleepless nights, the first day of a pedes- 

 trian tour, even through the jaradise of a June landscape, is steep, up- 

 hill work, but, with the aid of a merry traveling-companion and a. 

 light knapsack, Nature will at last prevail, and three days' hardship is 

 a cheap price for the remission of a three weeks' daily and nightly 

 martyrdom besides the possible sequela?. For the chief danger of 

 chronic asthma is the probability of serious pathological complica- 

 tions. The direct result of dyspnoea is the impoverishment of the 

 blood by an impeded process of aeration, and the concomitants of the 

 disease are therefore analogous to those of pulmonary phthisis and 

 protracted in-door life hypertrophy of the heart, emphysema, or 

 swelling of the lungs, inflammation of the bronchi, dropsical swellings 

 of the extremities. Even short attacks often lead to malignant after- 

 effects insomnia, indigestion, headache, and a peculiar affection of 

 the lungs that closely simulates the premonitory symptoms of pneu- 

 monia ; after the asthma proper has entirely subsided, a new difficulty 

 of breathing supervenes in the form of twitching pains in the pleura 

 and the upper lobes of the lungs. Before the end of the second day, 

 rest, embrocations with hot mutton-tallow, and a spare diet, generally 

 relieve these symptoms, w T hich follow more frequently after a drug- 

 suppressed case of asthma than after the pedestrian-cure. The latter 

 method of treatment is intuitively indicated by the restlessness of 

 asthma-patients. The same hygienic instinct which makes a passion- 

 ate longing for refrigeration a regular symptom of climatic fevers 

 seems here to prompt peripatetic enterprises by associating in-door 

 life with the idea of aj>oplexy and suffocation. 



Like consumption, asthma is a house-disease. Want of fresh air 

 and exercise will counteract all prophylactics, while the out-door liver 

 can confine his precautions to the beginning of the warm season. A 

 frugal diet, both as an hygienic aperient and a sedative of irate pas- 

 sions, will help the patient over the asthma-weeks (May and June 

 in the north, and April and May in the lower latitudes) ; an airy bed- 

 room and cold baths, over the summer season. The winter months will 

 take care of themselves, and every year thus passed diminishes the 

 danger of relapse. 



