i 9 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The mountain-cure remedies assist Nature only in an indirect way, 

 but before the end of the first week the breathing power of the asth- 

 matic lungs will revive as seeing and hearing awaken after a trance. 

 The respiration is still short and quick, but becomes less and lessda- 

 borious ; the patient need not gasp for air ; bis lungs have resumed 

 business, and attend to all the details of its functions till it becomes 

 entirely automatic. 



Expectoration becomes less frequent ; the source of the affection 

 seems to retreat upward, the sputa come from the upper air-passages, 

 and without the preliminaries of a worrying cough. Their quantity 

 gradually diminishes, and the relief is permanent, while cough-medi- 

 cines loosen the phlegm only by increasing its quantum, and discharg- 

 ing it with a tide of artificial mucus. 



The night-sweats, too, soon disappear, for they can be cured on 

 the slmilia similibus principle of the homoeopathists by day-sweats. 

 Put on a flannel shirt, get an old axe and try your luck with a good- 

 sized bee-tree, or with the old log that obstructs the trail. Keep a 

 tin cup about you, and assist Nature by frequent trips to the spring. 

 No matter if you have to change your flannel shirts four times a day ; 

 depend upon it that you will not need them at night. The hectic 

 fever abates ; the cause has been removed. The sweats as well as the 

 fever are induced by a pulmonary inflammation that increases the 

 temperature of the body, but can be relieved by giving it a chance to 

 eliminate the morbid matter. The four or five quarts of water that 

 were excreted in the process of perspiration have circulated through 

 every pore of the respiratory organs and depurated them more effect- 

 ively in a single day than the repeated doses of a cough-exciting 

 nostrum could do in a week. After the return from the mountains to 

 the city (not before November, if possible) the occasional recurrence 

 of the trouble will generally be limited to the rainy weeks of the first 

 month, for the antipyretic influence of cold, clear weather rivals that 

 of the perspiration-cure. 



The danger of a haemorrhage is generally passed when the ces- 

 sation of purulent expectorations proves that the disease has become 

 non-progressive, and that the ulcers begin to cicatrize. Hemoptysis, 

 or blood-vomiting, is the only symptom of their disease which is lia- 

 ble to shake the characteristic hop>efulness of consumptives. It gen- 

 erally frightens them considerably ; they are apt to protest against 

 out-door proceedings, and speak with bated breath, under the (errone- 

 ous) impression that a vocal effort has somehow induced the trouble. 

 It can do no harm to humor that disposition ; but keep the patient 

 on his legs lying down flat on the back after a heavy hemorrhage is 

 almost sure to bring on a relapse before the end of twenty-four hours. 

 For the first three or four hours walk slowly up and down, try to keep 

 up a deep and calm respiration, and, if possible, take the first nap in a 

 sitting posture propped up with cushions and pillows. At the end 



