THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 193 



of forty-eight hours the danger is past, and out-door exercise may be 

 gradually resumed. 



For stubborn dyspnoea (want of breath) there is a somewhat 

 heroic but almost infallible palliative, though I own that the rationale 

 of its efficacy is somewhat undefined artificial insomnia. Read or 

 write as long as that will keep you awake ; after midnight walk up 

 and down the room for fear of falling asleep in the chair, and toward 

 morning, when drowsiness becomes irresistible, go to bed for a few 

 hours, and that they will be passed in peaceful sleep can generally be 

 inferred from the circumstance that by that time the dyspnoea has 

 disappeared. After the second night's vigils the trouble is not apt to 

 recur for a month or so. But, unless the distress is utterly unbearable, 

 or the necessity for prompt recuperation very urgent, it is, on the 

 whole, better to eschew palliatives and rely on the only permanent 

 asthma-cure the gradual but normal invigoration of the whole system. 



In chronic catarrh a frequent concomitant of a tubercular diath- 

 esis the obstruction of the nasal ducts by accumulated mucus yields 

 in a day or two to any exercise that brings into play the muscles of 

 the neck, shoulders, and chest, such as shouldering a good-sized log, 

 walking bolt-upright with two large pails full of water, or a loaded 

 wheelbarrow. A very simple household remedy is a palliative to the 

 same effect : hot water applied to the palms of the hands and the 

 soles of the feet. It affords immediate though often only temporary 

 relief ; for the diathermal influence of the hot- water treatment, as it 

 were, dries up, and thus temporarily reduces the mucous accumula- 

 tions, while the preferable exercise- cure more gradually but perma- 

 nently removes the cause of the trouble. 



The stitch-like pain in the chest is apt to recur with every ca- 

 tarrh, and forms, indeed, only an incidental concomitant of tubercular 

 consumption. It is a pleuritic affection, and is often entirely wanting 

 in cases that end with death by tubercular cachexia. The Calmuck 

 Tartars, who defile the air of their family tents with tobacco-smoke 

 and suffer the usual consequences, cure pleuritic inflammation by a 

 simple method of inunction : viz., by fomenting the nape and chest 

 with hot mutton-tallow. When loss of appetite indicates a derange- 

 ment of the digestive organs, ointments may be used as a temporary 

 substitute for a demulcent diet. 



Dropsical swellings, chronic diarrhoea, with frequent chills, prove 

 that the disease has reached the colliquative or hopeless stage of its 

 development. But, even under such circumstances, the mountain-cure, 

 in the form of moderate exercise in the pure air of a highland sanita- 

 rium, will confer at least the negative benefit of saving the patient 

 from the horrors preceding the last act of a hospital-tragedy it will 

 insure an anaesthetic conclusion of the disease ; the vital strength will 

 ebb away in a painless deliquium. 



But while the vital forces still keep the foe at bay, i. e., before the 



VOL. XXIII. 13 



