CORRESP ONDENCE. 



263 



warm-weather disease, and " June being par 

 excellence the asthma-month of the year," 

 my experience goes to show that the worst 

 months are those in which the vegetation is 

 decaying September, October, and Novem- 

 ber. 



Now, as to the remedy which our author 

 recommends cold water. I would like to 

 apply his own language on a previous page 

 of his article to this, where he says : " Horse- 

 back-riding is an approved cure for epilep- 

 sy, but during the progress of the fit the 

 application of the specific might lead to 

 strange consequences. Yacht-sailing in a 

 storm would be a bad way of curing sea- 

 sickness, though it diminishes the danger of 

 future attacks." 



So it is with cold water as a cure for 

 asthma. "A plunge-bath into a pond or 

 tub of water " would indeed be a terrible 

 remedy, for a person afflicted with a severe 

 asthmatic spasm. No person of adult years 

 in such a condition would think of such a 

 remedy, for its consequences might be fatal. 

 The shock of such treatment would infallibly 

 increase the spasm and greatly intensify the 

 suffering. The patient instinctively feels 

 this, and knows that he can endure only the 

 most soothing and gentle treatment. There- 

 fore there is no danger to any adult asth- 

 matic in reading such advice. But parents 

 or unskilled medical men might be misled 

 by this authoritative statement a3 to the cold- 

 water remedy, and might subject children 

 to it with a refinement of brutality which 

 they happily would be ignorant of, but which 

 Dr. Oswald certainly ought to know better 

 than to recommend. 



Imagine the poor sufferer, propped in a 

 chair, livid and gasping for each imperfect 

 breath, unable to speak, fearful of the 

 slightest motion, a terrible strain pressing 

 on heart, brain, and nerves, and think of a 

 plunge cold bath in such a case. Yet our 

 Doctor says " it is the most reliable rem- 

 edy." Certainly he, for one, has not been 

 an asthmatic. 



If this criticism has only the effect of 

 making parents or physicians hesitate before 

 adopting such cruel remedies with children 

 (there is no fear of adults permitting it), 

 my main purpose in writing it will be ful- 

 filled. 



Our author also condemns, the use of 

 the ordinary . alleviations in asthmatic at- 

 tacks. There is some truth, doubtless, in 

 what he says on this subject. Still, they 

 are of the greatest value. A traveler, for 

 instance, who is free from asthma at home, 

 stop's at a close country inn, and contracts 

 an attack of asthma. Then the remedies 

 which are usually prescribed perhaps stra- 

 monium, perhaps coffee, or perhaps niter- 

 paper fumes relieve rapidly, and enable the 

 traveler to proceed, whereas without them 

 the spasm might last for days. These reme- 



dies act as helps, and the system has a sur- 

 plus of strength sufficient to repair the 

 slight damage caused by them. They help 

 in the time of need. They act as brandy 

 does to a frozen mountaineer ; and, if a mis- 

 taken medical philosophy is going to deprive 

 the suffering asthmatic of these invaluable 

 aids and reliefs, it ought to be combated 

 and exposed. As well say that surgical 

 operations should be conducted without chlo- 

 roform or ether, because the effect of those 

 anaesthetics is harmful, as to say that the 

 blessed relief which nature's herbs provide 

 should not be used in case of an asthmatic 

 emergency. 



Whatever may be Dr. Oswald's merits as 

 a physician, his paper on asthma, judged 

 from the standpoint of a campaigner in that 

 complaint, is not sufficiently correct or judi- 

 cious to be a safe guide for the physician 

 or the sufferer. W. B. Crosby. 



New Yoke, September 15, 1S83. 



Messrs. Editors : 



From the symptoms described by Mr. 

 W. B. Crosby, I suspect that his affliction 

 is not chronic asthma, but the dyspnoea which 

 sometimes accompanies a latent tubercular 

 diathesis, and which, in its spasmodic form, 

 is generally aggravated by catarrh. Asthma, 

 like hay-fever, is chiefly a warm-weather dis- 

 ease; still, if Mr. Crosby's trouble is not 

 confined to the end of the year, I believe I 

 can reconcile his experience with my ob- 

 servation on the secondary causes of the 

 disorder, viz., that the symptoms often as- 

 cribed to the effect of a vegetable pollen 

 " are probably a consequence of the relax- 

 ing influence of the first warm weather, for 

 in midwinter a single warm day, following 

 upon a protracted frost, may produce symp- 

 toms exactly resembling those of a hay- 

 catarrh" ("Popular Science Monthly," p. 

 606). Your correspondent suspects a mor- 

 bific agency in the decay of the autumnal 

 vegetation, and, in America at least, the Oc- 

 tober frosts, when the falling leaves expose 

 a vast area of woodland-soil, are almost 

 yearly followed by a return of warm weath- 

 er. I make no doubt but annual asthmas 

 are often supplemented by Indian-summer 

 attacks. What Mr. Crosby says about the 

 causal connection of asthma and indiges- 

 tion was mentioned in other words on p. 

 610 (" Popular Science Monthly ") : " There 

 is a curious correlation between asthma and 

 close stools ; they come and go together." 



Mr. Crosby is probably not less correct 

 in his statement that his asthmatic spasms 

 " generally come on in the early mornings, 

 the patient waking in a semi-nightmare to 

 find the attack already begun," and his 

 description does not materially differ from 

 mine, that, " after rolling and tossing about 

 till relieved by that form of sleep which the 

 Germans call Ein-dammern ' the patient 



