MODERN TROGLODYTES. 39 



view. " There is a cure for consumption," says Dio Lewis, " though 

 I doubt it' it will ever become popular. Even in its advanced stages 

 the disease may be arrested by roughing it / I mean by adopting 

 savage habits, and living out-doors altogether, and in all kinds of 

 weather." 



That low temperature in open air does not injure our lungs has 

 been recognized even by old-school physicians, who now send their 

 patients to Minnesota and Northern Michigan quite as often as to 

 Florida; and is conclusively proved by the fact that of all nations of 

 the earth, next to the inhabitants of the Senegal highlands, the Nor- 

 wegians, Icelanders, and Yakuts of Northern Siberia, enjoy the most 

 perfect immunity from tubercular diseases. Dry and intensely cold 

 air preserves decaying organic tissue by arresting decomposition, and 

 it would be difficult to explain how the most effective remedy came to 

 be suspected of being the cause of tuberculosis, unless we remember 

 that, where fuel is accessible, the disciple of civilization rarely fails to 

 take refuge from excessive cold in its opposite extreme an over- 

 heated artificial atmosphere and thus comes to connect severe win- 

 ters with the idea of pectoral complaints. 



There is a rather numerous class of beasts whose lungs seem 

 able to adapt themselves to an atmosphere almost devoid of oxygen, 

 but the human animal and the Quadrumana do not belong to that 

 class. Monsieur de la Motte-Baudin, who was connected with the 

 scientific stall* of the Jardin des Plantes as their "menagerie-doctor" 

 for more than twenty years, never omitted to dissect his deceased 

 patients before turning them over to the taxidermist, and invariably 

 found that all monkeys had succumbed to some variety of phthisis, 

 while the lungs of the badgers, bears, and foxes, were perfectly sound. 

 The three last-named animals are natural cave-dwellers, and have 

 been provided wih organs especially contrived to resist the effluvia 

 of their burrows ; while the Simice, like man, are open-air creatures? 

 whose proper atmosphere is the cordial air of woodlands. 



Among the natives of Senegambia pulmonary affections are not 

 only nearly but absolutely unknown ; yet a single year passed in the over- 

 crowded man-pens and steerage-hells of the slave-trader often sufficed 

 to develop the disease in that most virulent form known as galloping 

 consumption; and the brutal planters of the Spanish Antilles made a 

 rule of never buying an imported negro before they had "tested his 

 wind," i. e., trotted him up-hill and watched his respirations. If he 

 proved to be " a roarer," as turfmen term it, they knew that the dun- 

 geon had done its work and discounted his value accordingly. " If a 

 perfectly sound man is imprisoned for life," says Baron d'Arblay, the 

 Belgian philanthropist, " his lungs, as a rule, will first show symptoms 

 of disease, and shorten his misery by a hectic decline, unless he should 

 commit suicide." 



Our home statistics show that the percentage of deaths by con- 



