No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 177 



in the eradication and extermination of this disease. It is to trained 

 physicians that we are indebted tor the exact knowledge we possess 

 of what the disease consists of. It is to trained physicians to-day 

 that we are indebted for the best knowledge of the best means of 

 treatment. But I believe that I have expressed the concensus of 

 the best medical opinion when I say to you again, as I have just 

 said, that no case of tuberculosis ever was cured by drugs. 



I can very well remember fifty years ago of hearing my father, who 

 was an honored country doctor, say, that if a certain patient of his 

 could go into the coal regions, as they were called, that is, the 

 places where charcoal was burned in the woods, that he would have 

 a chance to get well. At that early day people recognized the fact 

 that in these coal regions cures occurred. They attributed the good 

 results to inhaling the fumes and the dust of the burning charcoal. 

 We know that charcoal is carbon, and it makes very little difference 

 so far as the irritation of the lungs is concerned whether it is in the 

 form of charcoal or in the form of bituminous coal; in either case 

 it is an irritant. This show T s how close men may be to a great truth 

 but not quite recognize it. What was the actual beneficial agent 

 in this case? Those charcoal burners set up a little cabin where a 

 mere screen intervened between the cold winter and the heat of 

 summer, with an open fireplace and with a bare apology for a chim- 

 ney, and whether they would or not, those who lived in those cabins, 

 practically lived in the open air. There was the explanation of the 

 whole thing — the open air. In 1873, I was acting as assistant sur- 

 geon of the United States Engineer Corps and we were then operat- 

 ing in Colorado. There were with me two men, one of them a very 

 distinguished scientist; the other a private soldier. The former had 

 been sent to Colorado with the idea that a life in the open air might 

 help him. The diagnosis in the case of the scientist had been given 

 by the most eminent authorities in New York City. The other case 

 had been diagnosed by a most accomplished man and they had sent 

 this private out to Colorado because they did not want to bury him 

 at Fort Leavenworth. Both of these men are alive to-day. The one 

 gained twenty pounds and took no medicine; the other gained forty 

 and gained it in spite of the whiskey he drank. I could not help 

 asking myself the question whether the beneficial effects of the open 

 air were confined to Colorado. As a Pennsylvanian I came home and 

 in 1876, placed a brother physician in the hemlock wilderness of Sul- 

 livan county. He stayed there in the open air without medicine 

 and almost without care and in two months gained enough strength 

 to return and continue his practice and then go to Cuba and die. 



Now as Commissioner of Forestry, I found myself three years ago 

 in charge of 600,000 acres of land. It belonged to the people of the 

 12—6—1905 



