80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



investigating hygienic modes of treatment. Each practitioner should, 

 as his opportunities permit, observe as carefully the effects of his hy- 

 gienic commands as he does those of the medicines he may prescribe. 

 He should compare also the one mode with the other, and calculate in 

 each case their relative advantages. In this way he will have the 

 opportunity of detecting with greater accuracy the pure effects of 

 medicines themselves ; seeing that the action of medicines is greatly 

 modified by the external conditions to which he who takes them is sub- 

 jected. 



Convinced of the importance of the above considerations, I have 

 made it my business for thirty years past to mark out a series of hy- 

 gienic rules for the treatment of consumptives ; and as I have had the 

 best and widest opportunities of carrying out these rules in practice, 

 and as the results have been satisfactory, I lay the views published, 

 originally, while I was one of the physicians to the Royal Infirmary 

 for Diseases of the Chest, once again, and briefly, before the public. 



In giving the following rules, I presuppose their general applica- 

 bility to cases of consumption in all stages of the disease : in the 

 premonitory stage ; in the stage when the tubercular deposition is 

 evident ; and in the next stage, when the local mischief is much fur- 

 ther advanced. In the last stage even, though hope is lost, many of 

 the rules may still be followed out with advantage, for by them the 

 course of the disease is smoothed, and sometimes life is prolonged. 

 In like manner, the rules are generally applicable to those who by 

 hereditary taint are as yet but predisposed to the disease. 



Rule I. A Supply of Pure Air for Respiration is the First Indi- 

 cation in the Treatment of the Consumptive Patient. — In all cases of 

 consumption, the attention of the physician should be at once directed 

 to the quality of the air breathed by the patient. 



In large cities, and even in small towns, it is next to impossible to 

 get a constant supply of pure air in inhabited houses ; for houses are 

 built according to false notions of comfort. " What a nice, cozy 

 room ! " is a common expression applied innocently to every place 

 where the greatest care has been taken to make an air-vault, without 

 a "draught," and all ready for being charged with invisible impurities. 



In a cozy room the consumptive is bound never to live, nor, in- 

 deed, in any one room for great lengths of time. So long as he is 

 able to be out-of-doors, he is in his best and safest home. In the fields, 

 on the hills, wherever the fresh air vivifies, where plants look most 

 vigorous, and animals frisk about in the joy of health, there will the 

 consumptive draw in his choicest medicine, there meet most advanta- 

 geously the dangers of his disease, and there repair most easily the 

 waste of tissue. 



The inclemencies of the weather may temporarily, it is true, pre- 

 vent the patient from his out-door existence. But even these inclemen- 

 cies are not so much to be dreaded as confinement in a house. I have 



