526 UK- CLARK ON CONSUMPTION. 



servance of certain hygienic rules and precautionary measures. 

 These, though particularly recommended to persons who are threat- 

 ened with consumption, will tend very materially to maintain the 

 health and prolong the life of the most sound and vigorous. A care- 

 ful perusal of (he present work has convinced us that no diminution 

 of the frightful mortality from this disease can be expected to take 

 place till more attention be paid to that particular slate of the general 

 health which immediately precedes its actual development, and till 

 all who are so predisposed sedulously adopt every means in their 

 power of improving their constitutions. 



No one now can err from ignorance. Our learned author has 

 pointed out the foreboding and premonitory signs and marks of the 

 disease in plain and easy language, and has explained the means of 

 averting it with gi-eat clearness, and, as it seems to us, with no 

 ordinary skill and judgment; and it is to this part of the work that 

 we would more particularly call the attention of the general reader. 

 Having described that particular state of the constitution which 

 leads to consumption at the commencement of the work, the author 

 begins the chapter on the Causes of the disease, by dividing them 

 into the remote and exciting, or those which induce the morbid state 

 of the constitution (Tuberculous Cachexia) and those wh'ch de- 

 termine the local deposition of tuberculous matter in the lungs. The 

 remote or predisposing causes, he informs us, are very often he- 

 reditary, and may exist in different degrees in children born of the 

 same parents, varying in intensity according to the state of health of 

 the latter when each was born. " A state of tuberculous cachexia is 

 not the only condition of the parent which entails the tuberculous pre- 

 dispositionon the children; there are several diseases which have this 

 effect, the most important of which are a disordered state of the di- 

 gestive organs, gout, cutaneous diseases, the injurious influence of 

 mercury on the system, debility from disease, age, &c. In short, a 

 deteriorated state of the health in the parent from any cause, to a 

 den-ree sufficient to produce a state of cachexia, may give rise to the 

 scrofulous constipation in the offspring.'' No remark is necessary to 

 show the important considerations involved in these observations. 

 Nothino- is more common than to find parents deceiving themselves, 

 from the circumstance that none of their family have suffered from 

 consumption. Our author shows that it is not necessary that they 

 should have done so. The off'spring of the gouty, the dyspeptic, 

 may and too often have a predisposition to consumption. 



In the second sejtion the author explains the mode in which the 

 disease may be induced in persons born without hereditary predispo- 

 sition. "In children, the earlier the causes of tuberculous cachexia 

 are applied the more speedily will it be induced. If, for example, 

 an infant born in perfect health, and of the healthiest parents, be in- 

 sufficiently or injudiciously fed, that is, be nursed by a woman whose 

 milk is inadequate in quantity or quality to affbrd proper nourish- 

 ment, or if the child be fed on other food ill suited to the state of the 

 dio-estive organs, or be confined to rooms in which free ventilation 

 and cleanliness are neglected, a few months will often suffice to in- 

 duce tuberculous cachexia. The countenance will become pale, the 



