176 ELEMENTS OF PHYSIOLOGY 



299. Consumption, or Tuberculosis, is a disease due chiefly 

 to living constantly in unventilated houses. That the 

 natural curative powers of the body are capable of curing 

 consumption, is shown by the fact that reports of post- 

 mortem examinations in some of the hospitals of the 

 United States and Europe show scars on the lungs in half 

 of the cases examined. These scars were left by con- 

 sumption, which the persons had had without knowing it or 

 being treated for it, and from which they had entirely re- 

 covered, dying afterward from another disease. These 

 facts show that in the early stage consumption is an es- 

 pecially curable disease. Persons are sometimes alarmed 

 because they have heard that consumption is caused by a 

 bacillus, or microscopic germ, commonly called a microbe. 



300. That it is not caused by microbes alone is proved 

 by the fact that the microbes are floating in the air, and 

 nearly all human beings are exposed to them many times 

 in their lives, yet all do not contract the disease. Consump- 

 tives are constantly spitting on the streets of cities, yet a 

 smaller percentage of the street cleaners of Berlin than 

 of almost any other class of the population die of con- 

 sumption. 



301. Outdoor life, simple diet, and exercise seem to be 

 the best treatment. Inhalations through apparatus of 

 medicated air, moist air, dry air, cold air, superheated air, 

 air charged with the pleasant aroma of pine leaves or the 

 repulsive sulphuret of hydrogen, have all been tried. It 

 seems impossible directly to destroy the microbes when 

 they once obtain a foothold in the lungs, without the 

 employment of such measures as will destroy the lung 

 tissue as well as the parasitic bacilli. Even if the bacillus 

 could be destroyed by germicides, it would be impossible, 

 since the germs are so widely scattered, to escape infection 

 again, and the disease would return for the same reason that 

 it first gained a foothold : this was because, from indoor 



