Human Physiology. J97 



may be drawn off by tapping, with temporary relief ; when 

 they are effused into the pleural cavity and press upon the 

 lungs and heart the end is near. 



Change of scene and change of climate are often pre- 

 scribed for the cure or amelioration of diseased conditions. 

 People say when a doctor cannot cure a patient he sends 

 him away to die. It is true that no physician likes to have 

 a patient die on his hands but such advice is in many 

 cases disinterested, and the departure of a patient is, of 

 course, a pecuniary loss to the physician. It is also, in 

 many cases, good advice. To hurry off a dying consump- 

 tive from the comforts of home to a sea side lodging is 

 often a useless cruelty; but a change of air, of scene, of 

 surroundings, is very useful in many cases. When one is 

 dying of home-sickness, home is cure. The poor negro 

 slaves described by Dr Livingstone in Central Africa, dying 

 of simple broken-heart, and placing their hands over the 

 heart when asked to show the seat of pain, would have 

 quickly recovered had they been set free. To remove the 

 cause of disease is often more than half the cure and the 

 cause may be the air one breathes, some subtle earth-in- 

 fluence, some moral contagion, the presence of uncongenial 

 people, annoying and depressing surroundings. Change is 

 cure. One may gain much by changing from a low to a 

 high situation. A few hundred feet may make a world of 

 difference. I write these lines some six hundred feet up 

 the side of the Malvern Hills, which rise eight hundred feet 

 above me ; and every one feels the exhilaration of even 

 these altitudes. The air is clear when the vast valley of 

 the Severn is a sea of mist. The higher altitudes of the Alps 

 are still more invigorating. We breathe more of a pure air, 

 and expanding the lungs becomes a habit. So by the sea 

 we take in draughts of a pure and stimulating atmosphere. 



Consumptives in America, seemingly far gone in the dis- 



