246 DISEASES OF THE PARENCHYMA OF THE LUNG. 



erly combined with saliva, whereby it is more thoroughly converted 

 into sugar and is easier of assimilation. Besides this, however, it will 

 drink all the more milk if it eat its bread plain. A similar plan of 

 treatment is of course proper for children, who, instead of inheriting, 

 have acquired a feebleness of constitution which often shows itself at 

 an early date in the form of scrofula, and occasions a predisposition to 

 consumption. 



A proper supply of fresh air is of equal importance with regula 

 tion of the diet. The facts adduced above, illustrating the baneful 

 effect of continual in-door life in producing scrofula and consumption, 

 are not sufficiently taken into account by many physicians. They very 

 often suffer delicate, sickly children to sit day after day and six hours 

 at a time upon the benches of a crowded school-room, after which they 

 have their tasks at home to prepare, private lessons to take, the piano 

 to play, etc. Cod-liver oil and an occasional month at a watering- 

 place cannot possibly repair the injurious effects of such a mode of life. 

 As soon as the influence of this immoderate " schooling " begins to 

 " tell," a reduction of it, or even a total cessation of it, should be im- 

 peratively insisted on. Obstinate opposition to such demands will be 

 often met with, but, in a series of instances in which I have obtained a 

 complete and prolonged respite from education, and made the children 

 spend most of their time in the open air, I have obtained effects at 

 which I was myself astonished, and which completely satisfied their 

 parents that results fully outweighed the serious sacrifices which they 

 had made. People in easy circumstances, who have delicate and scrof- 

 ulous children, especially if subject to croup and bronchitis, should be 

 induced to spend their winters in the South, so that the children may 

 also pass those months in the open air, which in our climate would be 

 too cold. This is a very common practice in Russia, where the per- 

 nicious effects of in-door life during the long winter are very con- 

 spicuous. 



In adults, when the signs of delicacy and weakness, combined with 

 deterioration of the blood, appear, the use of ferruginous preparations 

 is to be recommended, particularly the chalybeate springs of Pyrmont, 

 Driburg, Imnau, etc. I think that this treatment deserves a more gen- 

 eral adoption, as a prophylactic measure against consumption, than it 

 has received hitherto. 



Prophylactic treatment of consumption further demands a careful 

 avoidance of all agents calculated to cause hyperaemia of the lungs and 

 bronchial catarrh, and which we have enumerated as exciting causes of 

 phthisis. Persons in whom a tendency to consumption is suspected 

 should be strictly forbidden to inhale an atmosphere charged with 

 smoke or dust, or which is too hot or too cold, as well as to make 



