388 THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES. 



again ; and there is no progressive loss as there is in consumption. Mere variation 

 in weight is never of much consequence, a gain to-day and a loss to-morrow, but 

 progressive loss of weight going -on steadily for weeks or months is a bad sign,. 

 unless it can be accounted for by some change in habit or mode of living. In the 

 lung diseases which run an acute course, such as pleurisy and pneumonia, there is a 

 loss of weight corresponding to the amount of fever, just as there is in scarlatina, 

 measles, or small-pox, but this is rapidly regained on the establishment of 

 convalescence, and is no evidence of the existence of consumption. Night sweating, 

 one of the most distressing and exhausting symptoms of consumption, is seldom met 

 with in other chronic lung affections. "We have often asked the winter cough 

 patients if they suffer from perspiration at night, but the reply is nearly always in 

 the negative ; they tell us that, on the contrary, the skin " will not act," and they 

 never can get in a perspiration, though they wish they could, for they think it would 

 do them good. 



"We have already had occasion to refer incidentally to the influence of occupation 

 in the development of chest diseases, but we have no hesitation in returning to the 

 subject, seeing that a knowledge of certain facts connected with it may have 

 considerable weight in the selection of an occupation for a boy coming of a 

 consumptive stock. It is a curious fact that although a man may be fully aware 

 that his trade is an unhealthy one, and that the work has gradually undermined his 

 constitution, he generally ends by bringing his children up to it. Open-air occupa- 

 tions are of all the most suitable for those threatened with lung disease. First and 

 foremost stands agriculture, which is recommendable for the exposure to pure air 

 which it implies, for the abundant exercise it involves, and for the simple hours, 

 habits, diet, and amusements which of necessity accompany it. There is no temp- 

 tation to indulge in excesses of any kind ; there are not the enticing surroundings 

 of city dissipation, and the excitement of professional business ; political or 

 fashionable life is not at hand to urge the feeble to join in a race in which the 

 strong are the winners, and the weak drop behind strained and shaken by the 

 conflict. Whether, therefore, this country life implies being a landed proprietor, 

 living on and exercising the duties of his estate ; a farmer subsisting by the daily 

 superintendence of his work ; a labourer doing the drudgery of toil, and earning his 

 daily bread literally by the sweat of his brow ; or a shepherd in one of our rising 

 colonies, it is preferable to the largest independence in a city. As a recent writer 

 on consumption says : " Let those who have money and to whom there exists no 

 necessity for increasing their means, visit the interesting and beautiful parts of 

 their own country. Let them go abroad and see what is new in institutions, 

 wonderful in natural phenomena, grand in nature, and worthy of study in art. A 

 long and healthy sea-voyage may convey them in renewed vigour to the calm and 

 even climates of Tasmania or New Zealand, or the more bracing air of South 

 Australia. Here let them live on horseback and enjoy all that is new and exciting 

 in these younger nations of the earth. The extremes of climate are not forbidden 

 them, and a winter in Canada, or a summer in Norway, may lend them new vigour. 

 In the pure and invigorating air of the upper regions of Mexico, Oregon, or 

 Peru, in the exciting atmosphere of the Cape, are to be found, it is said, fresh 



