THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 633 



seems to reach the seat of the disease by an air-line. As the chest 

 begins to heave under the stimulus of the exercise, respiration becomes 

 freer as it becomes deeper and fuller, expectoration ceases to be pain- 

 ful, and the mucus is at last discharged en masse, as if the system had 

 only waited for that amount of encouragement to rid itself of the 

 incubus. A catarrh can thus be broken up in a single day. For the 

 next half-week the diet should be frugal and cooling. Fruit, light 

 bread, and a little cold, sweet milk, is the best catarrh-diet. A fast- 

 day, though, is still better. Fasting effects in a perfectly safe way 

 what the old-school practitioners tried to accomplish by bleeding ; it 

 reduces the semi-febrile condition which accompanies every severe 

 cold. There is no doubt that by exercise alone a catarrh can gradually 

 be " worked off." But in-doors it is apt to be steep up-hill work, while 

 cold air — even before the season of actual frosts — acts upon pulmonary 

 disorders as it does upon malarial fevers : it reduces them to a less 

 malignant type. 



A combination of the three specifics — exercise, abstinence, and 

 fresh air — will cure the most obstinate cold ; only, the first signs of 

 improvement should not encourage the convalescent to brave the at- 

 mosphere of a lung-poison den. So-called chronic catarrhs are, prop- 

 erly speaking, a succession of bronchial fevers. The popular idea 

 that an average " cold " lasts about nine days, has some foundation in 

 truth. Like other fevers, catarrhs have a self-limited period of de- 

 velopment, but the recovery from the first attack constitutes no 

 guarantee against an immediate relapse ; on the contrary, the first 

 seizure appears to prepare the way for its successors. A long sojourn 

 in an absolutely pure atmosphere, as in a summer camp on the mount- 

 ains, seems for a while to make the lungs catarrh-proof, by increasing 

 the vigor of their resisting ability, and the returned tourist may find 

 to his surprise that the air of his family den can now be breathed 

 without the wonted consequences. But the addition of a stove or a 

 double window at last turns the scales against Nature, and the first 

 malignant cold reproduces the sensitiveness of the respiratory organs. 



After recovery from a chronic catarrh the danger of contagion 

 should therefore be carefully avoided. In many of our Northern cities 

 ill-ventilated reading-rooms are veritable hot-beds of lung-poison, as 

 crowded court-rooms in the villages, and taverns and quilting-assem- 

 blies in the backwoods. Meeting-houses, with their large windows 

 and small, rarely-used stoves, are less dangerous ; but stuffy school- 

 rooms are as prolific of colds as swamps of mosquitoes, and often 

 counteract all sanitary precautions of the domestic arrangements. 

 Stuffed railway-cars, too, could claim a premium as galloping-con- 

 sumption factories ; and after dark the retreat to an over-heated 

 ** Pullman sleeper " would hardly increase the chances of longevity ; 

 the best plan for long-distance travelers would, on the whole, be to 

 secure a rear seat, where open windows are less apt to awaken the 



