October 4, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



231 



lem (black) with the prominent signs of phthisis, he was so much 

 exhausted, and had hemoptysis after a drive of twenty-five miles to 

 Milton, that the landlord of the hotel advised his friend to take him 

 home to die, as he could not possibly drive to Taunton the next 

 day, as proposed. I derive this last statement, not from the jour- 

 nal, but from family tradition. The travellers were both of them 

 plucky, and not only made that next day's journey, but the sick 

 man felt somewhat better at evening, and notes in the latter part 

 of his record the condition of the country before arriving at Taun- 

 ton. His fifty miles since leaving Salem had evidently done no 

 harm, but rather good. Anorexia had gone, as he " dined " (with 

 relish, apparently, because he could get nothing else) " on bacon 

 and eggs." Arrived at New Bedford next day, he feels able to 

 visit a friend. He examines a factory. He makes remarks on the 

 inhabitants he met and their employments. Though still having 

 some fever, he feels so much better that much darkness is removed 

 from the circle. Still more refreshed after a night's sleep, and hav- 

 ing still less fever, he visits a coal-mine recently discovered in the 

 vicinity. 



From this time there is almost steady improvement. He visits 

 Newport (109 miles from Salem), admires the harbor, but notices 

 its lack of shipping (to which in Salem, with its fleets of ships and 

 their long, wealth-bringing East India voyages, he had been long 

 accustomed). At Providence (141 miles from Salem) he finds 

 friends, and has pleasant meeting with them. Nothing is said of 

 illness. On the contrary, he has his " Rosinante harnessed " the 

 next day, with the intention of driving out of his intended route, in 

 order to visit the cotton-factories at Pawtucket Falls. Arriving at 

 Hartford (195 miles from Salem), he is altogether better, finds good 

 fare and a fine hotel. He meets there the judges in their circuit, 

 and has pleasant and profitable conversation with them at the 

 hotel at which they were stopping for the night. 



At New Haven (256 miles from Salem, and twelve days of open- 

 air travel) he calls on President Dwight of Yale College, and re- 

 grets that the eminent Professor Silliman is absent. He visits the 

 library, and finds it wanting in most of the modern English, 

 French, and German scientific works he had been so long ac- 

 quainted with, and had studied in Salem. At New Haven he 

 makes, for the last time, any allusion to his health, in the following 

 words : " I have a little pain in my breast, but my appetite and 

 general health are good." 



After this date, till he arrived home, his record seems like that 

 of a common traveller. He makes no complaints, but describes 

 brightly the places, friends, and others met, exactly as if he were 

 well, and travelling for pleasure only. 



At Albany he makes an especial and extra journey to Troy with 

 a party of transiently met friends, leaving his chaise for nearly two 

 days in the former city. He found the trip " very pleasant." On 

 return to Albany from Troy, he had driven 432 miles in nineteen 

 days. 



Starting for home, he appears delighted while travelling through 

 a " picturesque " country, and meeting at the various hotels intelli- 

 gent company whose society he was able generally to enjoy." He 

 visits the village of Canaan, and describes in detail what he saw of 

 the Shakers, and heard an extraordinaiy sermon delivered at him, 

 among others, as one of the " outside mankind." I forbear quot- 

 ing from it. His appetite was becoming ravenous. They would 

 not give him at one tavern, as he says, " half as much as I wanted 

 for my dinner." Finally he arrived home at Salem, so the record 

 states, " in much better health than he had when starting." 



His subsequent course in regard to himself and to his children 

 induces me to believe that the journey, though benefiting him im- 

 mensely, had not wholly cured him ; but it had proved to him the 

 absolute need he had of regular, daily, physical, open-air exercise. 

 Afterward, under walks of one and a half to two miles, taken three 

 times daily during thirty years of life, all pulmonary troubles disap- 

 peared. He died in 1838, from carcinoma of the stomach, one 

 lung presenting evidences of an ancient cicatrix at its apex, both 

 being otherwise normal. He was sixty-five years old ; i.e., thirty 

 years after the journey. 



" This was not always the ca 

 *' a member of Congress," who" 

 a syllable during the evening." 



, however, for at one town he met 

 IS apparently stupid enough. '* He 



; gentleman, 

 arcely spoke 



Having thus experienced in his own case the vast benefits re- 

 sulting from constant, regular exercise out of doors, he apparently 

 determined that his children should be early instructed in the same 

 course. As soon as we were old enough, he required of us daily 

 morning walks down to a certain well-known divine's meeting- 

 house, about three-quarters of a mile or a mile from our home. I 

 remember them very well for the tricks played with my brothers on 

 our way down, and for sundry twinges of conscience, felt even at 

 this moment, at the thought that we sometimes decided that the 

 sight of the "weathercock on Dr. Bentley's steeple," though seen 

 more than a quarter of a mile from our proper destination, was 

 near enough to our father's directions. 



If any of us, while attending school, were observed to be droop- 

 ing, or made the least pretence even to being not " exactly well," 

 he took us from school, and very often sent us to the country to 

 have farm-life and out-of-door " play to our hearts' content." Once 

 he told me to go and play, and to " stay away from study as long 

 as you choose." In fact, he believed heartily in the old Roman 

 maxim of " a healthy mind in a healthy body." In consequence of 

 this early instruction, all of his descendants have become thor- 

 oughly impressed with the advantages of daily walking, of summer 

 vacations in the country, and of camping out, etc., among the 

 mountains. These habits have been transmitted, I think, to his 

 grandchildren in a stronger form, if possible, than he himself had 

 them. 



You will readily agree with me that such habits are among the 

 surest guaranties against the prevalence of phthisis in a family. 

 Before detailing the actual result of these habits upon our family, 

 I must state the prospective chances of our escape from the mal- 

 ady. My father married his cousin, who, after long invalidism, died 

 of chronic phthisis in 1834. Certainly a consanguineous union of 

 two consumptives foreboded nothing but evil. They had eight 

 children (born respectively in the years 1805, 1806, 1808, 1809, 

 1813, 1816, 1819, 1823). Two (born 1809 and 1813; i.e., one and 

 five years after the journey) died, one at eleven, and the other at 

 birth. All the others either are now alive, or they arrived at adult 

 life and married, and have had children and grandchildren, but not 

 a trace of phthisis has appeared in any of these ninety-three ' per- 

 sons. 



Now, I ask the consideration of this question : To what cause 

 can we attribute this extraordinary immunity from the disease 

 which is generally regarded as showing the influence of heredity 

 and of consanguineous unions more, perhaps, than most other com- 

 plaints ? 



If any one can see anv other explanation than the influence of this 

 original journey upon the health of one of the great-great-grand- 

 parents, conjoined with his wise management of his own health 

 subsequently, and his fastening upon his descendants, even to the 

 present day, the virtues of open-air life, I hope he will frankly say 

 so. Truth should be forever our motto ; and the man who will 

 convince me of the error of any scientific, or apparently scientific, 

 statement I may utter, and which, if not corrected, may lead others 

 astray, I regard not as an opponent, but as my foremost friend. 



I submit these facts and thoughts for candid, mature, and prac- 

 tical consideration and use in the treatment all are called to make 

 of this terrible scourge of ail parts of this Union. For my own 

 part, I fully believe that many patients now die from want of this 

 open-air treatment. For years I have directed every phthisical pa- 

 tient to walk daily from three to six miles ; never to stay all day at 

 home unless a violent storm be raging. When they are in doubt 

 about going out, owing to " bad weather," I direct them to " solve 

 the doubt, not by staying in the house, but by going out." 



A cloudy day, or a mild rain, or the coldest weather, should not 

 deter them. If the weather be very cold, let them put on respira- 

 tors before leaving the house, and be thoroughly wrapped in proper 

 clothing for the season. I direct them never to stand still and 

 gossip with friends in the open street, as by so doing they are much 

 more liable to get a chill than while walking. Hence, summer and 

 winter alike, my patients usually get plenty of fresh air, uncontami- 



1 The number of their descendants amounts now (iSSg) to g children, 31 grand- 

 children, 50 great-grandchildren, 4 great-great-grandchildren : total 93. It may be 

 noted, that, of the two who were born in 1809 and 1813, one died when eleven years 

 old (1820), and the other at birth (1813); while the writer and reader of this paper 

 was born twenty days before the journey began. 



