146 MY LIFE 



which it is now known that most lung diseases are curable. 

 He ordered me to go home to Hoddesdon immediately, to 

 apply half a dozen leeches to my chest at a place he marked 

 with ink, and to take a. bitter medicine he prescribed to give 

 me an appetite ; but these were only preliminaries. The 

 essential thing was the use of a small bone breathing-tube, 

 which he told us where to buy, and which I was to use three 

 times a day for as many minutes as I could without fatigue; 

 that I was to eat and drink anything I fancied, be kept 

 warm, but when the weather was mild sit out-of-doors. I 

 was to come back to him in a week. 



The effect of his treatment was immediate. I at once 

 began to eat, and though I could not breathe through the 

 tube for more than a minute at first, I was soon enabled to 

 increase it to three and then to five minutes. It was con- 

 structed with a valve so that the air entered freely, but passed 

 out slowly so that it was kept in the lungs for a few seconds 

 at each inspiration. When I paid my second visit to Dr. 

 Ramage, he told me that I was getting on well, and need not 

 come to him again, that I was to continue using the breath- 

 ing-tube for five minutes three or four times a day. He also 

 strongly advised me, now I saw the effect of deep and regular 

 breathing, to practise breathing in the same way without the 

 tube, and especially to do so when at leisure, when lying 

 down, or leaning back in an easy-chair, and to be sure to fill 

 my lungs well and breathe out slowly. " The natural food 

 of the lungs," he said, " is fresh air. If people knew this, and 

 acted upon it, there would be no consumption, no lung dis- 

 ease." I have never forgotten this. I have practised it all 

 my life (at intervals), and do so still, and I am sure that I 

 owe my life to Dr. Ramage's treatment and advice. 



In about two months I was well again, and went back to 

 Kington, and after a little office-work my brother and I went 

 to the little village of Llanbister, near the middle of Radnor- 

 shire, the nearest towns being Builth, in Breconshire, and 

 Newtown, in Montgomeryshire, both more than twelve miles 

 distant. This was a very large parish, being fifteen miles 



