The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by Tichnor and Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.
The highest medical authorities of this century have expressed the opinion that tubercular disease of the various tissues is justly chargeable with one-third of the deaths among the youth and adults of the civilized world. The seat of this tubercular disease is, in great part, in the lungs.
Before the taint is localized, it is comparatively easy to remove it. If in regard to most other maladies it may be said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, in reference to tubercular consumption it may be truly declared that an ounce of prevention is worth tons of cure.
Had the talent and time which have been given to the treatment of consumption been bestowed upon its causes and prevention, the percentage of mortality from this dreaded disease would have been greatly reduced.
Genuine consumption does not originate in a cold, an inflammation, or a hemorrhage, but in tubercles. And these tubercles are only secondary causes. The primary cause is a certain morbid condition of the organism, known as the tubercular or scrofulous diathesis. This morbid condition of the general system is sometimes hereditary, but much more frequently the result of unphysiological habits. Those cases to which our own errors give rise may be prevented, and a large proportion of those who have inherited consumptive taint may by wise hygiene be saved.
Consumption is not a Local Disease. —It is thought to be a malady of the lungs. This notion has led to most of the mistakes in its treatment.
Salt rheum appears on the hand. Some ignorant physician says, It is a disease of the skin. An ointment is applied; the eruption disappears. Soon, perchance, the same scrofulous taint appears in the lungs in the form of tubercles. The doctor cannot get at it there with his ointment, and resorts to inhalation. He is still determined to apply his drug to the local manifestation.