Consumption is a disease which is not entirely confined to the lungs. It is often a depraved condition of the system, particularly the blood. There is a “consumption of the blood,” and a variety of morbid phenomena, which cannot be expressed in the single word consumption. It not unusually results in a scrofulous predisposition. An hereditary predisposition may or may not be the cause. If the former, its development must depend upon some exciting cause, which will be mentioned hereafter. The intermarrying of persons of like temperaments and constitutional dispositions inevitably results in children of scrofulous and consumptive diathesis.
A NATURAL POSITION. AN UNNATURAL POSITION.
A neglected cold, cough, or catarrh may soon develop this fatality. The peculiar changes in females at certain periods of life often awaken the slumbering enemy. Teething in infancy not unfrequently develops the scrofulous element, and a wasting of the system—either marasmus or tabes mesenterica—follows, which, under the best treatment, may prove fatal.
The slip-shod, doubled-up way that many people have of lying, sitting, and standing, are conducive to consumption.
Badly-ventilated school-houses have heretofore been a source of great injury to children, developing scrofula and consumption in constitutions where it might have remained latent during their lifetime. Every reflecting parent should rejoice in the improvements which have been made during the last few years in the matter of ventilation in buildings, particularly in churches and school-rooms, although janitors, porters, and teachers have as yet too limited ideas on the subject of wholesome air. The dry furnaces are a very objectionable feature, and not conducive to health.
Early Symptoms.—Fatigue on the least exertion; a languid, tired feeling in the morning; rosy tint of one or both cheeks during the latter part of the day, caused by unoxygenized blood rushing to the surface; swelling of the glands of the neck, or elsewhere; enlarged joints; paleness of the lips; areola under the eyes; sensitiveness to the air; chills running over the body; taking cold easily; catarrhal symptoms; premature development of the intellect; and early physical maturity, are among its initiatory indications. Also, when the disease is located in the lungs, spitting of white, frothy mucus, or blood, with catarrhal symptoms; cough, which is noticed by others before by the patient; hacking on retiring, or early in the morning; varied appetite; tickling in the throat; short breath on exertion, with rapid pulse.
Second Stage.—Cough, and difficult breathing; increased difficulty of lying on one side; sharp, short pains; diminution of monthly period; swelling of the lower extremities, leaving corrugation on removing the hose and garters at night; raising greenish yellow matter, with (at times) hard, curd-like substance; sweating easily (sometimes the reverse); night sweats; restless, feverish, either dull or sharp bright cast to the eyes. Sputa increases to the
Third Stage.—Diarrhœa not unusually supervenes; spitting of blood; the person emaciates rapidly; the face changes from a bloated to a cadaverous appearance, with hectic fever; the patient faints easily; debility increases with the cough, or hæmoptosis occurs often, until death finally closes the scene.
These are merely some of the external symptoms. Let the patient mark them, not so much to fear, as to provide against them. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. I caution you against the causes, and give you the benefit of my extensive experience with this disease, both in New England and three years in the South, that you may avoid its development by attention to rules for health and longevity.