Among the preventives of this fell destroyer I enumerate,—
First, Plenty of God’s pure, free air; and second, sunshine. These are indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.
A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.
“Madam,” I said, “I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no sunshine permeates by day;” for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked astonished at my Œdipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.
“Yes, sir,” she finally answered, “he always sleeps in a room where the sunlight don’t enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am discouraged.”
Such stoicism was unpardonable, but I said in reply,—
“Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come back and assure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him.”
She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her mind,—
“Put a plant into his room—plant into Johnny’s room.”
The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.