“What are the proofs?”
Where on dissection we find cicatrices,—places in the lungs where tubercles have existed, sloughing out great cavities, which have healed all sound, the scar only remaining—what then? Here is positive proof that consumption had been at work, was repelled by some means, and the patient had recovered, subsequently dying of some other disease, or from accident.
Such is the fact in many cases. It is an error—fatal to thousands—to suppose that the lungs, of all substance in the body, cannot be healed. Yet it is a fact patent to most educated physicians, that many cases of consumption are cured in this country, while others are prolonged, and the patient made comfortable during many years.
Change of climate may be much towards saving a patient. Before deciding upon such change, consult your physician. Ought not he to know best? A climate adapted to one constitution may be quite unsuited to another. What a wise provision in Providence in giving this little world a variety of climates! There are certain portions of the States and world where consumption seldom prevails. The climate of California and the western prairies, as also some portions of the South away from the coast, is less conducive of lung and throat diseases than the more bleak and changeable climate of New England and the Northern States. A change is only beneficial in those cases where there is a mere deficiency of vitality in the system. If the disease depends upon a scrofulous or other taint in the system, one gains little by going from home. Change of climate does not alter the condition of the system materially, so much as it relieves one from atmospheric pressure, reducing thereby the demands upon his small stock of vitality,—just as some places are less expensive in which to live, and your funds hold out longer. The writer resided in the Southern States during three cold seasons, and carefully studied the effects of changes. He has two brothers in California, who, during the past ten years, have often written respecting the climate west of the Rocky Mountains. If ever called upon to decide on a climate for a friend or patient who had determined to change from this, I would advise him, or her, to select California.
Do not change too late! going away from home and friends to die among strangers....
Avoid Humbugs.
Do not run to clairvoyants and spiritual humbugs for advice. A clairvoyant physician once said to me,—
“Mr. So-and-so has just called upon me to learn where he shall spend the winter. He thinks he has the consumption, and that I can tell him where he will pass the winter safely. What confounded fools some of these men are, to be sure!” she exclaimed. “Why, I have got that disease myself (not the foolish disease, but consumption), and don’t know what to do to save my own life.”
That lady is living in Boston to-day. The gentleman went to St. Thomas, dying in the hospital in January, amongst strangers, where every dollar he possessed was stolen from him.
Nearly all patent medicines are humbugs. Avoid them. Dr. Dio Lewis says that “the bath-tub is a humbug.” I believe him. While you avoid drowning inside by pouring down drugs, do not exhaust your vitality externally in a bath-tub. The hand-bath is all-sufficient for consumptives.