From all these facts it is evident, that the remedies for consumptions must be sought for in those exercises and employments which give the greatest vigour to the constitution. And here I am happy in being able to produce several facts which demonstrate the safety and certainty of this method of cure.
During the late war, I saw three instances of persons in confirmed consumptions, who were perfectly cured by the hardships of a military life. They had been my patients previously to their entering into the army. Besides these, I have heard of four well-attested cases of similar recoveries from nearly the same remedies. One of these was the son of a farmer in New-Jersey, who was sent to sea as the last resource for a consumption. Soon after he left the American shore, he was taken by a British cruiser, and compelled to share in all the duties and hardships of a common sailor. After serving in this capacity for twenty-two months, he made his escape, and landed at Boston, from whence he travelled on foot to his father's house (nearly four hundred miles), where he arrived in perfect health.
Doctor Way of Wilmington informed me, that a certain Abner Cloud, who was reduced so low by a pulmonary consumption as to be beyond all relief from medicine, was so much relieved by sleeping in the open air, and by the usual toils of building a hut, and improving a farm, in the unsettled parts of a new country in Pennsylvania, that he thought him in a fair way of a perfect recovery.
Doctor Latimer of Wilmington had been long afflicted with a cough and an occasional hæmoptysis. He entered into the American army as a surgeon, and served in that capacity till near the end of the war; during which time he was perfectly free from all pulmonary disease. The spitting of blood returned soon after he settled in private practice. To remedy this complaint, he had recourse to a low diet, but finding it ineffectual, he partook liberally of the usual diet of healthy men, and he now enjoys a perfect exemption from it.
It would be very easy to add many other cases, in which labour, the employments of agriculture, and a life of hardship by sea and land, have prevented, relieved, or cured, not only the consumption, but pulmonary diseases of all kinds.
To the cases that have been mentioned, I shall add only one more, which was communicated to me by the venerable Doctor Franklin, whose conversation at all times conveyed instruction, and not less in medicine than upon other subjects. In travelling, many years ago, through New-England, the doctor overtook the post-rider; and after some inquiries into the history of his life, he informed him that he was bred a shoe-maker; that his confinement, and other circumstances, had brought on a consumption, for which he was ordered by a physician to ride on horseback. Finding this mode of exercise too expensive, he made interest, upon the death of an old post-rider, to succeed to his appointment, in which he perfectly recovered his health in two years. After this he returned to his old trade, upon which his consumption returned. He again mounted his horse, and rode post in all seasons and weathers, between New-York and Connecticut river (about 140 miles), in which employment he continued upwards of thirty years, in perfect health.
These facts, I hope, are sufficient to establish the advantages of restoring the original vigour of the constitution, in every attempt to effect a radical cure of consumption.
But how shall these remedies be applied in the time of peace, or in a country where the want of woods, and brooks without bridges, forbid the attainment of the laborious pleasures of the Indian mode of hunting; or where the universal extent of civilization does not admit of our advising the toils of a new settlement, and improvements upon bare creation? Under these circumstances, I conceive substitutes may be obtained for each of them, nearly of equal efficacy, and attainable with much less trouble.
1. Doctor Sydenham pronounced riding on horseback, to be as certain a cure for consumptions as bark is for an intermitting fever. I have no more doubt of the truth of this assertion, than I have that inflammatory fevers are now less frequent in London than they were in the time of Doctor Sydenham. If riding on horseback in consumptions has ceased to be a remedy in Britain, the fault is in the patient, and not in the remedy. “It is a sign that the stomach requires milk (says Doctor Cadogan), when it cannot bear it.” In like manner, the inability of the patient to bear this manly and wholesome exercise, serves only to demonstrate the necessity and advantages of it. I suspect the same objections to this exercise which have been made in Britain, will not occur in the United States of America; for the Americans, with respect to the symptoms and degrees of epidemic and chronic diseases, appear to be nearly in the same state that the inhabitants of England were in the seventeenth century. We find, in proportion to the decline of the vigour of the body, that many occasional causes produce fever and inflammation, which would not have done it a hundred years ago.
2. The laborious employments of agriculture, if steadily pursued, and accompanied at the same time by the simple, but wholesome diet of a farmhouse, and a hard bed, would probably afford a good substitute for the toils of a savage or military life.