Patients can be assured at once then that they need not worry that the hereditary factor will make their affection less curable. On the contrary, our recent careful studies in tuberculosis show just the opposite of the old false impressions. The children of parents who had tuberculosis are much more likely to possess resistive vitality to the disease than those whose parents never had it. As we emphasize in the chapter on [Heredity], the nations that have had the disease the longest among them are the most resistant to it. When the affection is newly introduced into a tribe or race it carries off a great many victims. This immunity, however, is not a function of heredity or of the increase of resistive vitality by the inheritance of an acquired character from the preceding generation, but tuberculosis takes the non-resistant, weeds out all those who have not some immunity against it, and consequently those that are left possess some immunizing power. Tubercular heredity, then, instead of being a source of discouragement should rather be a source of hope. It is surprising to note what a relief to many patients' minds is the explanation of this newer view of heredity in tuberculosis; it lifts a burden from many and makes them eat and sleep better for days.
ANNOUNCING THE DIAGNOSIS
Friends and especially near relatives sometimes come to a physician when there is suspicion that a young person is suffering from tuberculosis and ask that, if there is a ground for a positive diagnosis, it shall not be communicated to the patient. They usually urge that they fear the discouragement will kill the patient. The young are not so easily killed and the reaction on being told the truth and the facing of it bravely is such a magnificent help in therapeutics that the physician should always refuse for the patient's sake alone, quite apart from any ethical obligations in the matter, to enter into any such arrangement. The assurance may be given that the patient's condition will be so stated that, far from the patient being discouraged after due consideration, he or she will look forward with confidence to overcoming the affection.
EARLY DIAGNOSIS
Mental treatment is most valuable in the very early stage of incipient cases of tuberculosis. The time is past when the diagnosis of tuberculosis was made only after the recognition of definite physical signs in the lungs and a considerable loss in weight.
In the Medical News for April 9, 1904, I called attention to the question of "Early Diagnosis of Tuberculosis" from the pulse and the temperature in these cases, and pointed out that a disturbance of temperature need not necessarily be a febrile temperature of over 100 degrees, but that any increase of the normal daily variation of temperature, usually considered to be about a degree and a half, should suffice to arouse serious suspicion at least. If the morning and evening temperatures differ by two degrees, this would indicate the presence of some pathological condition, usually tuberculosis. If in addition to this and the pulse disturbance there is any localized area of prolongation of [{355}] expiration, then tuberculosis is almost certainly present, even though there may be no other physical signs, no cough, no tubercle bacilli in the sputum, nor any other signs of an active process.
It is in these cases particularly that patients can be benefited. Very often they have a slight hacking cough, frequently repeated, with some disturbance of appetite and of digestion and sometimes some loss in weight. Indigestion is recognized now as one of the early stages of tuberculosis. The cough in these cases, as has been said, is often spoken of as a stomach cough and is supposed to be due to the nervous reflex from the pneumogastric nerve carrying irritative impulses from the stomach to the lungs. It is much more likely to be due directly to irritation of the terminal filaments of this same nerve in the lungs themselves.
FAVORABLE MENTAL ATTITUDE
The most important element in any cure or successful treatment of the disease is a favorable attitude of the patient's mind. He must be told at once that consumption takes away only the "quitters." People who give up the battle or who, though still hoping, do not hope actively—that is, do not make the exertion necessary to get out into the open air and to eat heartily—inevitably succumb to the disease.
Eating.—Eating is often more a question of exertion than appetite or anything else for consumptive patients. They have no active appetite and they simply must force themselves to chew and swallow. Their fatigue from chewing is, indeed, likely to be so disturbing that it is advisable to furnish patients as far as possible with such food as requires no chewing. Milk and eggs and the thin cereal foods, like gruel, and rather thin puddings are the best for this purpose. Patients must be persuaded that they must take these whether they care for them or not. Occasionally they may cough after a meal and vomit it up. The rule in the German sanatoria for consumptives is that whenever this happens they must, after a short interval, repeat the whole meal. Only rarely does it happen that a tuberculous patient vomits without some such mechanical cause as coughing. They must be made to understand that any food that stays down does them good no matter how they may feel toward it.