“Dr. Trudeau inoculated twelve rabbits with tubercle or consumptive germs. Six of these he turned loose on an island where they ran wild. The other six were kept confined in hutches such as rabbits are usually kept in. Results—All the six rabbits in the open air recovered from the inoculation and remained well. Five of the confined rabbits died of tubercles in the lungs and different parts of the body. The sixth was still lingering, badly diseased, when the experiment was brought to a close. Fresh air and exercise enabled the first six to overcome the disease germs. Confinement gave full play to the disease in the others.
“Now, you house lovers, sleepers in close bedrooms, people afraid of cold air, you are the rabbits in the hutches. Beware, lest the verdict be in your case, ‘Died of tubercles in the lungs.’ If you are not able to leave your home, live with open windows, day and night, summer and winter.
“Exercise systematically, especially those exercises, accompanied by deep breathing, that open and strengthen the lungs—exercises without fatigue.
“If you are hoping that some wonderful, mysterious drug has been or will be discovered, a drug that will cure consumption without your help, you are hoping against hope. Improved nutrition is your salvation, and that must come through exercise, diet and fresh air.”
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, in his Home Hand-Book of Hygiene and Medicine, recommends a salt sponge bath upon retiring, to arrest night sweats, or sponging with hot water. He adds:—
“It is important that patients should know that the sweats are greatly aggravated by opium in any form, and hence are increased by cough mixtures of any sort which contain this drug. Very simple remedies are often effective to relieve the most distressing cough, such as gargling of water in the throat, holding bits of ice in the mouth, taking occasional sips of strong lemonade, and similar remedies. As a general rule, patients run down and the disease progresses much more rapidly, after beginning the use of opium in any form. Sometimes it is best that the cough should be encouraged instead of being repressed. When the patient expectorates very freely, the cough is a necessary means of relieving the chest of matters which would seriously interfere with the functions of the lungs if retained, by filling up the bronchial tubes and air-cells. The kind of cough needing relief is an irritable, ineffective cough, unaccompanied by any considerable degree of expectoration. Loaf sugar, honey or a mixture of honey and lemon juice, and other simple, familiar remedies are often effective in relieving such a cough. * * * * *
“It is perhaps needless to add that the numerous quack remedies for consumption advertised in the newspapers are wholly without merit. There is no known drug which will cure this disease, or in any certain degree influence its progress. Numerous remedies have been recommended as curative, but not one has thus far stood the test of experience.”
Displacements of the Uterus:—These conditions are not among those for which alcoholic liquors are likely to be advised by a physician, but women frequently resort to Lydia Pinkham’s Compound and other alcoholic preparations in the vain hope of finding the relief so positively promised in the nostrum advertisements. Women are sometimes seriously injured by using the nostrums specially advised for uterine weaknesses, for this reason: a drug which may be of service in an anæmic condition of the womb may do much damage in an inflamed or engorged condition, yet the nostrum vendors advise their preparations for all alike, without a word of warning as to possible dangers.
Ordinary displacements may be recovered from by cleanliness of the parts and by exercises which strengthen the muscles in the pelvic region. The writer has known a considerable number of women who have been restored to health by exercises after months, in some cases, and several years in others, of weakness and misery. One of these women was a close relative of a celebrated specialist in women’s diseases. He said he could not do any more for her, and gave permission for her to try the exercises, which were given her by a well-equipped teacher of physical training.
There are three kinds of displacements: anteversion, retroversion, and prolapsus. The causes of these troubles are various; lack of proper care in child-bearing, miscarriages, heavy lifting, a hard fall, jumping out of a carriage, straining, too violent exercise in gymnasium work, and tight-lacing, also gradual weakening of the ligaments which sustain the uterus in position.