This whole Cumberland Table is no small country. It comprises territory enough to make a good sized State. At present, it is almost one great wilderness, in many particulars as unknown as the Black Hills. It is coming into the world now, and will be well known in a few years. The great city of Cincinnati has determined to build a railroad through the very center of this great table in the north part of the State, connecting with Chattanooga in the southern part. This road is nearly bored through, and in another year or two the Cumberland Tablelands in Tennessee will be much heard of at home and abroad.
It seems to me this country has merits. It is located in the latitude of mild climate; not so far south as to be scorched by the hot summer sun, or visited by the great life destroying epidemics; not so far north as to meet the severe and lengthened winters.
Climate, we know, is a fixture; it has a government; it has rules; the weather may change, but climate does not; it is a permanent out-door affair, and what is true of to-day was true centuries ago, and will be true forever, in the measure of any practical scope, at least. The people of the world are beginning to know that the greatest destroyer of human life has its remedy in climate.
Mr. Lombard, in his famous exhibit in relation to the prevalence of consumption among the people of different occupations, circumstances of life, and place of dwelling, gives the lowest number of deaths from this cause to those who live in the open air. He found the people who lived most in the open air, as would be readily conjectured, in the mild latitudes, not in the countries of hot sands or cold snows.
[The above article, in regard to which we have noticed frequent allusions in many of our exchanges, all erroneously attributing it to Dr. Wright, of Tennessee, and for which we have received repeated requests quite recently, was read by the lamented Dr. E.M. Wight at the 43d annual meeting of the Tennessee State Medical Society, held at Nashville, April 4, 5, and 6, 1876. Its distinguished and talented author will long be remembered as one of the most active, earnest, and zealous members of the State Society. At this meeting he also read a very admirable paper on "The Microscopic Appearance of the Blood in Syphilis," and prepared the report of the Committee on State Board of Health, to which report may be ascribed the honor of securing the necessary legislation organizing the Board. A true, upright, honest man, an earnest, devoted and zealous physician, universally esteemed and beloved by all who knew him; himself the subject of tuberculosis, dying in the prime of a brilliant manhood. He had but few equals in the glorious profession he honored and loved so well.
From a careful reading of his paper, we find that he describes a large area of territory, free, absolutely free, from subsoil moisture, a climate mild and equable, a soil capable of producing nearly everything necessary for the comfortable maintenance of human life, surroundings that tempt, nay, compel the greatest possible amount of open air life. His description is exceedingly accurate of a plain, primitive, simple-minded people with but few wants, many of the virtues and few of the vices of humanity. With their surroundings, soil, climate, residence, and mode of living, need we be surprised that "there is a people," or a land "free from consumption"?--ED.]--Southern Practitioner.
THE TREATMENT OF HABITUAL CONSTIPATION.
Dr. F.P. Atkinson thus writes in the Practitioner, January, 1884: I suppose there is no derangement of the system we are more frequently called upon to treat than habitual constipation; and though all kinds of medicines are suggested for its relief, they rarely produce more than temporary benefit--and it is difficult to see how the result can well be otherwise, while the root of the evil remains untouched. Now by far the more numerous subjects of this disorder are women; and as they do not seem to know that regularity is essential to the performance of every one of nature's operations, they appoint no stated times for trying to get the bowels relieved, but trust to receiving intimation when the rectal accumulation and distension can be borne no longer. This method of action may and does answer fairly well for a time; but nature gradually gets upset, the sensation of the lower bowel becomes blunted, and at last it ceases to respond to the ordinary stimulus. Then aperients are regularly resorted to, and although these act fairly well for a time, they gradually have to be increased in strength and frequency. Now, as regards the treatment, the first thing to be accomplished is of course to get the rectum well relieved; the next, to get the actions to take place at fixed times; and lastly, it is necessary to get more tone imparted to the muscular tissue of the bowels, so that the regularity of action may be helped and also maintained. In order, then, to get the bowels relieved in the first instance, it is well to give five grains of both compound colocynth and compound rhubarb pill at bed-time (this rarely requires to be repeated), then to take a tumblerful of cold water the next morning on waking, and repeat it regularly at the same time each day. Should the bowels remain sluggish for some time, the same quantity of water may be taken daily before each meal. Supposing no action takes place on rising or shortly after, a small injection of warm water may be resorted to. After each movement of the bowels, a small hand-ball syringeful of cold water should be thrown into the rectum and retained. A soup plateful of coarse oatmeal porridge (made with water and taken according to the Scotch method, viz., by filling half the spoon with the hot porridge and the other with cold milk) each night at bed-time, or even every night and morning for a time, is often a very great help. But above all things, it is necessary for the patient to try and get relief at a certain fixed time regularly every day. If these directions are strictly carried out in their entirety, the evil, even if it has been of long standing, will generally be corrected, and the patient will improve in health and appearance. Of course where the constipation results from exhaustion of the nervous system (such, for instance, as is brought about by self-abuse), the special cause has to be taken into consideration, and such treatment adopted as is suited to the particular necessities of the case.