Chapter 106
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 const.i.tution 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 pa.s.s 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.
COD-LIVER OIL AND WHISKEY.
"Take cod-liver oil and die!" has become proverbial. The oil is utterly worthless as a medicine, and the whiskey usually recommended to be taken in connection is decidedly injurious. It is poisonous. I defy one to obtain a pure article of whiskey in this country. If it could by any means be obtained in its purity, it would not cure this disease any more than the nasty oil from fishes' livers. The oil is often given, not as a medicine, but as an article of nourishment. If the patient so understands it, all right; it will do no harm; but if he thinks that he is taking a remedial agent, he is deceived thereby, and losing the precious time in which he ought to be employing some remedy for his recovery. The statements that cod-liver oil contains iodine, lime, phosphorus, etc., is all bosh. A most reliable druggist of this city, who has sold a _ton or two_ of the oil, told me that "all the iodine or phosphorus that it contains you might put into your eye, and not injure that organ."
If good, wholesome bread, b.u.t.ter, milk, eggs, and beef, will not give nutriment to the wasting system, cod-liver oil will not, and the patient must die--provided he has trusted to nutriment alone.
I have never known a consumptive patient to recover upon cod-liver oil. I have known them to recover by other treatment, particularly by the use of the phosphates, as "phosphate of lime," and iron, soda, and other combinations. I have intimated that a patient should be advised by "his physician;" but if that physician is one of the old-fogy style who insists upon cod-liver oil and whiskey as a cure, why, you had better "change horses in crossing a river," than to perish on an old, worn-out hobby!
There are two cla.s.ses of
I remember a story ill.u.s.trative of the latter. A dyspeptic applied to Dr.
C. for treatment. The doctor looked into the case, gave a prescription, telling the patient to take it, and return in a fortnight.
At the designated time he returned, radiant and happy.
"Did you follow my directions?" inquired the physician.
"O, yes, to the letter, doctor; and see--I am well!"
"I have forgotten just what I gave you; let me see the prescription," said the doctor, delighted at his success.
"I haven't it. Why, I took it, sir."
"Took it--the medicine, you mean," explained the man of pills and powders.
"Medicine? No. You gave me no medicine--nothing but a paper, and I took that according to directions. That's what cured me."
The clown had swallowed the recipe!
The consumptive requires nourishment. He must derive it from wholesome food,--even fat meats are beneficial,--not from medicines. Let food be one thing, medicine another. I believe that a man would starve upon cod-liver oil. He would not upon bread or beef.
SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.
Go into one of our school-houses, and you may there see subjects preparing for consumption. Our ill.u.s.trations will give the reader a correct idea of our meaning, without any explanation. The sewing-machines, or rather the position which many girls a.s.sume while sitting at their work by them from three to twelve hours a day, tend to depression of the lungs, obstruction of circulation, reduction of the vitality, dyspepsia, and sooner or later lead to consumption.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A HEALTHY POSITION.]
Let everybody when walking stand erect, with shoulders slightly thrown back rather than inclined towards the chest, then outward, and keep the mouth closed. When sitting, keep the body erect, or lean back slightly, resting the shoulders, rather than the spinal column, against any substance excepting feathers, changing the limbs from time to time to any easy position. If tired, and one can consistently "loll," recline to one side, resting the cheek upon the hand. If one is very tired, and desires to "rest fast," sit with the feet and hands crossed or arms folded.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A CONSUMPTIVE POSITION.]
If you lie crooked in bed, do it on the side. "To bend up double, man never was made," says the song. Do not bolster up the head so as to get a square look at your toes, or, being in a feather bed, till you resemble a letter C. Rather use but one light curled-hair pillow. It is cool and healthy. Avoid feather beds and pillows.
"Didn't your 'grandma sleep during nearly a hundred years' on a feather bed?" My quizzer has returned, peeped over my shoulder, and asked this question. Now see me quench him at a swoop.
"Yes, she did; and I think it probable that if she had not she would have been living now. My grandmother's good habits, free use of muscle, suns.h.i.+ne, and air, more than offset the use of mince pies, and the evil of sleeping on a feather bed in winter."
I sleep on a hair mattress and pillow the year round. They are the best.
CATARRH AND COLD FEET.--HOW TO CURE BOTH.
Catarrh is peculiarly a Yankee disease. Now, how does a Yankee differ in his habits from the rest of the world's people?
Let me tell you wherein he differs. The "five minutes for refreshments" is an ill.u.s.tration. He hurries, he rushes, he's a talker; and having hurried unnecessarily, and got himself all in a perspiration, he stops to talk with a friend on the street, in a current of air, possibly in a puddle of water, the consequence of which is checked perspiration, a cold, the catarrh. If the circulation to the skin is checked, that excretory organ ceases to throw off the waste and worn-out matter of the system, and the work is thrown upon the mucous membrane, which if failing to perform the unnatural office, the patient goes into a decline. Set this down as reason No. 1 for the catarrh being peculiarly a "Yankee disease."
Chronic catarrh necessarily must be connected with a bad circulation of the blood, a want of action in the skin, and usually with cold feet. I must take time to explain these causes of a disease which usually leads to the more fatal one--consumption. Now we have cold feet and loss of action in the skin. Result, catarrh, terminating fatal in consumption.
To keep the feet warm is to restore the circulation. Has your doctor failed to do this? I fear he did not understand the connection, or the patient did not follow his instructions. Dip the cold feet into a little cold water! Is that "too homeopathic?"--cold to cure cold! Never mind, do it. It feels cold at first. Well, catch them out, rub them vigorously with a towel, then with the hands, and when quite red, cover them up in bed, or in stockings and boots. Repeat it daily till cured. Wear thick-soled boots and shoes always. Meantime, take a dose of the third dilution of sulphur mornings, or at ten A. M., and the third trituration of calcarea-carbonica at early bedtime.
To restore the loss of circulation to the skin, meantime--for they must both be cured together--take a daily hand-bath; that is, with the hand and in a comfortable room, apply a dose of castile or Windsor soap to the skin, half of the person at a time, if the weather is cool,--avoiding a current of air,--then, with cool or cold water, _and the hand only_, wash rapidly over the surface, following quickly with a dry towel and the dry hand, till warm. Cover the upper extremity, and proceed to wash the other portion of the body in the same manner. I really believe that there are individuals with such peculiar temperaments, or low state of the blood, that they cannot bear cold water. See to it that it is not fear, or habit, which prevents its use, before abandoning a remedy of such curative powers.
Now, there is no other way under heaven whereby man can be saved from catarrh than this which I have here given. If the patient requires further medical treatment, he or she surely requires this, else there is no catarrh in the case.
"But can't you give me some snuff, doctor?"
Snuffs and nasal injections are humbugs. They will not cure a chronic catarrh. The sugar and gum arabic powder is excellent for the local irritation. That is all any local remedy can reach. Thousands of dollars are expended annually for "Catarrh Remedies," which never cured a case yet, but have been the death of thousands, by aggravating and prolonging the disease.
Indigestion and "a goneness at the stomach" not unusually accompany the above disease. In addition to the instructions here given, rubbing and slapping the region of the stomach with water and the hand, and taking small quant.i.ties of extract gentian, orange-peel, dock, and ginger, equal parts, twice daily, following the directions regarding slow eating and cheerfulness, will eventually remove the distressing disease.
OTHER THINGS TO BE AVOIDED.
For consumption, the old-fogy treatment by squills, ipecac, laudanum, and the host of expectorants, is worthless. One of the fatalities in this disease has been the sticking to these useless medicines by a certain cla.s.s of physicians and patients.
Use no tobacco. If tight-lacing and confined habits, as want of air and exercise, have been conducive to the development of consumption in females, more repulsive habits have led to catarrhal affections, destruction of the vitality, and finally to consumption in many of the opposite s.e.x. Does the mother, by habits which injure her health, jeopardize the life and health of her offspring? The husband and father, by the debasing and health-destroying habit of tobacco-using, injures both mother and child. The description which I have given in the article on tobacco, respecting cleansing the young man, and purifying him fit for society, is no joke! The clothes, skin, blood, muscle, and bones,--even the seminal fluid,--of the confirmed tobacco-user, all are impregnated with tobacco poison. Does any one question but something of this virus is transmitted to the offspring? Further, I have known many a wife to become tobacco-diseased,--nervous, yellow, sick at the stomach, dyspeptic, neuralgic, etc.,--suffering untold horrors, from lying, night after night, during year in and year out, beside a great, filthy, tobacco-plant of a husband!
Perhaps some sensitive gentleman--user of the weed of course--may object to my way of putting it. Sound truths, like sound meat, require no mincing. We know that children, sleeping constantly with elderly people, become prematurely old and infirm. We know also that nurses and others, sleeping with perpetual invalids, imbibe their diseases. The skin of the tobacco-user is continually giving off the tobacco poison--_nicotine_--and the more susceptible skin of the female, or child, by its absorbent powers, is as continually taking in this poison. There are many tobacco-users, who, if they knew this fact, would for this reason, if no other, abandon the injurious and sinful habit; would not want to continue a habit--be it never so slavish--which, aside from its injury to themselves, was destroying the health and lives of his wife and his children.