THE

MONTHLY.

ΜΑΥ, 1883.

THE

THE REMEDIES OF NATURE.

BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D.

CONSUMPTION.

HE organism of the human body is a self-regulating apparatus. Every interruption of its normal functions excites a reaction against the disturbing cause. If a grain of caustic potash irritates the nerves of the palate, the salivary glands try to remove it by an increased secretion. The eye would wash it off by an immediate flow of tears. A larger quantity of the same substance could be swallowed only under the protest of the fauces, and the digestive organs would soon find means to eject it. The bronchial tubes promptly react against the obtrusion of foreign substances. The sting of an insect causes an involuntary twitching of the epidermis. If a thorn or splinter fastens itself under the skin, suppuration prepares the way for its removal. If the stomach be overloaded with food, it revolts against further ingestion.

These automatic agencies of the organism generally suffice to counteract the disturbing cause, and the sensory symptoms attending the process of reconstruction constitute merely a plea for non-interference. The suppurating tissues push the thorn outward, and resent only a pressure in the opposite direction. The eye volunteers to rid itself of the sand-dust, but remonstrates against friction. The rum-soaked system of the toper undertakes to eliminate the poison, and only asks that the consequences of the outrage be not aggravated by its repetition. But, if that plea remains unheeded, it finally takes the form of the emphatic protest we call disease. For, even in its urgent manifestations, the reaction against a violation of Nature's health-laws is a cry for peace, rather than a petition for active assistance in the form

existence you were before unaware, and which, if suffered to re and accumulate, might prove the destruction of the house you li -and that, instead of its needing to be cured,' it is itself a cur operation; and that what should be called disease lies back of symptoms which, in fact, are made for the express purpose of re ing the real disorder or difficulty" ("Medical Reform," p. 310).

Drugs can rarely do more than change the form of the disea postpone its crisis. Mercurial salve, which conscientious physi have almost ceased to regard as a lesser evil of any alternative once a favorite prescription for all kinds of cutaneous disease cleansed the skin by driving the ulcers from the surface to the int of the body. A drastic purge counteracts constipation-for a d two-by inducing a still less desirable state of artificial dyser Combined with venesection the same remedy " " will suppres symptoms of various inflammatory affections by compelling the hausted system to postpone the crisis of the disease; in other w by interrupting a curative process. The best way to "assist" N in such cases is to give her fair play by forbearing to meddle wit restorative methods, and by removing the predisposing cause o disorder. Diseases plead for desistance, rather than for assistance the discovery of the cause is the discovery of the remedy. For is a strong upward and healthward tendency in the constitutic every living organism: Nature's revenge is but an enforced conc of peace. Pain, discomfort, and even the premature loss of org vigor, are the attendant symptoms of a reconstructive process, and permanence is a presumptive proof that, in spite of such admoni that process is a struggle against a permanent obstacle, or agai constantly repeated frustration of its efforts.

To this self-regulating tendency of the living organism, certain orders (the lues veneris, prurigo, etc.)-probably due to the agen microscopic parasites--oppose a life-energy of their own, and thus far resisted the influence of hygienic or non-medicinal rem But, with that exception, it may be laid down as a general rule tha virulence and duration of every disease are proportioned to the dand the contumacy of the provocation-a retribution proportion the degree of the guilt, we should say, if Nature did not admin her code after the principle that ignorance of the law constitut excuse. The ignorant mother who, with the best intentions in world, forces her child to sleep in an air-tight bedroom, incurs the alties of an inexorable law as surely as the vicious father who to his child to a life of infamy.

In the aggregate, hygienic errors cause more mischief than hyg recklessness; and, if we would know the most baneful of those e

habit slays its thousands every year; but statistics prove that human life has a more terrible foe. The proportion of deaths from all diseases that can be ascribed to the effects of intemperance relates as three and a half to ten in Northern Europe, and as four to ten in the United States and Canada-to the mortality-rate of PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. Without counting acute pneumonia and other fatal lung-diseases, tubercular phthisis alone claims yearly one life out of 410 to 415; or an aggregate which, for the United States, has been estimated at 94,000; in Great Britain and Ireland, 110,000 (or one of every 300 inhabitants); in France, 80,000; in European Russia, 105,000; in Northern Germany (including the Polish provinces of Prussia), 82,000. And the quantum of the mischief is still aggravated by its quality. Consumption fulfills no scavenger's mission: the most voracious is, withal, the most fastidious disease, and selects its victims from the most industrious classes of the noblest nations; hard-working mechanics, devoted supporters of large families, bread-winning laborers and prize-winning students are its favorite victims. For the last fifty years its ravages have steadily increased; but the excess of the evil has finally revealed the means of deliverance, and the worst scourge of the human race has one redeeming feature that its cause, and consequently its proper cure, have at last been determined with absolute certainty. Not more than fifty years ago the consumption-problem was still the crux medicorum; the disease seemed almost unaccountable and wholly incurable. Practical physicians had ascertained the value of certain secondary remedies, the prophylactic influence of fat and phosphates (cod-liver oil, etc.), and of chest-expanding gymnastics; but they had failed to recognize the great specific. Misled by the most prevalent of all popular delusions-the Cold-Air Fallacy *—they ascribed consumption to the influence of a low temperature, and tried to cure it by sending their wealthier patients to a warmer climate and the poorer to an air-tight sick-room. There were hospitals for consumptives where invalids were nursed with a care that would have insured recovery from almost every other disease, but here all calculations were defeated by the result of one wrong factor; the chief efficacy of the treatment was supposed to depend upon the exclusion of every draught of fresh air.

But statistics have at last exploded that delusion. It was ascertained that consumption is essentially a house-disease. North or south,

* "Dry and intensely cold air preserves decaying organic tissues by arresting decomposition, and it would be difficult to explain how the most effective remedy came to be suspected of being the cause of tuberculosis, unless we remember that, where fuel is accessible, the disciples of civilization rarely fail to take refuge from excessive cold in its opposite extreme-an overheated, artificial atmosphere, and thus come to connect severe winters with the idea of pectoral complaints. . . . They avoid cold instead of impurity, just as tipplers, on a warm day, imagine that they would 'catch their death' by a draught

the rural districts, cities more than country towns, manufacturing more than commercial and semi-agricultural cities, weaver-towns than foundry-towns. "If a perfectly sound man is imprison life," says Baron d'Arblay, the Belgian philanthropist, "his lur a rule, will first show symptoms of disease, and shorten his mise a hectic decline, unless he should commit suicide."

Moreover, it was shown that in non-manufacturing (uncivili pastoral) regions a low temperature seems to afford a protection a pulmonary disorders. Professor Jacoud found that, at an elevat four thousand feet, the cold Alpine districts of Northern Sav almost free from lung-diseases. The medical statistics of the Au army have established the fact that recruits from the Tyrol, Carinthia, and the Carpathians (Transylvania), i. e., from the hi and consequently the coldest, provinces of the empire, enjoy markable immunity from tubercular consumption. Dr. Hjalt resident of Iceland, states that among the inhabitants of that co pulmonary diseases are almost unknown.

But in the temperate zone consumption-statistics alone wou able us to infer the amount of dust-breathing and in-door worl dental to the pursuit of each trade. In the Italian cities that largely engaged in the production of textile fabrics, consumptio become as frequent as in Lancashire. Irrespective of race-diffe and special dietetic habits, the habitual breathing of vitiated air to the development of pulmonary scrofula. And science has fur the rationale of that result. Physiology has demonstrated that gaseous food, and respiration a process of digestion. The atmos furnishes the raw material of the pulmonary pabulum; at each ration the organism of the lungs imbibes the oxygenous or nut principle of the air-draught, and excretes the indigestible eler By breathing the same air over and over again, the atmospher ment becomes azotized, i. e., depleted of its life-sustaining prin and therefore unfit to supply the wants of the animal economy. continued inhalation of such vitiated air fills the respiratory o with indigestible elements, which gradually accumulate beyon dislodging ability of the vital forces, and at last corrupt the tis the congested organ and favor the development of parasites. sumption is one of the diseases that seem to confirm the tenets germ-theory. A tubercular diathesis is favored by stagnant impu of the circulatory system, by a warm and humid climate, and co acted by cold air and other antiseptics. Six years ago a German sician demonstrated that the progress of pulmonary scrofula c arrested by a pectoral injection of carbolic acid; and one of his trymen lately ascertained that the tubercle-virus is alive with