Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/232

220 And this result we may hope to attain. That pulmonary consumption is only an acquired disease we know from the fact that it first appears in the apices of the lungs—a portion of the organ which is not affected by hereditary pathological processes. The diathesis only is hereditary, and this diathesis consists simply of a general debility, which, however, can be overcome. But the thing that is transmitted hereditarily is habits of life—the avocation descending from father to son.

MacCormac tells of a family in which father, mother, and six children, died of consumption; the seventh son alone survived, he having quit the paternal house and calling, and gone to sea. Many instances of a like kind might be cited. This case is easily understood when we consider that here the parents and the six children who died had followed a sedentary trade; that they lived in narrow quarters, the air of which was quickly vitiated by the large number of persons breathing it; that they slept in a dusty room, with windows closed, lest they should take cold. They fell sick one after another; but the seventh son, who quit the unhealthy locality, had exercise, inhaled fresh, pure air, became vigorous and healthy, and escaped from consumption.

This simple explanation appears strange to those who believe in "tuberculosis." If this disease has grown to be the curse of modern society, the scholastic interpretation of it has to bear no small part of the blame. The doctrine of the heredity of consumption leads to the belief that the consumptive patient is fated to die of his complaint, and that his death is merely a question of time. He himself often draws the conclusion that the best thing for him to do is to enjoy life as best he may while it lasts. On the other hand, we must condemn the heedlessness of those who, so long as danger is not proximate, fear the expenditure of time and money. These same people, when hæmorrhage suddenly appears, quite lose their heads, adopt the most preposterous methods, whose only result is to cause new hæmorrhages, and to produce a regular case of consumption: whereas many of the old physicians recommend horseback exercise as the best cure for those suffering from hæmorrhage of the lungs, we now often see patients shut up in a hot, dusty room, not allowed to talk, and almost forbidden to breathe.

It is a peculiarity of consumption that it may appear in association with all diseases in which recovery is slow. In the first place, it accompanies inflammation of the lungs, unless the patient, while recovering, is permitted to breathe plenty of pure air. But it also makes its appearance in typhus, diabetes, and meningitis, when the patient is kept for a long time in a close room. So, too, delicate persons—those supposed to tend toward consumption—will all the sooner become indeed "tuberculosed," the more they are coddled, protected against cold, and treated with warm drinks and so-called