Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/105

Rh the phthisical man should not exert his skill. The exertion of blowing these instruments interferes materially with the regular play of the respiration and circulation. In playing upon stringed instruments, moreover, the amusement should not be carried on until it wearies the performer. Mothers anxious for the accomplishments of their daughters make frequently a fatal mistake on this score. They place a poor child, who has no musical tastes, at the piano-forte; and there she is made to sit hour after hour, until a lesson is perforce learned, or an exercise completed. The system, useless in an educational sense, is fraught with direct danger to health.

For the consumptive, reading aloud is a good daily practice. Cuvier, the great naturalist, attributed his recovery from threatened phthisis to the delivery of some lectures which he was appointed to give. There should, of course, be a limit to the time of reading aloud; it should never exceed an hour, should be stopped if hoarseness or weariness occur, and should be without effort or vociferation.

The selection of books for the entertainment of the mind is a further and important point. Exciting romances, filled with the narrations of deep and fiendish plots or hyper-poetic sentiments, are quite out of place, for they, through the mind, influence respiration to the detriment of the physical forces of life. So also do dull, monotonous, whining, terror-striking treatises, of whatever kind. But the book which is amusing, and which, with easy effort, raises the hearty laugh at an innocent picture, or the book which carries the reader along the page of history with gentle carriage, or tells of natural facts in natural language—this is the book to be sought for.

Singing is an amusement which may with prudence be followed by the consumptive in whom the tendency to the disease is indicated only, and the disease itself is not actually developed. The exertion must not, however, be kept up so long at any given time as to produce breathlessness or hoarseness. It must be done without labor or distress, and at intervals when the body is in a condition to sustain the effort. It is then useful.

To sum up, the amusements of the consumptive should combine with the pleasure they afford a moderate and equal degree of muscular exercise, and with the muscular exercise a degree of exhilarating amusement free from over-excitement and mental toil.

. Cleanliness of Body is a Special Point in the Treatment of Consumption.—But little need be said to enforce this rule. In health there is always a mutual understanding and a kind of partnership between the skin and lungs. In consumption moderate action of the skin is a relief to the lungs, and as such ought to be encouraged. This is best attained by keeping the skin clean by daily ablution. Let the consumptive boldly take his bath as each morning comes; not a shower-bath, not a cold bath, under any impression that water cast on the body in a certain fashion, or at a certain temperature, will give