Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/107

Rh cases in which I have seen them tried, no such specific virtues in asses' milk and goats' milk as some have supposed. Tea may be taken, in moderation, with perfect safety. Fresh vegetable diets should not be omitted; and fruits, especially roasted apples, are always admissible, except in instances where they excite irregular action of the bowels. The Iceland moss has had a great reputation, as have jellies of different kinds, but these often are slow in digestion, and they have no specific value.

The question of the use of alcohol in consumption is one on which scientific opinion is much divided. I have recommended alcohol under some conditions of the disease, and I have shown, on the other hand, that one particular kind of consumption may be produced by indulgence in alcohol. Of late years I have prescribed alcohol very sparingly, and never in the form of the pernicious mixtures in which it is sold for general use under the names and forms of alcoholic beverages. When I now prescribe it, it is purely as a medicine and in the form of alcohol itself properly measured, properly diluted, and properly timed. In this form it comes under the head of medicinal, as distinguished from hygienic, treatment, and, I am satisfied, with much more value than when it is inaccurately classified as a food or drink.

The two indulgences, snuff-taking and tobacco-smoking, ought to be strictly avoided by the consumptive.

Reviewing what has been thus written, I would add, as a supplement to the ten rules submitted, that, whenever distinct evidences of phthisis have set in in an individual of either sex, the marriage of such person is wrong, if not inexcusable; while the marriage of two persons, both the victims of the disease, is opposed both to reason and humanity.

—The above essay "On the Hygienic Treatment of Pulmonary Consumption"—less one or two minor revisions—was written and published under the same title in 1856.

The essay found little favor. It was considered as not practical, and as conveying the ideas of a dreamer, that the fatal disease, consumption, could be prevented generally, and treated specially by hygienic measures. To-day, under a revival of the old animalcular speculation as to the origin of some diseases from living forms—the entity doctrine in a new dress—the conception of the hygienic treatment of pulmonary consumption has been accepted in name as well as practice, as if it were new in word and in deed, the height of practical learning and skill. So ideas change; and the disfavored of one generation is the favored of another. But it matters not how or by whom it is borne, so long as the torchlight of truth makes its way.—The Asclepiod.