Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/338

326 was agony, when the same air could be had in his bedroom, with pleasure and safety, by bundling him up and opening the windows and keeping them open. It is against the law to live in cellars, but we make cellars of our rooms by keeping them filled with impure air. I do not inveigh, as it is the fashion to do, against the temperature at which our American houses are kept; a higher temperature is a necessity of our climate; but some one has yet to secure a fortune and the blessings of mankind by devising a system which will keep our houses always filled with living, moving, fresh air, and that will oblige everybody to attend to this matter as he ought.

And here I wish to enter an earnest protest against the practice of sending patients, often far gone with consumption or other wasting disease, away from friends and the comforts of home, without knowledge of what would be best for them, in a fruitless search for health, when, in their enfeebled state, better conditions could be instituted at home where at least they could die in peace. Some, not too far gone, do recover, it is fortunately true, but many lie buried there, and more are sent east in long boxes. On my last trip east, a young girl sat in front of me, whose mother's body accompanied her, and opposite me sat a gentleman and his wife whose daughter's body was also in the baggage car. In neither of these instances had the invalids been more than a short time west. Too many such things are happening for the credit of our profession. Send patients, in time, with a definite intention in the change of climate sought, or do not send them at all.

My object has been to call attention to the many and often difficult questions involved in the therapeutics of climate in its wide and varied significance. Probably no one now lives who is capable of answering all the questions relating to "therapeutics of climate," but they will be answered some day and correctly answered; and when answered it will be found, I believe, as a general thing, that the best climate for consumptives is also the best for other persons in like general physical conditions. Twenty years after our profession more fully realizes the immense value of "climate in therapeutics"—and hundreds of capable men have been studying the subject from that point alone, and valuable material has been created to draw upon—a climato-therapy may be formulated which will give the divine art of healing a new uplifting, not less glorious than that which in our day has attended the labors of Pasteur, Koch, Lister, and others whose immortal services have so enriched the world.