The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-07-05
Hygiene and Consumption.

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and mechanics, we, wonder, is the buck.
wheat breakfast gone into disgrace ?
We readily recall the time when un-
counted multitudes of families broke
their fast of twelve hours and faced the
work of clustering winter day with
nothing but greasy buckwheat cakes aud
molasses They might almost as well
have eaten sawdust; and what had they
for dinners Boiled salt pork and pota-
toes, and for supper boiled salt pork and
potatoes again-cold, and made palata-
BILE with vinegar! All, we forget the
pie-the everlasting pie, with it's sugary
center and leathery crust-the one
Utilization of the palate that made life
tolerable Good bread and butter or
milk, abundant fruit, beef, or mutton,
nutritious puddings-all these things
have been within the reach of the people
of New England, for they have always
been the thriftiest people in the world !;
but they have cost something, and they
have not really been deemed necessary.
The people haze not realized that what
they regarded as luxuries were neces-
saries, and that the food upon which
they have depended for protection from
the climate, and for the repair of the
wastes of labor, has been altogether in
adequate, and has left them with impov-
erished blood and tuberculous lungs.
After taking into account all the in
fuence of heredity, which is made much
of in treating of the causes of phthisis,
insufficient nourishment is responsible
alike, in most instances, for the deposit
of tubercle and the Inflammation to
which it naturally gives rise. There are
many men who, by change OF living,
render the tubercles already deposited
in their lungs harmless. Vitality be-
comes so high in its power that it DOM
mates these evil influences, and they
live out fairly long life with enemies
in their lungs that are rendered power
less by the strength of the fluid that
fights them. We have seen consump-
ton cured again and again by the sim
pie process of building up the forces of
vitality through passive exercise in the
open air, and the supply of an abund-
ance of nutritious food and we have no
doubt that it can be prevented in most
instances by the same means.
No human body con long endure the
draught made upon it by cold climate
and by constant labor, unless it is well
fed, well clothed and we'll housed.
Som ewhere deterioration will show
itself, and in New England-nay, all
over the kingdom of Great Britain it is
the same, where the people are worse
fed than here-the poverty of blood
shows itself in the deposit of tuberculous
matter in the lungs. There should be,
by this time, some improvement in New
England, in consequence of the increased
intelligence OF the people, but, so long
as 80 many of them are running west
ward, and their places are taken by an
ignorant foreign population, it is not
likely that the statistics will show much
Improvement for great many years to
come. If our physicians could only be
paid for preventing disease, and could
be permitted to prescribe for each
family it's way of living, there would be
but little difficulty in routing from its
stronghold that most fatal and persistent
enemy of human life which we call con
sumption.-Dr. Holland, in July Scri6