Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1878-08-05
HYGIENE AND CONSUMPTION.

II AMI OONSOm 1ONs
At the tables of how many farmers
and mechanics, we wonder, is the buck
wheat breakfast gone into disgrace? We
readily recall the time when uncounted
multitudes of families broke their fast of
twelve hours and faced the work of
clustering winter day with nothing but
greasy buckwheat cakes and molasses E!
They might almost as we'll have eaten
sawdust; and what had they for dinner? ?
Boiled salt pork and potatoes, and for
supper boiled salt pork and potatoes
again-made palatable with vinegar
All, we forget the pie,-the everlasting
pie. with its sugary centre and its leath-
cry crust-the one Utilization Of the pal
ate that made life tolerable. Good bread
and butter or milk. abundant fruit, beef
and 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 have not realized
that what they regarded as luxuries were
necessaries, 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 hereditary, which is made
much of in treating of the causes of
phthisis, insufficient nourishment is re-
sponsible 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 liv-
ing, render the tubercles already depos-
tied in their lungs harmless. Vitality
becomes so high in its power that it
dominates 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 consumption
cured again and again by the simple
process of building up the forces Of vi
tality through passive exercise in the
open air, and the supply of an abundance
of nutritious food, and we have no doubt
that it can be prevented in most instances
by the same means.
No human body can long endure the
draught made upon it by cold climate
and by constant labor, unless it is well
fed, we'll clothed, and we'll housed. Some.
where deterioration will show itself, and
New England-nay, all over the king
dom 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, il
consequence of the increased intelligence
of the people, but so long as SO many O
them are running westward, and thei
places are taken by an ignorant foriegr
population, it is not likely that the sta
tistics will show much improvement fol
a great many years to come If ou
physicians could only be paid for pre-
venting disease, and could be permittet
to prescribe for each family its way o
living, there would be little difficulty ii
routing from its stronghold that mos
fatal and persistent enemy of human
life, which we call consumption.-Dr
Holland, IN July Scribner.