The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-09-09
Hygiene and Consump ton.

At the tables Of how many farmers and me-
chanics, we wonder, is the buckwheat break
fast gone into disgrace? We readily recall
the time when uncOunted multitudes of FAM
lilies broke their fast of twelve hours and faced
the work of clustering winter day with
nothing but greasy buckwheat cakes and mo-
lasses! They might almost as well have eat
en- sawdust; and what had they for dinner
Boiled salt pork and potatoes, and for supper
boiled salt pork and potatoes again-coId, and
made palatable with vinegarl All, we forgot
the pie-the everlasting pie, with its sugary
centre and its leathery crust-the one titilla-
tlon Of the palate that made life toerable.
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 peo-
pie have not realized that what they regarded
as luxuries were necessaries, and that the
food upon which they have depended for pro-
lection from the climate and for the repair of
the wastes of labor has been altogether mad
equate, and has left them with impoverished
blood and tuberculous lungs.
After taking into account all the influence
of heredity, which is made much of in treat
ing OF the causes of phthisis, insufficient nour-
ishment is responsible alike, in most instances,
for the deposit of tuberce and the infamma-
ton to which it naturally gives rise. There
are many men who by change of living ren-
der the tubercles already deposited in their
lungs harmless. Vitality becomes so high in
its power that it dominates these evil infu-
ences, and they live out a fairly long life with
enemies in their lungs that are rendered pow
erless 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 vitality through pas
sive 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, well
clothed, and well housed. Somewhere dete-
rioration will show itself, and in New Eng
land-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 mat
ter 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 so many of them
are running westward, and their places are
taken by an ignorant foreign population, it
is not likely that the statistics will show much
improvement for a great many years to come.
II our physicians could only be paid for pre-
venting disease, and could be permitted to
prescribe for each family its way of living,
there would be but little difficulty in routing
from its stronghold that most fatal and per-
sistent enemy of human life, which we call
consumption.-Dr. Holland in Scri5ner's.