Daily independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 188?-1915, 1890-01-22
PULMONARY DISORDERS.
Outdoor Air and Exercise tho Beat REM
edies for Consumption.

NUMBER OF oDSerVant physicians have
evinced more and more outspoken con-
viction that pulmonary disorders make
no exception to the general rule that all
diseases become more durable in cold
weather Three generations ago al
lung troubles, almost without an OK
ccptlon, were ascribed to the influenc,
OF cold ARA delusion perpetuated il
the still sadly misleading word cold
as a synonym Of catarrh, and in the not
yet quite obsolete fashion of sending
consumptives to an early grave in
tho sultry coast regions of tho
tropics. Cold night air, ''draughts'
and raw March winds" had be-
come the bugbears of lung-sick per-
sons A disease due to a low temper
allure seemed naturally to demand
warmth for its cure, and patients who
could not afford the expense of q journey
to Florida or the West Indies were kept
penned up in the sitting atmosphere of
an overheated sick-roon, with every
breath OF fresh air carefully excluded.
Those delusions were first shaken by
tho result Of comparative statistics. The
mortality records of every civilized
country east, west north or south dem
prevalence of consumption bears an ex-
act proportion to tho prevalence of in
door occupations. In pastoral Norway
pulmonary disorders were found to be
less frequent than in cotton-spinning
England; in frosty Switzerland less fire.
qucnt than in sunny France. The unan-
imous reports of Arctic travellers estab-
llshed the still more remarkable circum-
stance that in the polar regions lung
diseases are almost wholly unknown,
due to diet of train oil" argued tho
old-school doctors. LET us try that
specific" And the cod-liver-oi1 nuisance
was added to other SORROWS of afflicted
mankind. Kohl, Father de Smeth and
other explorers of the North American
inland regions, in the meanwhile no
tlced that the hunting tribes of our
frozen Northwestern prairies share the
privilege OF Weather-prOof lungs at a
distance of 1000 miles from the next
traln-oll kettle; while the reports of tho
Naples hospitals proved that the do
velopment of factory towns had made
consumption extremely prevalent in tho
more than half-tropical coast district of
Southern Italy.
At the same time experience had left
no doubt that a change from indoor to
outdoor occupations could, in four out
of five cases, be relied upon to avert tho
doom OF hereditary consumption The
siclkly wives of Silesian weavers recov-
cred from malignant lung disorders
after the removal of their household to
the backwoods of the Tennessee valley;
hollow-cheeked mechanics, worn out
with hectic coughs, became athletes by
adopting an outdoor mode of life; of
i've sons descended from an ancestry of
consumptives, four died in city work.
shops before the completion of their
fftieth year, while the fifth on his
mountain farm outlived his nephews
and grand-nephews. Consumption was
gradually recognized to be a house dis
ease.
1t Is true that the theory Of the old
school party is apparently supported by
the circumstances that lung disorders
become more frequent after the end of
October, and subside about the middle
of May; but should that phenomenon be
wholly unconnected with the fact that
winter is, by excellence, the season Of
indoor life? Savages, who spend their
winters outdoors, and trappers in their
draughty winter camps in the gully of
Western sierra, know catarrhs only
from hearsay, and we have seen that
the natives OF the arctic regions share
shat immunity in spite of their ILL
ventilated novels, which may keep out
snow-flakcs, but can not counterfeit the
penetrative force Of polar winter
storm.
These facts suggest considerable mod
ifications in the conventional method of
treating catarrhs and other disorders OF
the respiratory organs. They have al
ready led to the practical establishmentoi
the truth that cold pure air, rather than
warm foul air, is natures specific for the
elimination of lung microbes, and scores
OF consumptives are actually cured by
their removal from the sultrv lovlapda