Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1890-04-03
Food and CONSUMPTION.

Friend, you and I have dear ones we
know must leave Us soon By means of
that devastating American plague,
consumption. Let us reason together.
At the tables of how many farmers
and mechanics, 1 wonder, is the buck
wheat breakfast gone into disgrace?
We all readily can recall the time
when countless multitmdes IF families
broke their fast of twelve hours, and
faced the work of clustering winters
day, with nothing but greasy buck
wheat cakes and molasses. They
might almost as we'll have eaten saw
dust. And what had they for dinner?
Salt pork and potatoes. And for sup
per? Potatoes and salt pork for a
change--sometimes cold, and made
palatable with vinegar! Oh, 1 forgot
the pie-the everlasting pie, with its
sugary center and its leathery crust
the one Utilization of the palate that
made life tolerable. Good bread and
butter or milk, abundance of fruit,
beef, mutton, and nutritious buildings
all these things are within the
reach of people who have left
the East, and at this time these
sturdy Westerners are noted for being
the most progressive farmers in the
world; but they have cost something.
and have not really been deemed
necessary. The people have not real
lied thai what they regarded as
luxuries were necessaries, and that the
food upon which they have depended
for protection from more rigorous
climate, and for the repair of the
wastes of labor, has been altogether
inadequate, and is leaving them with
blood Impoverished and lungs tuber-
culated After taking into account all
hereditary influences, upon which doc
tors place great stress in treating of
the cause of phthisis, insufficient nour-
ishment is alike responsible.
In most instances the deposit of tu-
bercle and the inflammation to which
it naturally gives rise is directly trace
able to poor food. There are many
men who by change of living render
the tubercles already deposited in their
lungs harmless. Vitality becomes so
high in its power that it dominates
these evil influences, and they live out
a tolerably long life with enemies in
their lungs that are rendered powerless
by the strength of the fluid that fights
them. I have seen consumption cured
again and again by the simple process
of building up the forces of vitality
through passive exercise in the open
air and the supply of an abundance of
nutritious food, and have not the
least doubt that it can be prevented in
most instances by the same means.
No human being can long endure the
draft made upon it by cold climate
and by constant labor, unless it is well
fed, well clothed, and well housed.
Somewhere deterioration will show
itself, and in all countries where peo-
pie are poorly fed consumption deci-
mates the populace. There should
be by this time some improvements in
the West and North in consequence of
the increased intelligence of the peo-
pie, but so long as SO many of them
are unsettled, moving and moving,
leaving good places vacant to be taken
by ignorant, often filthy, foreign popu-
lation, it is not likely that statistics
will show much less tuberculosis for
years to come.
When We are sick we hire physician
who can live only by people being sick.
If we could hire doctors to keep us well,
if code of ethics could be adopted that
they would only be paid for preventing
disease, and could be permitted to pre-
scribe for each family its way of living,
there would be but little difficulty in
routing from its stronghold that most
fatal and persistent enes> human
life which we call corsnmptio.- but
which is not, it being just the o;po-