The Logan County banner. [volume] (Logan, W. Va.) 1889-1903, 1890-01-30
PULMONARY DISORDERS
DaS-Door Air and Exercise the Best Ron
edies for Consumption.


Das-Door Air and Exercise the Best ROM.
edies for Consumption.
In the course Of the last fifty years q
number of observant physicians have
=exineed a more and more outspoken con-
viction that pulmonary disorders make
=tfe= exception to the general rule that all
diseases become more durable in cold
weather Three generations ago all
lung troubles. almost without an ex-
ceptjon, we're ascribed to the influence
OF cold ARA delusion perpetuated In
the still sadly misleading word cold
as synonym Of catarrh, and in the not
yet quite obsolete fashion OF sending
consumptives to an early grave in
the sultry coast regions OF the
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
ature seemed naturally to demand
warmth for its cure, and patients who
could not afford the expense Of a journey
to Florida or theN West Indies were kept
penned up in the sitting atmosphere of
an overheated sick-room, with every
breath of fresh air carefully excluded.
Those delusions were first shaken by
the result OF comparative statistics. The
mortality records Of every civilized
country east, west north or south dem
onstrated the suggestive fact that the
prevalence of consumption bears an ex-
act proportion to the prevalence of in
door occupations. pastoral Norway
pulmonary disorders were found to be
less frequent than in cotton-spinning
England; in frosty Switzerland less FREE
quent than in sunny France. The unan-
-imous reports of Arctic travellers estab-
lished the still more remarkable circum-
stance that in the polar regions lung
diseases are almost wholly unknown,
''due to a diet Of train Oil, argued the
old-school doctors. ..Let us try that
specific" And the eod-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.
ticed 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
Naples hospitals proved that the de-
velopment Of factory towns had made
consumption extremely prevalent in the
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, inf four out
of five cases. be relied upon to avert the
doom of hereditary consumption. The
ssickly 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
five sons descended from an ancestry of
consumptives, four died in city work.
shops before the completion of their
fiftieth year, while the fifth on his
mountain farm outlived his nephews
and grand-nephews. Consumption was
gradually recognized to be 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, 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
that immunity in spite of their ILL
ventilated novels, which may keep out
snow-falses,4 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 ledto the practical establishmentof
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 sultry lowlands
of the Mississippi valley to the frosty
highland regions of the Adirondacks.
For the same reason DIR. Lewis advised
his Iung-sick patients to take an extra
dose Of outdoor air in mid-winter, and
it would not be bad plan to utilize the
coolest and driest breezes of every win
ter for -disinfectant purposes just as
the owners of a new family residence
celebrate s'house-warming, old tene-
ments should be treated to an occasional
house-freezing.- DIR. I. L. Oswald, in
Harper's Bazaar.