Daily Kennebec journal., 1899-05-22
FIGHTING THE WHITE flEND.
The Treatment Of Consumptves in The Black
Forest.

a CORRESPONDENT of the London Daily
Graphic gives some interesting details
concerning Dr. Walther'S treatment of
consumption in the NordraCh Valley Of
the Black Forest.
There are five houses, with different
numbers of rooms. one has 20, one
about l.. and the other three small
houses have - between them. Each
patient has one room, which has
douche in it. Unless patients are too
i'll all meals are taken in common in
the dining room, which is some hun
dreds of yards from thevarious houses.
The meals are at $, l and ! o'clock. No
food is allowed between meals The doc
tor sits in the middle of one side Of the
long table--the Germans on his right,
the English on his left and among the
English are a few Dutch, Danes and
Italians. There are more men than
women.
The doctor carves the food himself.
-ri hoops , y patient 10 his or her
ual..H.. hl-h u-= ty ht i.nl-I.--. {. fOr1
t.e place can be taken away for an
other course. Patients sometimes sit
for an hour after the close of a meal
to finish their portion. They have to
eat about half as much again as an
ordinary individual. If they feel in
they must go out and come back again
to finish. Each patient is seen two or
three times a day by the doctor. and
the day is mapped out as follows: 80
dress ana douche:S. breakfast: .. walk:
l., lie down; l. dinner; 80, walk or sit
about in the woods; 6 +. NJ. lie down. I,
dinner; $50. bed. The hours rest be
fore each meal is very important. The
walking is to be done very slowly ana
often uphill. The weather is quite dis
regarded. and getting wet through is
a very frequent occurrence-fur the
rainfall is great. Some patients do
not change when they got wet. others
get rheumatism if they 10 not. There
is no advantage in not changing. II is
only fad-and a somewhat dangerous
one. The temperature has t. be taken
four times a day. The doctor directs
the movements of every patient ac-
cording to his temperature and his gen
eral condition. When patient has a
temperature which persists for some
hours above 100 degrees Fahrenheit he
is put to bed, isolated ana Kept there,
slAA't - wen lf'i Alllll lllt tenn llEldt l Ire
comes down. In this way DR. Walther.
with his extraordinarily good tudg-
ment, has managed to cure many cases
that were apparently hopeless 1t is al
most comic to see the change in pa
tientS' appearances as they put on
stones of weight ana become red,
healthy-looking. stout individuals. The
food is plain, but very good and very
nourishing. Milk is drunk by most pa
tients at dinner and supper-as well as
beer and wine if they like them-and a
very great deal of butter is eaten.
The constant slow walking which
makes such a marked difference be
tween the NOrdrach treatment and
other sanatorium treatment, is pre-
scribed, not as Mr.. Gibson says in the
Nineteenth Century, TO exercise the
lungs without exerting them" but to
exercise the heart and every muscle
Of the body. 1t would be better if.
as DR.. Walther insists. the lungs could
be kept at perfect rest. but this can
not pc done, for YOU cannot suspend
the function of respiration, but pro
longed rest in the recumbent position
leads to the heart becoming fat. weak
| and tiabby like all other muscles, and
70 the lungs, therefore, becoming un-
healthy "waterlogged." owing to the
circulation of blood through them be-
ing slow and weak. II is to avoid the
state of weak, flabby heart and sodden
lungs. and slow-actinG. choked-up or
ganS. that DIR. Waithcr wisely watches
his patients and carefully graduates
their exercise until they are put as far
as may be in the position of carefully
trained athletes with every muscle and
every organ healthy and working eff
cientlY, and their blood and all their
other tissues in such a state that thew
are at their point of highest resistance
against microbic infection or toxic in
liucnce. And in that state they are
able to return to their work. and in
| many cases they can do so, although
they are not actually cured. but thov
are so strong that they are not in
f!uenced by their local lung lesion. and
eventually live it down and lose II
provided they lead the same sensible
open-air life that they have led AT
NordraCh.