The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-09-02
TENT LIFE FOR CONSERVATIVES.
An Experimenter's Notion of How Cure
May BE Effected.
Boston Evening Transcript.

bOSlOH EheHIllS 1IdLSCIIpls
AS soon as the weather will permit and
proper locations can be rhected there will
be pitched near Boston the first of a num-
Der of camps for consumptives. This camp
(and each succeeding camp Will be ike III
will consist of ten piano-box tents, ar
ranged in a circle with an open-air fire in
the center, and surrounded by duck wall
eight feet high Each of these tents will
will sleep there, even through the coolest
weather, with no other protection than
plenty of felt blankets. felt sleeping boots
and two-gallOn jug of hot water.
The tents are made of twelve-ounce duck,
are only seven feet high. with four-foot
walls, boxed in around the bottom a foot
from the ground. They will be lined with
weather paper. The flaps will open towards
the fire. the ten tents making little circle
wall which will surround the whole will be
q single entrance. The people who live
there will wear one heavy suit night and
day. They will each of them take one quick
soapless bath a week, and will eat three
good hearty meals a day, with coffee in the
morning and hot chocolate any time of the
day or night. Their bill of fare will in
clude milk, eggs, vegetables. bread and
butter and meat-chiefiy beef, mutton
pork, broiled on spits before the fire, or
roasted in the embers, or boiled down into
soup.
This open life is expected to cure them of
their disease. The method is the result Of
experiments made last winter in tent
Huntington avenue by a scientist whose
name has not yet been divulged. This gen.
tleman pitched his tent during the coolest
part of a January which was more than
usually cold, and stayed there until the
early spring, engroSSed in his experiments,
but finally seeing patients and announcing
that he wanted as many consumptives as
possible to prove the truth of his theories.
He wants the consumptives still. His
theory has been pretty well tested now, but
he still wants as many cOnsumptives as
will come to him-the worse their condition
the better-to put them in his settlements.
THE life there he said this morning,
quickly fortifieS a mans bodily powers; it
envolutes, then evolutes man back toward
ancestral or wild life. The skin, nails and
hair tougher and thicken; pulmonary ca
tarrh stops; hemorrhageS cease. A civilized
man loses his constituencies; his emotions
change. He becomes insensitive and fear
less. All his energy goes to nutrition; his
powers are concentrated in building and
repair. He falls asleep at twilight and
wakes at dawn, ready to eat. Incidental
disaster affects him little; he changes from
dollhouse plant to an oak. The fear and
panic customary to a crowd of consump-
tives no longer affects him, and thus the
greatest danger of hospitalism is avoided
Baron Larry Nap, chief surgeon and adj
wiser, made this same observation in his
Egyptian and Russian campaigns; that in
cipient consumptives make the best sol
diers. They have Spartan courage, and
army life properly regulated will cure
them. A regiment OF conSumptives would
be no mean enemy"
The camps are merely for the purpose OF
scientific investigation, and if a patient
cannot afford the expenses he will be taken
free The camps will all be near the city
where scientific physicians are within call.