Consumption (disease)

“ Anything that constitutes a tax upon the system beyond its ability to extract an ultimate good therefrom—for we know that, within certain limits, taxing the powers, the mental, physical and emotional, tends to exalt them—or to put it squarely: anything that overtaxes the system in any direction, tends to induce that state or condition commonly recognized as consumption. No greater error can be made than that of considering this disease as primarily affecting the lungs. The lungs are readily affected by disorder of the digestive organs. ”

“ In acute cases, take frequent Turkish baths, to help elimination by way of the skin, and keep that organ active by frequent warm baths and vigorous friction with a moderately coarse towel. Let the diet be plain and moderate, never eating to excess, and drink freely of water, to keep the blood liquid, and practice the habit of breathing deeply, to oxygenate the blood.
CONSUMPTION. Of all diseases, consumption is the most widespread and destructive to human life. Over 3,000,000 people die annually from this disease. ”

“ This disorder, which is supposed often to cause consumption, is rather a disease of indigestion, and is especially apt to attack patients already in consumption, because of their chronically disordered nutritive and respiratory organs. ”

“ The principal causes of consumptive disease are, hereditary predisposition, and improper feeding in infancy. There are besides two diseases incidental to childhood, and one of them almost peculiar to it, namely typhoid fever and measles, which are more apt than any others to develop a tendency to consumption. During convalescence from either of them, therefore, special care is needed.
[Pg 177] In the grown person, consumption almost always attacks the lungs, and this often to the exclusion of other organs. ”

“ I have said formerly, that the three states of consumption do not observe any regular course in succeeding each other. They are not only complicated in some instances, but they often appear and disappear half a dozen times in the course of the disease, according to the influence of the weather, dress, diet, and the passions upon the system. The great secret, therefore, of treating this disease consists in accommodating all the remedies that have been mentioned to the predominance of any of the three different states of the system, as manifested chiefly by the pulse. ”

“ Though consumption is not inherited, as some suppose, lung weaknesses may be transmitted from parents to children. This, together with the fact, now generally recognized, that consumption is contagious, accounts for the frequent appearance of this disease in the same family. Consumption as well as other respiratory affections can in the majority of cases be prevented, and in many cases cured, by an intelligent observation of well-known laws of health. ”

“ Following this direction, and aiming constantly, but comfortably, to maintain the balance between diet and labor—between the food eaten and the needs of the organism for nutriment—one may not only enjoy, as he ought, the pleasures of the table, but, in very many cases, absolutely and largely increase these pleasures, in the aggregate, considering, more especially, his exemption from sickness with its occasional involuntary fasts, and with many, the quite frequent periods of slight, or non-satisfaction, through nausea and lack of appetite arising from an injudicious dietary. ”

“ So long, however, as any hygienist favors even a moderate indulgence in animal foods as a necessity for most people throughout their lives, his followers will take it upon themselves to decide as to what constitutes moderation, just as is the case with coffee, liquor, and tobacco-users, only the former (by reason of their ignorance as to what constitutes health and symptoms of disease) have no such means of recognizing the symptoms of excess, as have the latter. The truth is that “abstinence from all unwholesome practices, only, is easier than temperance.” ”

“ Above all, no mind-pictures104 about eating, eating, eating—unless, the patient is past hope!
THE POSITION IN BED.
As well as when up and about, is a matter of importance to the sick or well. With the sick, the habit of “rounding up” to the disease is every way prejudicial. Consumptives are especially inclined to seek present ease to their ultimate hurt. It should be one of the aims, in “lung difficulties,” to increase the breadth of the chest in order to give more room for the expansion of the lungs ”

“ An ill, poor, and insufficient diet is the mother of many diseases, and especially of consumption: "Whatsoever was the father of a disease, an ill diet was the mother."
The most common exciting causes of consumption are slighted colds, neglected inflammation of the chest, long continuance of influenza, sleeping in damp beds, allowing wet clothes to dry on the body, unhealthy employments—such as needle-grinding, pearl button making etc. ”

“ It is not what we were taught—it emphasizes, nevertheless, what every physician already knows, that, theoretically, consumption is a disease that should respond to treatment. That we have not had greater success with it in the past, must be attributed to our method of treatment. The fact that most of us have had the disease, and have recovered, conclusively demonstrates its curability. Those individuals who fail to recover promptly do not possess the vitality to throw it off spontaneously. ”

“ Consumption is, to a limited extent, an infectious disease. It is spread chiefly by inhaling the expectoration (spit) of patients which has been allowed to become dry and float about the room as dust.
Do not spit except into receptacles, the contents of which are to be destroyed before they become dry. If this simple precaution is taken, there is practically no danger of infection. The breath of consumptive persons is free from infection. ”

“ Of the Nature, Causes, and Symptoms of Consumptions.
I. A Consumption, in general, is a wasting of all the solid parts of the Body, for want of a due Distribution, or Assimilation of the Nutritious Juices.
By some learned Men this is observed to be the Endemical Distemper of England; and indeed our Weekly-Bills at once declare both the Strength of the Disease, and the Weakness of the Medicines wherewith it’s Cure hath been hitherto attempted. ”

“ What is one great cause of Consumption? How may a constitutional tendency to this disease be warded off in youth? Ans. Besides plenty of fresh air and exercise, care should be taken in the diet. Rich pastry, unripe fruit, salted meat, and acid drinks should be avoided, and a certain quantity of fat should be eaten at each meal.—BENNETT. What is asphyxia? ”

“ Connected with this subject, viz., the treatment of consumption, there is probably much more of quackery than in any other department of disease which could possibly be mentioned. One individual who makes pretensions to cure, in this formidable disease, and who has written and spoken very largely on the subject, heralds his own practice with the following proclamation: "Five thousand persons cured of consumption in one year, by following the directions of this work." ”

“ Do not suppose that in this description I have been painting too dark a picture, or that children who die thus have been exceptionally weak, and so under the acknowledged difficulties of hand-feeding at length became consumptive. They do not die of consumption, and in a large number of instances their bodies show no trace of consumptive disease, but present appearances characteristic of this condition of starvation, and of this only. ”

“ Consumption is the most fatal disease which they encounter; this runs its course with singular speed after being once contracted. All attempts of the physicians are in vain; the patient, falling into a condition of hopeless indifference, soon passes away. ”

“ Consumptive Disease of the Bowels.—Consumptive disease sometimes invades the whole system from the very first, while in other instances it attacks from the outset the organs of digestion, and continues throughout to affect them chiefly, and loss of flesh is then one of its earliest symptoms. In instances where there is a strong family predisposition to the disease, consumption of the bowels or mesenteric disease, or disease of the glands of the bowels, all three popular names for the affection, sometimes shows itself at the time of weaning. ”

“ Thus, when a consumption proceeds from, the scrophula or king’s evil, from the scurvy, the asthma, the venereal disease, &c. a due attention must be paid to the malady from whence it arises, and the regimen and medicine directed accordingly.
When excessive evacuations of any kind occasion a consumption, they must not only be restrained, but the patient’s strength must be restored by gentle exercise, nourishing diet, and generous cordials. Young and delicate mothers often fall into consumptions, by giving suck too long. ”

“ We frequently hear of patients in confirmed consumption being sent to Mentone, to Madeira, and to other foreign parts. Can anything be more cruel or absurd? If there be any disease that requires the comforts of home—and truly may an Englishman’s dwelling be called home!—and good nursing more than another, it is consumption.
361. What is the death-rate of Consumption in England? At what age does Consumption most frequently occur? Are girls more liable to it than boys? What are the symptoms of this disease? ”

“ Yet the number of persons who die prematurely from consumption every year greatly exceeds the deaths from yellow fever or any similar disease when it occurs, and the suffering entailed by consumption is very much greater. ”

“ Consumption is a disease which is not entirely confined to the lungs. It is often a depraved condition of the system, particularly the blood. There is a “consumption of the blood,” and a variety of morbid phenomena, which cannot be expressed in the single word consumption. It not unusually results in a scrofulous predisposition. An hereditary predisposition may or may not be the cause. ”

“ Can a return to nature, then, instantaneously eradicate predispositions that have been slowly taking root in the silence of innumerable ages?—Indubitably not. All that I contend for is, that from the moment of the relinquishing all unnatural habits no new disease is generated; and that the predisposition to hereditary maladies gradually perishes, for want of its accustomed supply. In cases of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. ”

“ From these and many other tests, it has been proved that consumption is not inherited, and that the reason the child of the consumptive so often has consumption is because he lives with people having the disease. ”

“ But this solid residue, favored by the internal temperature, begins to ferment, after a time, and causes more or less irritation and congestion of the mucous lining of the stomach, which gives rise to the sensation popularly called “hunger”; and thus every few hours, and when the patient impatiently202 awaits the call to dinner and thinks himself most in need of food, he is, in fact, in the very worst condition to take it. Ninety-five persons in every hundred have this disease (for it is nothing less than chronic dyspepsia) throughout life. ”

“ In order then to avoid consumption—and this is particularly of importance for those in whose family there is a predisposition to the disease—the individual should live soberly, should try at all times to obtain a reasonable amount of good food, should sleep a sufficient number of hours, and should be clothed properly, particularly in the winter. ”

“ The diseases which are hard to cure in neighbourhoods such as those to which I have referred above are catarrh, hoarseness, coughs, pleurisy, consumption, spitting of blood, and all others that are cured not by lowering the system but by building it up. They are hard to cure, first, because they are originally due to chills; secondly, because the patient's system being already exhausted by disease, the air there, which is in constant agitation owing to winds and therefore deteriorated, takes all the sap of life out of their diseased bodies and leaves them more meagre every day. ”

“ Functional disease and its ultimate result, functionally-caused organic disease, are the consequences of digestion impaired by incorrect methods in feeding, by improper selection of food, and by excess supply. ”

“ These agencies, whether circulating liquids or cells or corpuscles, are most active in the healthy body, and anything that tends to reduce the general health, such as exposure, overexertion, imperfect nourishment, overeating or overdrinking, or lack of sleep, tends to diminish their activity and so makes the individual more susceptible to disease. ”

“ Now as we need not, cannot feed the brain in time of sickness, what can we feed? In all diseases in which there are a high pulse and temperature, pain or discomfort, aversion to food, a foul, dry mouth and tongue, thirst, etc., wasting of the body goes on, no matter what the feeding, until a clean, moist tongue and mouth and hunger mark the close of the disease, when food can be taken with relish and digested. ”

“ Of recent years many diseases have enormously increased, some even seem to be new. Digestive disturbances, dental caries, appendicitis, gout, rheumatism, diabetes, nervous complaints, heart disease, baldness and a host of other diseases are due, in a great measure, to abuse of food. ”

“ Whatever thus makes living substance is nourishment; whatever fails to do so is not. If food be taken, and even digested, without being thus assimilated, it becomes an injury to a patient instead of a help. In cases of fever, inflammatory disease, or wasting sores, much rich food feeds the fire. ”