CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!--UNIVERSAL REIGN.--SIGNS OF HIS
APPROACH.--WARNINGS.--BAD POSITIONS.--SCHOOL-HOUSES.--ENGLISH
THEORY.--PREVENTIVES.--AIR AND SUNSHINE.--SCROFULA.--A JOLLY FAT
GRANDMOTHER.--"WASP WAISTS."--CHANGE OF CLIMATE.--"TOO LATE!"--WHAT TO
AVOID.--HUMBUGS.--COD-LIVER OIL.--STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.--A
MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.--SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.--SIT AND LIE
STRAIGHT.--FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.--A YANKEE DISEASE.--CATARRH AND
COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.--"GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR."--OTHER THINGS
TO AVOID.--A TENDER POINT.
Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common
acceptation of the term consumption. _Phthisis_ is from the Greek, meaning
_to consume_. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the
history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of
human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail
humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption;
in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England,
the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling!
One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the
prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.
Consumption is a relentless monster, and insidious in his approaches. He
spares not the high or the low. Oftener known in the hovel, he fails not
to visit dwellers in palaces. He paints the cheek of the infant, youth,
maiden, the middle-aged, and the aged with the false glow of health. The
delicate and beautiful are his common subjects.