"Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in
the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how
speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come
back and assure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him."
She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her
mind,--
"Put a plant into his room--plant into Johnny's room."
The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had
died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.
It is a daily occurrence for physicians to see patients who are dying by
inches from the above cause; nor are they the low foreigners alone, but,
like my stoical one hundred and eighty pounder, of American birth, and
without excuse for their ignorance.
Do not sleep or live in apartments unventilated, or where the life-giving
sunshine does not penetrate during some portion of the day. It is living a
lingering death. If the patient is scrofulous, let him or her employ such
remedies as are known to remove the predisposition, or seek aid from some
physician who has cured scrofula. The regular practitioner seldom desires
such cases. One who has devoted much time to scrofula and chronic diseases
should be preferred. I think chronic practice should become a separate
branch in medicine as much as surgery is fast becoming. Take the disease
in season. Do not neglect colds, coughs, and catarrh.
Persons of a low state of blood, who are weak and debilitated, should wear
flannels the year round--thinner in summer than in winter; keep the feet
dry--avoid "wafer soles,"--and the body clean, but beware of what Artemus
Ward termed "too much baths." Employ soap and a small quantity of water,
with a plenty of dry rubbing, till you get a healthy circulation to the
surface.
Mothers, see to the solitary and other habits of your daughters. Fathers,
instruct your sons in the laws of nature, and of their bodies. Do you
understand?
See our youth swept off by the thousands annually, for want of proper care
and instruction!...