Open-air travel as a curer and preventer of consumption : as seen in the history of a New England family / by Henry I. Bowditch.

  • Bowditch, Henry I. (Henry Ingersoll), 1808-1892.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Open-air travel as a curer and preventer of consumption : as seen in the history of a New England family / by Henry I. Bowditch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    OPEN-AIR TR VENTER AND PRE- lON, As Seen in the History of a New England Family. By henry I. BOWDITCH, M D., OF BOSTON, MASS. For my own part, I intend to hunt twice a week during my stay with Sir Roger; and I shall prescribe the moderate vise of this exercise to all my country friends as the best kind of physic for mending a bad and preserving a good one.—Sir Roger de Coverley, chapter xiii. p. loi, Goldschmidt, Edinburgh, 1889. It is a curious coincidence that, at the same meet- ing of the Climatological Association, the President should give you some information gleaned from my recorded cases as to the connection of pleurisy with phthisis, and I should present the history of my father, cured, as I believe, of severe phthisical symp- toms by a journey in an open chaise, and by per- sistent daily walking of from five to six miles during the rest of his life. In connection with this I shall endeavor to show that, by the same persistent open- air treatment of his children during their periods of growth, he was able to prevent the occurrence of the same disease in a large number of his descend- ants, who, in consequence of himself and his wife being tuberculous, and also first cousins, must have been very strongly predisposed to it.^ ' I am well aware that, since the brilliant discovery by Koch of the bacillus tuberculosis, some writers deny that phthisis can be inherited. But surely this opinion I cannot think true. All my medical experience is directly against it. Moreover, we all admit that a certain deterioration of the vital power of the whole, or an abrasion of a part of the body, is necessary for the life and propa- gation of the bacillus and consequent production of tubercular phthisis. Hence, as far as active out-of-door life tends to the pro- duction of perfect health in a person or a family, it would seem, il priori, that the course pursued by my father, which undoubtedly was of such infinite service in his own case toward the cure of