On diseases of the lungs and air-passages : their pathology, physical diagnosis, symptoms and treatment / by Henry William Fuller.

  • Fuller, Henry William, 1820-1873.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On diseases of the lungs and air-passages : their pathology, physical diagnosis, symptoms and treatment / by Henry William Fuller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    498/596 (page 480)
    the general powers of the system, and improving the functions of assimilation and nutrition, the tubercular cachexia may be removed, the formation of tubercle prevented, and its further development arrested. The question therefore arises—How is this desirable result to be brought about ? Many persons imagine that warmtli is the panacea which will effect our object, if the patient be placed under otherwise favourable hygienic circumstances. The first and most effectual prophylactic/5 says one of our most esteemed authorities, is residence in a warm climate. Now, here at once I find myself at issue with the opinions of many excellent and learned physicians, and no less so with popular prejudice. From our cradle to our grave we are taught to regard cold as an un- mitigated evil; and as warmth is intimately mixed up in our minds with the notion of comfort, and that again with everything which is conducive to our bodily well-being, the recommendation to seek a warmer and more genial climate is quite in keeping with our inbred feelings, and is regarded as consistent with sound sense and the exercise of common prudence. But, before adopting this view, let us look more closely than is ordinarily done into certain facts of every-day life, and into others which have been elicited by recent statistical inquiry. Nothing is more certain than that many persons are conscious of enjoying better health and greater vigour in winter than in summer; the cold seems to brace them and do them good, they breathe in it more freely and are equal to more exertion, their digestive organs are more active, and they are enabled to take many articles of diet which disagree with them and render them bilious in the warmer and more enervating weather of summer. There are others, and possibly they form a majority, in whom cold produces a precisely opposite effect; it pinches and prostrates them, lowers the whole tone of their system, interferes with their digestion, and disturbs the regular course of their other functions. The absurdity of subjecting these two classes of persons to the same regulations in respect to temperature and climate is too obvious to be insisted on, and yet that practice is almost uni- versal ! To take another class of facts. The result of careful observa- tion has been to show that, although many consumptive patients