Climate and consumption / by S. D. Bird.

  • Bird, S. D. (Samuel Dougan)
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Climate and consumption / by S. D. Bird. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    them that every minute spent under a roof of any kind is.time lost in their treatment, and that they should eat, drink, talk, drive, ride, and, if need be, sleep in the pure, dry bracing air. The results are sometimes miraculous. I remember some years ago sending a poor fellow up to the Darling, with one side collapsed from old empyema, softening tubercle in the other lung, and a general haggardness of look that would have scared an undertaker. The following spring, a brown bushman tied a jaded horse at my door, having galloped some thirty miles alongside Cobb's coach, in which was a sick friend whom he was bringing to consult me. The brown bushman was my quondam moribund, hale hearty and active, his collapsed side three inches larger, and his tubercles dried up ! In summer, the bracing southerly breezes of the coast, or the highlands of Gipps Land or Tasmania; in spring and autumn, the neighbourhood of Melbourne. Such variety cannot be had in Europe without traversing the whole length of the continent, three or four times our Australian distances, and we have steamers and rail- roads as well as other people. That these colonies have for many years held a high reputation for salubrity, and as a suitable residence for consumptives from Europe, and that this reputation is well-founded, is evident from the fact that all the leading physicians in the home country continue to send patients hither in increasing numbers, as the means of com- munication are facilitated, which they certainly would cease to do did they not find favourable results from so doing. Besides this, we have our own evidence as eye-witnesses of the fact, and the most remarkable figures quoted of the comparative mortality in penal institutions. How then stands the balance of evidence—in the one scale we find such names as Stokes, Graves, Walshe, Cotton, Williams, Hyde Salter, Andrew Clark, Begbie, Dobell, Hamilton Roe, Barlow, Peacock, Quain, Sibson, Sieveking, Tanner, Watson, and a string of other well-known physicians long enough to fill this page, backed up by our own experience; in the other scale we have a party by the name of ' Thomson !' Oh, monstrous ; but one half- penny-worth of suburban celebrity to this intolerable deal of talent! Mr. President and gentlemen,—We need hardly waste yourti me by waiting to consider which scale up-flies and kicks the beam. A discussion followed. Dr. Bird in reply, admitted that he felt very strongly on the subject of his paper. Before leaving England, eight years ago, he had been assured by some of the highest authorities in London that his chances of living more than a few months were very small indeed. He came to this colony as a last resource, having tried the effect of change to various European climates without any result. Kecovering so rapidly and completely as he had done after a few weeks' residence here,^ contrary to his own and every one else's expectation, and remaining in excellent health till now, he was justified in attributing his recovery to climatic influences alone. Seeing the impossibility of recording the results of large numbers of cases in private practice, he