Consumption : how to prevent it, and how to cure it / By James C. Jackson.
- Jackson, James C., 1811-1895.
- Date:
- 1862
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Consumption : how to prevent it, and how to cure it / By James C. Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![restless, and miserable, when deprived of it. If they continue to indulge in it, they lose their healthy appearance ; and, although they may not evince any severe or specific disease, the nervous system, and especially the mental powers, are weakened by it, and the persons become prematurely aged and short-lived. My readers can see, then, that it is not by taking poisons, whether administered by physicians or under popular usage, t]iat the subject of pulmonary or mesenteric consumption can hope to be cured; nor is it by taking patent-medicines, nor by medicated inhalations, nor by using stimulating beverages, nor by eating scrofulous flesh-meats, nor by using mineral waters, nor by being shut up in the house. Invalids have no more fatal habit than that of shutting themselves up in houses, and especi- ally in close rooms. In order to have healthy conditions of the nervous system as well as a healthy state of blood, life in the open air is absolutely necessary. The strongest man immediately begins to fail in the direction of vigor, actual strength, and powers of endurance, when circumstances force him to dwell within shady walls, and to breathe the air which they contain : for, in the first place, it is very difficult indeed to get thorough and, complete ventilation of any room which one may inhabit; and great pains must be taken, or only partial success is had. We have accustomed ourselves, as I have said in a previous chapter, to consider the benefits of pure air, and the injurious effects of impure air, as consisting mainly in the effects which are produced on the blood; but the larger my experience, and the wider my observation of the causes of disease, and of the difficulties that lie in the way of overcoming them, especially diseases of the lungs, stomach, and brain, I am strengthened in the belief, that the most serious ill effects from the use of impure air are to be seen in debility of the cerebro-nervous system. It is nearly always the case, that persons who are suffering under any form of consumption, be it incipient or in more advanced stages, show nervous derangement, eithfer of the brain, the organic nervous system, or both, previous to the appearance of their consumptive disease. If it be true, then, that atmospheric air in its purity is necessary to the maintenance of health of the nervous structure,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21018947_0405.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
