from untimely death the assembled children of poverty, science learns, as it could in no other way do, methods which enable it to rescue the children of wealth.

"The more hopeful character of the most modern science had been in great part anticipated by the brave intellect of Andrew Combe. Before his time, it was too generally, if not universally assumed, that the symptoms of Consumption were a death-warrant; he proclaimed the reverse truth, and established it. He became in his own person the teacher and exemplar, both to physician and patient; and in his compact popular volume and regimen, he has recorded, in a form accessible to all, the conclusions of his practical experience. He did away many of the old coddling notions, which helped to kill the patient by stifling the pores of the skin, filling the lungs with bad air, softening the muscular system with inaction, and deadening the vital functions; a service scarcely more useful in reconciling the patient to the restorative influences of nature, than in returning hope to the afflicted relatives, and in showing what might be done by common sense and diligence. At an early age, Andrew Combe was found to be in a Consumption -words which were formerly accepted as a death-warrant, in submission to which the awed patient duly laid down and died; Andrew Combe lived more than twenty years longer, a life of activity, usefulness, and temperate enjoyment."

In 1841, Sir James Clark, with Dr. James Cox, examined the lungs of Dr. Andrew Combe, whom all considered in the last stages of Consumption. Sir James said to his brother, "I am grieved indeed to find that the lungs on one side are affected to a considerable extent; this examination has given me great distress, more than

I ever suffered from the examination of a patient, because it gives me the painful conviction that his life, in all human probability, cannot be long preserved; I consider him a great benefactor to his race, and were he spared a few years longer he would do still more to promote the welfare of mankind. I am anxious to make you fully aware that he might die before the end of the winter; therefore I give up all idea of recommending him to go abroad." Dr. Combe himself said in October, “I am now told it is scarcely expected I shall survive the winter, or go much beyond it."

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And yet without taking any medicine, except to regulate his general system, and by using all the means in his power, and which his extensive medical knowledge so well qualified him to employ, he survived the winter and died six years afterwards of diarrhoea in connection with ship fever, and on examining his lungs, they were found not worse than usual, and that his death was to be ascribed solely to disease of the bowels." And yet, in 1831, sixteen years before his death, he had lost his health, and considered himself so much of an invalid, that with Spurzheim's advice, he went to spend the winter in Italy, saying of himself, "Taking the whole aspect of the case, it would be difficult to find any characteristic symptom of phthisis wanting."

I give space to this narrative the more willingly, in the hope that it may afford rational ground for encouragement to the frail and feeble, as to what may be expected in the way of prolonging life for many years in reasonable comfort, by a patient and judicious attention to symptoms as they present themselves; not by the constant taking of medicine, for they who are always swallowing drops, or pills, or tonics, are always sick,

but by a wise conduct as to the habits of life, using medicine only as an occasional, indispensable aid, for this, it is invaluable. And for further encouragement, I take occasion here to state in reference to

FRAIL AND FEEBLE PERSONS,

that they often outlive by half a life-time the robust and the strong, because they feel compelled to take care of themselves, that is, to observe the causes of all their illfeelings, and habitually and strenuously avoid them. Our climate is changeable, and in proportion unhealthful. In New York City, for example, during one week in December, in which the thermometer ranged from five degrees above Zero to fifty-five, there were forty-one deaths from inflammation of the lungs, while the ordinary number is about fifteen. The healthy disregard these changes to a great extent, and perish within a few days. The feeble are more sensitive to these changes; they increase their clothing and their bedding with the cold, and with equal care diminish both, with the amount eaten, as the weather grows warmer, and thus, long outlive their hardier neighbors. These same precautions, with others, must all observe, THROUGH LIFE, who have been cured of an affection of the throat or lungs. Let this never be forgotten, for the oftener you are re-attacked, the less recuperative energy is there in the system, and the less efficient will be the remedial means which once cured you, unless by months of continued attention and wise observances, you give the parts a power and a strength they never had before. This can be done in many cases.

But once cured, avoid the causes which first injured you. If you put your hand in the fire, you may restore

it, but however magical may be the remedy, that hand will be burned as often as it is placed in the fire, without any disparagement of the virtues of the restorative. No cure of your throat or lungs will render you invulnerable. What caused the disease in the first instance will continue to cause it as long as you are exposed to it. No promise is given you of permanence of cure longer than you are careful of your health. The safer plan by far will be, to consider yourself peculiarly liable to the disease which once annoyed you, and make proportionate endeavors to guard yourself habitually against its advances. All assurances that any mode of cure will afford you a guarantee against subsequent attacks, are deceptive. No medicine that any man can take in health will protect him from disease. There is no greater falsity than this, that if you are well, a particular remedy, or drink, or medicine, will fortify the system against any specified disease, whether cholera, yellow fever, or any other malady. So far from this being so, it is precisely the reverse. Doubly so; you are thrown off your guard, and in addition you make the body more liable to the prevalent malady by poisoning the blood; for whatever is not wholesome food, is a poison to the system, pure water excepted. Nothing, therefore, will protect a healthy man from disease but a rational attention to diet, exercise, cleanliness, and a quiet mind; all else will but the more predispose him to it. But when once diseased and then cured, these things are not sufficient to keep him well; he must avoid what first made him an invalid, otherwise permanent health is not possible, but a speedy relapse and death are inevitable, as to Throat-Ail, Bronchitis, and Consumption.

The opinion as to the curable nature of consumption

of the lungs has gained extensively within the last few years among medical writers of repute, so that a respectable medical journal can scarcely be opened without there being found in it statements more or less favorable to its curability, by which I desire to be understood always, in these pages, merely an indefinite arrest of the disease in its last stages, but in its first stages, a thorough and permanent cure.

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Dr. John A. Swett, while he was physician to the New York Hospital, and member of the New York Pathological Society, has, in an elegantly executed octavo volume of six hundred pages, published in 1852, on Diseases of the Chest," written much that is new, truthful and valuable. The book should make a part of the library of every medical scholar. Although in general he writes discouragingly as to the cure of consumption, yet in view of incontrovertible facts presented, he closes all that he has said on the subject, as follows:

"Thus, by carefully watching the symptoms, by avoiding the causes of irritability and irritation, opposing their progress by suitable remedies, life will certainly be prolonged, and sometimes a more or less complete recovery will reward a judicious exercise of medical skill." Again, he says, "The cicatrization of a tubercular abscess is NOT A very rare occurrence."

"Another change much more frequently noticed, must equally be regarded as a curative process-exhibiting one of the methods which nature employs to cure the disease."

Expectoration of chalky secretions indicates a curative effort."

"Abnormal circulation and cough are the last symptoms which disappear in cases that recover.'