are not the places for a body worn away by disease, and wasted by long nights of incessant cough or drenching night sweats, cold and clammy as the grave; nor for a mind made timid by constant pain, and weakened by its own incessant and restless workings. If any man in the wide world needs them, it is the consumptive, who should have around him every comfort, every convenience, every facility which unbounded wealth or undying affection can procure. The light step, the soft whisper, the affectionate inquiry, the cheerful voice, the friendly smile, the tireless watching, and the sleepless eye-all these, and a thousand other nameless attentions, he needs, and needs them every day and every hour. To leave home for any length of time is advice which ought never to be given in a case of decided consumption; it is not applicable in any stage of actual consumptive disease, and an observant practitioner will never give it. Voyages at sea, and locations on the seashore or lake coasts, are unsuitable, pernicious, and deadly in their ultimate effects.

I wish it could be as deeply felt as it is strictly true, throughout this broad continent, in every mansion of its merchant princes, in every fisherman's hut and squatter's cabin, that the permanent arrest of consumptive disease in its latter stages and its effectual eradication when only in its first beginnings, is to be accomplished by one and the same system of means, and which no internal medicine hitherto known to man has ever yet been able singly to accomplish.

In the treatment of any case purely consumptive, two things only are needed, and they are needed always, and under all circumstances:

A greater consumption of pure, fresh, cool air.

A greater digestion of nutricious food.

A man must have more air for his lungs, and more flesh for his body. A consumptive is always short of breath and deficient in flesh. No medicine can ever give air to the lungs, nor can it impart nutriment to the system. It is the pure air which the lungs receive which purifies the blood, and it is plain, substantial food introduced into the stomach which gives nutriment and strength and flesh to the system. My practice, therefore, in simple consumptive disease is, to force the lungs to consume a larger and larger quantity of pure, fresh, cool air every day, and to cause the digestive apparatus to derive from the food a greater and greater amount of nutriment; hence, as my patients are getting well, they walk faster, run farther without fatigue, eat more food, digest it better, and consequently increase in flesh, and while this is going on, the cough, in all curable cases, gradually and spontaneously disappears, without doing anything for it; it disappears because it is eradicated, and not because it is smothered up by balsams, drops, syrups, and all the long catalogue of life-destroying poisons, which are sold under the name of patent medicines, by the unsuspecting in their credulity, or by the unprincipled, in their wilful recklessness of human life.

One of the greatest difficulties in the successful treatment of Consumption is, that the stomach and bowels are deranged; the appetite may be moderately good, and the bowels for the most part regular, yet for all that, they are not in a condition sufficiently healthful to impart to the system the nutriment which the food contains, but which they are not able to eliminate; hence, the universal complaint, what I eat does not seem to strengthen me any; but this very condition is always and

inevitably aggravated by every dose of patent medicine swallowed for coughs and the like; because every one of them, without any exception, as every respectable physician knows, and every honest, intelligent druggist will acknowledge, has more or less opium in some form or other, and this is impossible to be taken, even a single time, without having a tendency to make the liver torpid, to derange the stomach, and to constipate the bowels.

I do not wish it to be understood that I give no internal medicine under any circumstances, nor that I undervalue its remedial efficacy, but simply that it ought not to be taken except by the advice of an experienced physician, and not on the responsibility of the patient or some more ignorant adviser.

The best physicians in the land, with the experience and skill of a quarter of a century, but too often fail to conduct a case of common consumption of the lungs to a favorable and successful termination. I must say that any unprofessional man who could be tempted to tinker with his constitution, from any knowledge which he could gain from any source in a month or in a much longer period, when he would not be willing, without special instruction, to attempt the mending of an old shoe, such a man, to say the least of it, runs a fearful risk.

DISEASES OF THE THROAT.

I here confine my attention to the one disease called variously Chronic Laryngitis, Clergyman's Sore Throat; Throat-Ail. There are two forms of it: one, coming on in the course of a night, ending in restoration or death in a few days or hours sometimes, is called Acute Laryngitis. By this disease, then known little of, Washington

was attacked on Friday night, and died Saturday night, in consequence of being out on his farm during Friday, a cold, raw, drizly day in December, at Mount Vernon. The account given is as follows:

"Some time on the night of Friday, December 13, 1799, General Washington, having been exposed to rain on the previous day, was attacked with an inflammatory affection of the upper part of the windpipe. The disease commenced with a violent ague, accompanied with some pain in the upper and lower part of the throat, a sense of stricture in the same part, a cough and a difficult rather than a painful breathing deglutition, which were soon succeeded by fever and a quick and laborious respiration. The necessity of blood-letting suggesting itself to the General, he procured a bleeder in the neighborhood, who took from his arm in the night twelve or fourteen ounces of blood. He could not, by any means, be prevailed on by the family physician to send for the attending physician till the following morning, who arrived at Mount Vernon about eleven o'clock on Saturday. Discovering the case to be highly alarming, and foreseeing the fatal tendency of the disease, two consulting physicians were immediately sent for, who arrived, one at half after three, and the other at four o'clock in the afternoon. In the mean time were employed two pretty copious bleedings; a blister was applied to the part affected, two moderate doses of calomel were given, and an injection was administered, which operated on the lower intestines; but all without any perceptible advantage, the respiration becoming still more difficult and distressing. Upon the arrival of the first of the consulting physicians, it was agreed, as there were yet no signs of accumulation in the bronchial vessels of the lungs, to

try the result of another bleeding, when about thirtytwo ounces of blood were drawn without the smallest. apparent alleviation of the disease. Vapors of vinegar and water were frequently inhaled, ten grains of calomel were given, succeeded by repeated doses of tartar emetic, amounting in all to five or six grains, with no other effect than a copious discharge from the bowels. The powers of life seemed now manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder. Blisters were applied to the extremities, together with a cataplasm of bran and vinegar to the throat. Speaking, which was painful from the beginning, now became almost impracticable. Respiration grew more and more contracted and imperfect, till half after eleven on Saturday night, when he expired without a struggle, retaining the full possession of his intellect.

"He was fully impressed at the beginning of his complaint, as well as through every succeeding stage of it, that its conclusion would be mortal; submitting to the several exertions which were made for his recovery, rather as a duty, than from any expectation of their efficiency. He considered the operation of death, upon his system as coeval with the disease; and several hours before his death, after repeated efforts to be understood, succeeded in expressing his desire that he might be permitted to die without further interruption.

"During the short period of his illness he economized his time in the arrangement of such few concerns as required his attention, with the utmost serenity; and anticipated his approaching dissolution with every demonstration of that equanimity for which his whole life had been so uniformly conspicuous.

"This account is dated Alexandria, Virginia, Decem