Note 10 — LIFE IN A TUB.1

Now, if it be conceded that the main cause of consumption, tracing the disease back to its first cause, is to be found in an insufficient supply of oxygen to the system (which certainly the success attendant on the treatment based upon this theory would lead one to suppose), we would beg of our readers seriously to ask themselves how can consumption be cured by drugging, and how can the much required oxygen be supplied to the blood by any proceeding of the kind? We think that the results of such a system afford a conclusive answer to this question; failure marking its course wherever it has been tried. Again, as regards the fashionable remedy of going abroad,10 how are we likely to get more oxygen supplied to our blood by going abroad than by staying at home? What magic is there in the process? A mild climate may certainly prove less irritating than its native air to a diseased and disordered lung, and the suffering and uneasiness consequent on the irritation may be thereby allayed, but we are not a whit nearer being cured by this device, nor have we, in so doing, properly gone to work to remove the main spring and cause of the disease.