Note 11 — LIFE IN A TUB.1

Carrying out these principles, in curing consumption, Dr. Barter would use all means to place the system in a favourable condition to receive a full supply of oxygen, first, by a direct inhalation of a mixture of oxygen and atmospheric air through the lungs; secondly, by enjoining a large amount of active exercise in the open air, when practicable, and sleeping at night with open windows; and thirdly, by inducing a healthy action of the skin,11 and consequent supply, through it, of oxygen to the blood, by the intervention of the Turkish bath. This mode of treatment has, we believe, proved most successful, whilst the old mode of treatment, of which it is the very antipodes, viz., keeping the patient in a heated and impure atmosphere, swathing him with flannels,12 dosing him with prussic acid, and applying a respirator to the mouth, has proved most unsuccessful and fatal. How it could ever have entered into the brain of a physician to recommend the use of a respirator, as a cure for consumption, we are at a loss to imagine, as a more ingenious mode of shutting out the pure atmosphere, essential to our existence, and exchanging it for one loaded with carbonic acid (thus aggravating the disease which it seeks to cure), could not possibly be devised. Man, in a state of health, requires pure air as a condition of his existence; and can it be supposed that, in a state of disease, he will be able, more successfully, to resist the effects of poison on his system than when in a state of health? Will he, in a state of disease, be strengthened and improved by the loss of that, on a due supply of which, when well, the continuance of his health and strength would depend? Does the experience of our readers furnish them with a single case of recovery from consumption caused by the use of a respirator, or does it not, on the contrary, furnish them, in every case where it has been resorted to, with instances of the bad effects attendant upon its use?