ed
to cure for the pleasure of curing--not for the emolument. In short, he
seemed to have no regard to the emolument--not the slightest, and to be
as nearly disinterested as usually falls to the human lot.

But did he cure? you will perhaps inquire. Yes, if _anybody_ cures.
Persons came under his care who had been discharged by other
physicians--both allopathic and homoeopathic--as incurable; and who
yet, in a reasonable time, regained their health. They followed our
directions, obeyed the laws of health, and recovered. You may call it
what you please--either cure or spontaneous recovery. Miracle, I am
quite sure, it was not.

What, then, were the agencies employed in the air-cure? My friend
believed that the judicious application of pure air, in as concentrated,
and, therefore, as cool a state as possible, particularly to the
internal surface of the lungs, was more important than every other
agency, and even more important than all others. But then he did not
forget the skin. He had his air bath, as well as his deep breathings; it
was as frequently used, and was, doubtless, as efficacious.

He also placed great reliance on good food and drink. Animal food he
rejected, and condiments. I have neither known nor read of any
vegetarian, of Britain or America, who carried his dietetic
peculiarities to what would, by most, be regarded as an extreme, more
than he. And yet his patients, with few exceptions, submitted to it with
a much better grace than I had expected. Some of them, it is true, took
advantage of his absence or their own, and made a little infringement
upon the rigidity of his prescriptions, but these were exceptions to the
general rule; and I believe the transgressors themselves regretted it in
the end--fully satisfied that every indulgence was but a postponement of
the hour of their discharge.

One thing was permanently regarded as ultra. He did not believe in
breakfasting; and therefore kept every patient, who wished to come under
his most thorough treatment, from the use of food till about the middle
of the day. This permitted of but two meals a day, which, however, is
one more than has sometimes been recommended by O. S. Fowler, the
phrenologist, and even by a few others.

The main error, however, of this air-cure practice,--if error there was
in it,--consisted in the idea of its applicability to everybody, in
every circumstance. For though it may be true that as large a proportion
of inveterate cases