among
the elements, even in the mildest and most favorable of climates.

He must be fed upon the most abundant and nutritious of foods, even the
simplest being milk of a richness which is given by no kind of wild
cattle, and which, indeed, only the most carefully bred and highly
civilized strains of domestic cattle are capable of producing; eggs such
as are laid by no wild bird or by any but the most highly specialized
of domestic poultry at the season of the year when they are most
required; steaks and chops, hams and sides of bacon, sugar and fruits
and nuts, which simply _are not produced anywhere outside of
civilization_, and often only in the most intelligent and progressive
sections of civilized communities.

Put him upon even the average diet of many people in this progressive
and highly civilized United States the year round,--with its thin milk,
its pulpy, half-sour butter, its tough meat, its half-rancid pickled
pork, its short three months of really fresh vegetables and good fruit,
and six months of eternal cabbage, potatoes, dried apples, and
prunes,--and he will fail to build up the vigor necessary to fight the
disease, even in the purest and best of air.

The saddest and most pitiful tragedies which the consumptive
health-resort physician can relate are those of wretched
sufferers,--even in a comparatively early stage of the disease,--whose
misguided but well-meaning friends have raised money enough to pay their
fare out to Colorado, California, Arizona, or New Mexico, and expect
them to get work on a ranch, so as to earn their living and take the
open-air treatment at the same time.

Three things are absolutely necessary for a reasonable prospect of cure
of consumption. One is, abundance of fresh air, day and night. Another,
abundance of the best quality of food. And the third, absolute--indeed,
enforced--rest during the period of fever. Let any one of these be
lacking, and your patient will die just as certainly as if all three
were. _Not one in five_ of those who go out to climates with even a high
reputation as health-resorts--expecting to earn their own living or to
"rough it" in shacks or tents on three or four dollars a week, doing
their own cooking and taking care of themselves--recovers. They have a
four-to-one chance of recovery in _any_ climate in which they can obtain
these three simple requisites, and a four-to-one chance of dying in any
climate in which any one of these is lacking.

Ins