unfortunates whose fight against tuberculosis is nearly over and
who in desperation have fled to Arizona, hoping that the dry air might
afford relief, is that the lack of nourishing food, inevitable in those
deserts, hastens on the disease, so that the expected benefits from the
dry air are entirely offset. Likewise, in tenement-house districts in
cities, the fight against consumption is practically useless because of
the impossibility of securing for those starved or underfed helpless
ones the nourishing food necessary. In the country, this part of the
treatment ought to be the simplest, and yet one fears that the habit of
eating through nine months of the year only salted and dried foods has
not furnished patients in the country with the kind of nourishment
necessary. Experience indicates that eggs and milk should be the bulwark
on which the patient must depend for food, and in the sanitariums of New
York State it is not uncommon for patients to be stuffed with two dozen
raw eggs every day in addition to other food.

The next important factor is rest, since the effect of tuberculosis is
to break down lung tissue, and for the prevention of this it is
necessary to give the forces of the body every aid in preventing this
destruction. All exercise taken by a tuberculous patient means the
withdrawing of that much blood from the lungs, where is the strategic
point of the disease, to the part of the body being exercised, and one
of the most striking features of sanitarium treatment is the absolute
rest enjoined on the patients. Flat on their backs, day and night for
months, without so much exercise as walking across the room, is the
ordinary treatment, and the effect of disobedience is plainly seen in
the rise in temperature or increase in fever which follows a violation
of these rules. Even when the patients are allowed to sit up, they do
not sit straight, but rest on couches or reclining chairs, so that their
heads are down and their feet up, making the passage of the blood to the
lungs easier. Even where the patient, determined to recover, is not able
to place himself in the hands of a hospital physician, he can adopt this
important method of arresting the disease by strictly avoiding exercise
and exertion of every sort. The Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston
has tuberculosis clinics, where patients who are not far enough advanced
in the disease to require absolute rest are inspected daily, their
condition noted, an