ceives congratulations. Whatever he had been taking now has the credit,—whether what his physician prescribed or hypophosphites, cod-liver oil, balsams, pectorals, expectorants, "compound oxygen," benzoic; when the fact is that the tubercles have softened. As foreign bodies they produced fever and other symptoms; they have been eliminated by coughing and other natural processes. Meanwhile others are forming which give no uneasiness except a slight increase of shortness of breath. When the second softening period comes the patient sinks lower than before; new remedies, of course, are tried, radical change of diet is made, but if death does not end the scene similar apparent recovery takes place. At either of these stages a visit to a grotto, the operations of "faith-healers," or a magnetic belt or pad, might seem to produce a great effect; but decline would occur at the periods of softening, and the patient afterward improve or sink beyond the possibility of recovery, if none of these things had been done.
A fact concerning consumption is known to medical men and stated in works on hygiene, but often disbelieved. That fact is that pulmonary consumption, genuine and unmistakable, often terminates spontaneously in recovery, and frequently yields to hygienic methods. It is the opinion of one of the most celebrated physicians of Europe that for every two cases of death from consumption there is one case that is either indefinitely prolonged, the patient living to be old, or entirely recovering and dying of old age, or of some entirely different disease. It may be asked how such a fact as this can be established. By two modes—one probable, the other conclusive. The probable is where the patient had all the external symptoms of the disease, and examination of the
