p. 13 | Why Consumption Is Not Cured

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 25, 1912

Why Consumption Is Not Cured

In the spring of the year, Mr. Brown moved into a house in another part of the town from that where he had always lived. By autumn he had contracted tuberculosis. It was learned later that several different families which had occupied this same house in succession, had lost, in turn, several members from tuberculosis. No attempt had ever been made to disinfect the house.

Mr. Brown went at once into the country, pitched his tent on a certain spot, and never made any change from that one spot until his death. Note that fact. As a result, the soil over which he slept night after night became saturated with the accumulated germs which he expelled in coughing, so that he was continually, at night, rebreathing into his system the very “seeds” which caused the disease. He was repoisoning himself nightly, and didn’t know it. His system would have been able to throw off the original germ poison which it contracted, but it was not strong enough to withstand a new dose of the poison every night. Had he daily changed the location of his tent, he could have slept each night in an atmosphere practically germ-free.

There is a lesson in this. The open-air treatment is all right, but it must be

carried out by right methods. All early cases of consumption that have failed to recover by outdoor treatment must lay the blame to faulty treatment. Mr. Jones, who went into the country and recovered, changed his location every day, and in doing so, he avoided Mr. Brown’s fatal mistake.

How about Smith? This case is of the greatest importance. He recovered his health in the country, and returned to his home feeling fine—back to what?—To the very same plague-ridden room in which he had first contracted the disease,—a room reeking with tubercular germ-life, which had been occupied, it was learned later, by five different consumptives at various times. The disease got a hold on him the second time for the simple reason that he came back to the original source of his disease. He should have sought new quarters; or else the house, and particularly the room he occupied, should have been disinfected before being occupied by him or by any one else.

These three cases cited are but typical instances. There are thousands upon thousands of Browns, and Joneses, and Smiths, living and dying this very day, whose story, if told in its true light, would match exactly the simple but pathetic histories of these three men.—Technical World Magazine.