SINGING AS A PREVENTIVE AGAINST CONSUMPTION.

Kumara Times, Issue 1100, 9 April 1880, Page 3

SINGING AS A PREVENTIVE AGAINST CONSUMPTION.

From the fact that during thelast quarter of a century not a single singer in St Petersburg has died of consumption, though that disease is more fatal than any other in the Russian capital, a Dr Vasilieff has drawn the inference that the exercise involved in staging is a preventive of consumption. The Lancet, however, is inclined to question this view, and points out that it may be either singers are not consumptive because they can use their chest and throat freely, or that consumptive people are not singers, because their weakness incapacitates the chest and throat for exertion; both these hypotheses being true up to a certain point, yet not holding good in all cases. Chest development is best promoted in childhood by the most natural and convenient methods in exercise, or otherwise later in life there is the likelihood of great mischief being caused by undue straining of the muscles of the thorax and throat, as well as consider* able risk of injuring.the smaller tubes and air vesicles of the lungs by too violent an exertion of the vocal and respiratory organs. This seems by far the most rational view. We believe it is indisputable that in countries where the people take to singing naturally, and from earliest childhood, consumption is far less prevalent than it is else, where. It is just possible there would be less 'consumption in this country if the children were more generally taught singing. Only they must be taught to sing from the chest, so as to give the respiratory organs full play, and not, as is mostly the case, from the throat .