The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, & Saturdays. Thursday, Mat 25, 1899. THE NEW CONSUMPTION CURE.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXI, Issue 3902, 25 May 1899, Page 2

The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, & Saturdays. Thursday, Mat 25, 1899. THE NEW CONSUMPTION CURE.

The new consumption cure the Nordrach treatment as it is called, after the name of the place where it has its origin—has been attracting a good deal of discussion lately. Since medical men and people generally have discarded the old-fashioned idea that the disease is incurable, and that the best that can be done for the patient is but to palliate the symptoms and make the passage of the afflicted person more easy, the way has been left clear for bringing a more rational mind to boar on consumption and its ravages. We owe much to Koch's discovery in 1882 of the bacillus of tuberculosis and the new direction that gave medical treatment, and it seems fairly well established now that consumption in its earlier stages may be eared, while even at a later period there is room for much to be done. Opinions differ as to what should be done, however, and what is exactly the best method to be followed. It is the distinction of the Nordrach system that it makes a new departure in reversing some of the older methods applied to the treatment and cure of this fell disease. It is perhaps fortunate for the peace of mind of humanity that we are not compelled to keep the tale of its ravages continually in mind. Its work is done slowly, and though it mercilessly exacts its inescapable toll of viotims year by year the process is so unobtrusive and, sad to say, so common-place that the world is spared the shock of its realisation. If we heard that a sudden epidemic, a seismic disturbance, or a state of war swept away onc-seventh of the population of Europe in any one year, civilisation would stand appalled at such a catastrophe. Yet this is the deathrate of consumption, not in one year only, but regularly every year. If what we are now told about the treatment be true, most of the methods hitherto pursued were in principle all wrong. The disease was nursed, the patient “ coddled ” and kept in a warm room, and his appetite was humored in the way best calculated to destroy it altogether. He was sent on long sea voyages, and told to live in warm climates, Madeira, the Riviera, Egypt, and such places were indicated. As we have reason enough to know, consumptives were sent in large numbers to Australasia, where they usually sought the comforts of life in the humid air of the Bea-coast. As to that, the discovery lias long ago been made that, if consumptive persons desire ad-

vantage from the Australasian climate, they must seek it in the dry air of the plains and not within reach of the sea. It has always been known that the disease progresses most rapidly in tropical countries once it has won a hold. Conversely, medical men have always been in possession of the facts that Iceland, a country of rigorous cold, is comparatively free from lung diseases, and people who live in the Hebrides are less often found subject to con-

sumption than those on the adjacent mainland. Practical medical men have bean applying these facts of late years. The idea of a long sea voyage has gone out of favour, except, perhaps, in the early stages of the disease, and when combined with generous diet and other conditions. Within the last few years, comparatively speaking, places like Davos-Platz, in the Orisons Alps, have become important health resorts, frequented by thousands of persons suffering from chest complaints who find in the clear and rarefied air of these elevated spots a measure of relief and often of permanent benefit. Davos-Platz has an elevation of a little over 5000 feet, and is sheltered by hills enclosing the mountain valley in which the sanatorium is situated. The new Nordrach cure applies all this so far as it goes ; but it advances a stage or two further.

Its essentials have been described by a writer in the Ninteeenth Century lately, in a paper which has excited some controversy. Climate, he contends prefatorily, has absolutely nothing to do with the matter. What are required as preparatory condition* are a site in the country where the air is pure and clear, and

free from smoke and dust, and a place were the patient will find quie-

tude and freedom from excitement. Soil, elevation, sunshine, wind, rainfall, all these matters, he maintains, need not enter into the consideration. If protection by trees from wind and sun can be secured, so much the better. The. patient’s room should have the front almost all window space, there should be linoleum instead of carpets, and the winter cold should be tempered by hot water pipes only on the very coldest day. .Lying-outverandahs and lazy habits are to be avoided, as much time as possible should be spent in the open air, and neither rain nor snow should keep the patient in if he ought to be out. The windows must always be kept open as widely as they will go, the patient should carry as little cloth-

ing as possible, and chest protectors, double flannels, and over coats should be gradually laid aside. But the main and apparently novel feature of the Nordrach cure is that which makes all these things effective, and without which some of them might even be dangerous. The patient should have ten hours’ sleep each night and avoid bumb-bell and other such suicidal exercises, but above all things he must bare a generous and even plenteous diet. He should eat as much as possible, meat, butter, vegetables, and gravy, with a hot course at supper as at dinner, the rule being to “ eat as much as possible at meals and nothing between whiles.” cKaracteristic feature of the whole system, which is not a mere “ oden air 99 cure, ns it has been described. Its merit is that it is applicable wherever pure air and a generous though simple diet are obtainable, and in its results it promises so far, if all that is claimed for it be true, to revolutionise the

whole question of consumption treatment with the most gratifying results,