Some Pearsonic maxims. Treatment of a Cough. HEALTH COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2416, 28 June 1900, Page 62

Some Pearsonic maxims.

Treatment of a Cough.

HEALTH COLUMN.

A vegetable and a fruit diet will help a man to remain young. It's better than the fountain of life, or the medicinal baths.

Give avray your money ; it's exhilarating, and tends to longevity. I don't drink either tea or coffee. They enter the heart.

If you catch a cold, lose your quinine and eat an onion".

JSTo x^ies or cakes, no pains or aches. Don't get angry, and don't get excited;' every time you fret yoii lose a minute of life.

Most men dig their graves with their teeth.

There is a physician in Chicago who is 80 years of age, and who announces his intention of living to 100. He is the wellknown philanthropist, Dr D. K. Pearsons, who has given away his entire fortune of 3.500.000d01. Quite recently he declined to serve on the Dewey Committee because it would involve the loss of his after-din-ner nap, and possibly interfere with his longevity scheme, which scheme he has condensed into a number of hygienic maxims. Here is a few of them: —

The treatment of a cough should depend upon its cause. When there is much secretion in the bronchial tubes the patient must cough or be suffocated, but in other cases the act is not only annoying, but may even do harm by disturbing the working of the heart or by interfering with other vital functions. Much may be done by striving to restrain the cough instead of letting it out whenever the tickling sensation begins. And many a cough which was at first involuntary and necessary remains as a meie habit-cough long after the need for it has passed. A throat-cough can often be quieted by gargling with water containing common salt in solution.

Coughing may bs excit-ed by irritation in the throat, the root of the tongue, or in the nose, and sometimes by ear trouble. It may also arise from irrigation of the respiratory nerves before they reach the bronchial tubes, as when they are pressed on by an aneurism or by some tumour in the chesfc or neck. Coughing may be excited by cold air striking the skin when one is dressing or undressing, or it may occur in seme persons whenever the feet get wet or cold. Sometimes a cough is purely '" nervous,'" being caused by no trouble that can be discovered in any part of the body. A cough of this nature will sometimes begin in a school and spread rapidly, by force of imitation, until nearly every scholar is affected.

But a bronchial cough s is by no means the only one, for we often see what is called a reflex or sympathetic cough, arising from, disturbances in other parts of the body. Thus we may have a cough excited by various digestive troubles, by affections of th-; liver, or by a disease of some other organ in the abdominal cavity.

This irritation may come simply from congestion or inflammation of the lining membrane of the bronchial tubes, even when there is no secretion, and consequently no phlegm to be coughed up. This is what is called a dry cough ; it is seen in, tlw early stages of a bronchial cold, and is usually succeeded by the loose cough as soon as the inflamed mucous membrane begins to secrete.

A cough is a spasmodic expulsion of air through the vocal cords, its use being chiefly "to expel phlegm collected in the bionchial tubes". It is excited by any irritation of the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract from the vocal cords to the lungs.