Is Consumption Curable ?

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 204, 21 May 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

Is Consumption Curable ?

Tin: scourge of the human race, more deadly than war or pestilence, is the dread disease ordinarily called consumption or phthisis. It is estimated that not less than 8,000,000 people die each year from this disease, and no condition of race or situation affords an exemption from its ravage?. For years the resources of science have been taxed to their utmost to find a cure for this deadly disease, but in vain. All kinds of treatment have been tried and all schools of medicine and therapeutics have grappled with the problem, but their efforts have been fruitless. There is an insidious character to consumption which has heretofore baffled human skill aid defied all efforts to cure. Every little while some quack or pseudo-scientist announces a certain remedy for consumption, but all the vaunted cures have proved inefficacious to do more than delay the ravages of the disease and prolong the life of the victim. It is a peculiarity common to all consumptives that they are never aware of their real condition, butareconstantly believing themselves better. Every improvement in their feelings they regard as a certain harbinger of recovery, and every accession of strength or appetite, no matter how brief or evanescent, is hailed as a sure indication that they are now really better. But in spite of hope and assurance oi recovery, there has been no hope. The percentage of recoveries in cases of real phthisis is so small as to be scarcely noticeable. Year after year and century after century the awful disease has lingered, counting its victims not by scores or by hundreds, but by millions. Changes of diet, of climate, of elevation are of benefit, if made early enough, but if delayed until the disease has gained firm hold, are all in vain. Now, however, conies a French discovery in medical science, highly recommended by the College of Science in Paris and used in France with surprisingly successful results. It consists, in the main, in injections of carbolic-acid gas, prepared by a process not yet made public. Some recent experiments in the Philadelphia Hospital go to indicate the possibilty of a tvue remedy having been found. The gas was administered to patients suffering from the last stages of consumption, and they at once commenced to show signs of improvement. The night sweats ceased as if by magic, the constant pains from which they were suffering vanished, and functions of the body became regular and natural and their apatites returned. To bring about these effects upon patients in the last stages of consumption is littlo less than supernatural, as it is not alone the ordinary waste of the disease with which 1 the physician has to contend, but as well the exhaustion caused by night sweats,loss of appetite and disordered digestive functional It is too soon to assume that the new process will be universally efficacious, but there is reason to hope that it may ; and if it shall be that this remedy' is effective and that consumption is curable, its discoverer will rank with Jenner and Harvey, I —•• S.R Chronicle."