re sometimes, though rarely,
afflicted with tubercula pulmonum, or Phthisis, properly so called,
which has some peculiarities. With them it is more palpably a secondary
disease than it appears to be among white people. European physicians
are just beginning to see and acknowledge the truth taught by our Rush
in the last century, that what is called Phthisis Pulmonalis is not a
primary, but a secondary disease; the tubercles of the lungs not being a
cause, but an effect of the primary or original vice of blood origin, or
as he called it, general debility. For half a century the attention of
the medical profession has been directed to the special and ultimate
results of Phthisis, instead of the primary condition of the system
causing the formation of tubercles. The new knowledge, derived from the
stethoscope, by detecting those abnormal deposits of abortive nutrition,
called tubercles, has been received for more than its worth, and has
greatly served to keep up the delusion of treating effects instead of
causes. The tubercular deposits, revealed by auscultation, are not only
the effects of abortive nutrition, but the latter is itself the effect
of some derangement in the digestive and respiratory functions,
vitiating the nutritive fluids, and producing what Rush called general
debility. The defect in the respiratory organs arises from the fact,
long overlooked, that in a great many persons, particularly the
Anglo-Saxons, the lungs are inadequate to the task of depurating the
superabundant blood, which is thrown upon them at the age of maturity,
unless aided by an occasional blood-letting, active and abundant
exercise of the muscles in the open air, and a nutritious diet, as
advised by the American Hippocrates, Benjamin Rush. White children
sometimes have Phthisis, but here, as everywhere, it is a rare complaint
before maturity (twenty-one in the male and eighteen in the female.) The
lymphatic and nervous temperament predominating until then, secures them
against this fell destroyer of the master race of men. Phthisis is, par
excellence, a disease of the sanguineous temperament, fair complexion,
red or flaxen hair, blue eyes, large blood vessels, and a bony
encasement too small to admit the full and free expansion of the lungs,
enlarged by the superabundant blood, which is determined to those organs
during that first half-score of years immediately succeeding puberty.
Well-formed chests offer no impediment to its inroads, if