f "the great white plague,"
vulgarly known as consumption. Consumptives were as thick as English
sparrows in Colorado and I saw ample evidences of the disease in all its
horrible details. It seemed that there was a sort of caste among the
"lungers," depending mainly upon their amount of ready cash. Some had
plain "consumption," while others had only "tuberculosis." Many had "lung
trouble," "catarrh," "bronchitis," and--"neurasthenia."

The patients in the sanitariums were graded. The most advanced cases were
called the "B. L. B's."--"The Busted Lung Brigade." It seems that there
is no condition too grim for joke and jest. On all sides there were
coughing and expectorating and suffering and dying, sufficient to dismay
the stoutest heart--and I a victim myself, I thought.

I heard that the torrid southwest was the ideal climate for tuberculosis
and thither I went. I visited a few places in this hot southwestern
country where it is alleged that consumptives in all stages soon recover
and grow fat. I soon learned that these alluring reports should be taken
with the usual quantity of saline matter. This boosting of climate for
invalids, I found, was mainly the work of land sharks, railroads, hotel
and sanitarium people, and a few medical men who were crafty or misguided.
This climate may be ideal in being germ-free, but where it is so hot and
dry that even germs can't eke out an existence, it is also a trifle trying
on the tender-foot consumptive. I found that the bad water and sand-storms
in many localities, coupled with his homesickness, more than off-set all
the good results the climate could otherwise bring to the sufferer.

In nearly every room I occupied while in this Mecca for consumptives, the
place had been rendered vacant by my predecessor having moved out--in a
box. I did not stay in one locality very long, but visited a number of
places that were exploited as being the land of promise for all afflicted
with this agonizing disease. Everywhere I went I saw hundreds of victims
being shorn of their money and deriving meager, if any, benefits. The
native consumptives went elsewhere in search of health, it being another
case of "green hills _far away_." Many went so far as the State of Maine.

Every State in the Union has at some time been lauded as the favored spot
for the cure of consumption, but, after all, it seems as mythical as the
pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Some climates may be better than
others f