TUBERCULOSIS
No matter in what part of the body it is manifested, is never (as has been thought) a local disease against which a local treatment suffices. The formation of tuberculous centre in the body is always preceded by a general weakening, which leaves a resistance insufficient to hold in check the tubercle bacilli which the majority of human beings harbour in their system from infancy. Of all the infectious diseases, tuberculosis is, par excellence, the one in which the general condition, the “soil”, plays the predominant part. Its rational treatment should aim, therefore, primarily and fundamentally, at the rebuilding of the entire organism.
To place the organism in the best conditions for self-defence, to strengthen it by rousing its natural resistance, such is the most efficient method of fighting tuberculosis. Everything which contributes to weakening or overfatigue of the organism predisposes to the development of the disease; lack of fresh air and sunshine, the feverish and unhealthy life of towns, work under the unhygienic conditions of many factories and workshops, privation, insufficient and excessive feeding, abuse of alcoholic beverages, intellectual and physical over-fatigue, and lack of exercise.
It has taken years to be assured of these facts. More often than not, the primary cause of tuberculosis-the very condition necessary for its development-is the subnormal state of general health of the individual. It is quite time that preventive hygiene was fundamentally reformed; it needs especially the inspiration of common sense.
To maintain the body at its maximum vitality should be the first act of protection against tuberculosis. As has been proved to the hilt by experience, air, sunshine and physical exercises stand first as the most efficacious preventive factors.
The same factors are also naturally indispensable in the actual treatment of tuberculosis. Indeed, one can confidently assert that in cases of active tuberculous lesions, whether in the skeleton or other tissues, the rebuilding of the whole body is the essential condition for effective cure.
If the organism, placed under good conditions of defence, is stronger than the germ, the latter remains inactive, an impotent prisoner in the glands.
If, on the other hand, the defence weakness, now or later, the bacilli which are, so to speak, merely dormant, become again virulent, escape from the glands, and enter the blood by way of the lymphatic system. They are then able to settle themselves in some part or another of the body:- in the kidneys (renal tuberculosis), in one vertebra or another (osteitis, Potts disease), in the hip-joint (coxalgia), or in the knee (white swelling or gonaditis).
They often select a region in which the tissues have suffered some preliminary injury, or have been disorganised by a bruise: thus one sometimes sees an outbreak of the disease in the locality of a wound due to a fall or blow.
The problem of the war upon tuberculosis resolves itself for the most part into a question of organic resistance; it is obvious that the individual organism should be fortified from earliest infancy. Since fresh air, sunshine and good food constitute the principal factors, it is but natural to recognize their primary importance in infant hygiene.
An organism attacked in a certain point by tuberculosis is like a country of which one province is invaded by the enemy and the other provinces are menaced by invasion. Unless the entire nation sends men from every corner of its territory, with food and munitions to its aid, the invaded province is lost. A poor country, disorganized and discouraged (a healthy spirit is as necessary as a good physique) will not triumph, even though prodigies of valour and resistance are opposed to the pressure of the enemy.
The same argument applies to the human body menaced by an invasion of microbes. If the entire organism does not co-operate in its defence, the local resistance is ineffective, defeat is nearly certain, and death is inevitable sooner or later.
Thus a rational treatment of tuberculosis must not be limited to the local centre. Popular common sense says “The disease is in the blood,” and popular common sense happens here to be supported by science. Hence the necessity of strengthening the blood, which is the principle of organic life, of rebuilding the general enfeebled condition, of stimulating the natural defences and the entire vital activity, as much in the moral as in the physical domain.
Twenty-one years experience with more than ten thousand cases of surgical tuberculosis, under strict radiographic control, permits us to state that heliotherapy, that is to say methodical sun-cure, is the most efficacious means of treating the multiple manifestations of tuberculosis.
The sun-cure in conjunction with the air-cure and practised preferably at an altitude (because there the air is more tonic and the sun shines winter and summer) is certainly the treatment par excellence for tuberculosis, because it places the organism in ideal condition for self- defence. It stimulates the nutrition, of all the tissues, increases the proportion of red corpuscles in the blood, promotes metabolic changes and assists the functioning of all the organs.
The sun has a particularly remarkable action on the skin, the highly important functions of which have been too long unrecognized. The skin is at once an organ of nutrition, of stimulation, of elimination and of protection. Rendered anaemic and atrophied by the wearing of too heavy clothing, the skin revives and becomes strengthened when restored by its natural environment of air and sunshine; it recovers its many functions, indispensable to the healthy working of the organism.
The physiological role of the skin is of capital importance. Thanks to the intense circulation in the capillary blood-vessels which cover the surface, and react to external influences (heat and cold) alternately dilating and contracting, the skin constitutes a vast organ of circulation. The skin is the great auxiliary of the heart.
By its many sensitive nerve endings, which forms a close network, the smallest external vibrations make an impression on the skin, and are immediately transmitted to the nerves centres. There they call out latent energies, and bring about reactions capable of exciting the various functions of the heart, lungs, etc.
At last the importance of the work of elimination performed by the skin is known, the glands of which excrete every day an average of more than a quart of perspiration, including a quantity of sebaceous and toxic products. The skin has been called the “delegate of the kidneys.” While one can live easily with only one kidney, death follows the loss (by burns, for example) of only one-third of the surface of the skin.
The skin, placed in direct contact with air and sunshine, becomes once more the ideal garment provided by nature. Bronzed by the sun, it is invulnerable to numbers of cutaneous affections, such as boils, acne, etc., which are often a portal for serious diseases. In a bronzed skin, wounds heal more rapidly. The pigmentation gives the cutaneous surface a special resistance to heat and cold. Experience shows that the degree of pigmentation of a patient is nearly always proportionate to his resistance.
The sun draws the blood to the body surface and relieves congestion in deeply-seated organs. It stimulates and regulates the circulation in a remarkable manner, and is thus equivalent to the best massage. Thanks to the intense circulatory movement over the whole body, the sun-cure develops and strengthens the entire tissues and musculature, even in cases kept in bed, and restores to the body the harmony of its lines.
This rebuilding of the muscular system in the case of most of our patients astonishes those who visit our clinics for the first time. Thus a surgical specialist remarked one day in passing through the galleries of one of our institutions, “This is not a clinic, it is a college of athletes.”.
Under the influence of open air and sunshine, the appetite returns, the digestive functions are stimulated, lost forces are regained, and the whole organism progressively regenerated.
