This shows, too, the reasonableness of the modern treatment of consumption, which consists not in the giving of {91} drugs, but in securing for the patient a plenty of fresh air for many hours a day and the encouragement to consume a liberal amount of nutritious food. Most of the much advertised remedies for consumption are really harmful rather than beneficent. Many of them are ordinary cough mixtures containing considerable opium, which lessens the cough, it is true, but also lessens the appetite and locks up the bowels. Besides, the cough is nature's method of removing material from the lungs which has become disintegrated, and if allowed to remain will certainly bring about the spread of the infection in the pulmonary tissues. Cough is a natural protective reaction to be encouraged, and is not in itself a source of evil needing to be suppressed. If cough is bothering the patient so much at night as to cause loss of sleep, then it is necessary to make a choice between two evils and somewhat to suppress the cough, even though it involves certain other inconvenience to the patient. All these so-called consumption cures contain materials that are almost sure to disturb the appetite and upset the stomach. The fate of a consumptive patient absolutely depends on his stomach; just as little, then, of medicine must be employed as possible. This will indicate the necessity for clergymen rather advising against than in favour of these proprietary medicines which have been definitely known to do so much harm in recent years. Many a patient delays an appeal to medical aid so long, as the result of trusting to such medicines, that a curable case of consumption becomes incurable, or else develops to such a condition as to require years of treatment on the fresh-air, abundant-food plan, where months would have sufficed before.