The famous rule of an old-time German physician was that no one was justified in coughing or scratching the head unless these activities were productive. Unless you get something as the result of the coughing, it should not be indulged in. There are a great many people who cough much more than necessary and who delay the progress of their betterment in that way. Whenever material is present to be coughed up, coughing is not only proper but almost indispensable. It is the imitative cough, the coughs which indicate overconsciousness of one's affection, the coughs that so often almost unconsciously are meant to catch the sympathy of those around, which must be repressed by the will, and when the patient finds that he really has to cough less than he thinks, he will be quite sure that he is getting better and will actually improve as a consequence of this feeling. {201} Coughs need an abundance of fluid much more than medicine, and warm fluids are better than cold; the will must be exercised so as to secure the taking of these regularly. At least a quart of warm liquid, milk if one is not already overweight, should be taken between meals during the existence of a cough. Hot milk taken at night will very often secure much better rest with ever so much less coughing than would otherwise be the case. The tendency to take cough remedies which lessen the cough by their narcotic effect always does harm. Coughing is a necessary evil in connection with coughs, and whatever suppression there is should be accomplished by means of the will. Remedies that lessen the coughing also lock up the secretions and disturb the system generally and therefore prolong the affection and do the patient harm. Most of the remedies that are supposed to choke off a cough have the same effect. Quinine and whiskey have been very popular in this regard but always do harm rather than good. Their use is a relic of the time when whiskey was employed for almost every form of continued fever and when quinine was supposed to be good for every febrile affection. We know now that quinine has no effect {202} except upon malarial fevers, and then only by killing the malarial organism, and that whiskey is a narcotic and not a stimulant and does harm rather than good. Those who did not take the familiar Q. and W. have in recent years had the habit of administering to themselves or to their friends various laxative or anodyne or antiphlogistic remedies that are supposed to abort a cough or cold and above all, prevent complications. All of these remedies do harm. Every single one of them, even if it makes the patient a little more comfortable for the time, produces a condition that prevents the system from throwing off the infection which the cold represents as well and as promptly as it otherwise would.