Health Through Will PowerWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Science
Health Through Will Power
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Mental healing; Mental health; Will
It has been recognized in recent years that the only climates which
give reasonable hope of being helpful for the tuberculous are those
which present a variation of some thirty degrees in their temperature
every day. Whenever this is the case chilly feelings are always
produced in those who are exposed to the change, even though the lower
temperature curve may not go down to anywhere near freezing. If for
instance the temperature at the hottest hour of the day, say three
o'clock in the afternoon, is 90° F. and that of the later evening or
middle of the night is 60° F., chilly feelings will be produced. Just
the same thing is true if the temperature is between 30° F. and 40° F.
shortly after the middle of the day and then goes down to {181} near
zero at night. These chilly feelings are uncomfortable, but they
produce an excellent reaction in the circulation and set the blood
coursing from the heart to the tissues better than any medicine that
we have. In the midst of this the lungs have their resistive vitality
raised so as to throw off the disease.
This is probably one of the principal reasons why mountain climates
have been found so much more helpful for the treatment of tuberculosis
than regions of lower elevations. Whenever the elevation is more than
fifteen hundred feet there will almost invariably be a variation of
thirty degrees between the day and the night temperature. There are of
course still greater variations, even sixty or seventy degrees
sometimes where the altitudes are very high, but this is often too
great for the tuberculous patients to react properly to, in their
rundown conditions. Besides, the air is much rarer at the higher
elevations, breathing is more difficult, because the lungs have to
breathe more rapidly and more deeply in order to secure the amount of
oxygen that is needed for bodily necessities from the rarified air.
The middle elevations then, between fifteen hundred and twenty-five
{182} hundred feet, have been found the best for tuberculosis
patients, and they are very pleasant during the summer time, though
never without the chilly discomfort of the drop in temperature. During
the fall and winter, however, many patients become tired out trying to
react to these variations of temperature and want to seek other
climates where they will not have to submit to the discomfort and the
chilly feelings. If they come down to more comfortable quarters before
their tuberculosis has been brought to a standstill by the increase of
their resistive vitality, it is very probable that they will lose most
of the benefit that they derived from their mountain experience. Here
is where the will comes in. Those who have the will to do it and the
persistence to stick at it and the character that keeps them in good
humor in spite of the discouraging circumstances which almost
inevitably develop from time to time, will almost without exception
recover from their tuberculosis with comparatively little difficulty,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account