After about four years in Paris, a dry, hard cough developed insidiously, gradually increased in annoyance, and finally grew so serious as to demand a return once more to his native Bretagne. He lost flesh, became subject to intermittent attacks of fever and suffered from some pleuritic and pulmonic pains. For some time after his return to his native air he improved. He was treated by the usual method employed at the time whenever fever accompanied any ailment. Venesection was the main part of what was then called the antiphlogistic treatment. It is needless to say he did not improve. He was suffering from exhausting disease and the treatment became really an accessory to further exhaustion. At last there could be no longer any doubt that the end was approaching. The old curé of the village came often to visit him, and brought him all the consolations of religion. {159} With his sincere Christian faith and firm conviction, it was not hard for Laennec to find the moral force and the calm necessary to secure an easy death. Finally one day, on August 13th, his wife saw him take off his fingers one after another the rings he wore, and place them softly upon the table. When she asked him why he did so, he replied, "It will not be long now before someone else would have to do this service for me, and I do not wish that they should have the trouble." Even in death he was thinking of others rather than of himself, and he was calmly facing the inevitable, thoroughly prepared for it. Two hours afterward, at five o'clock in the afternoon, without there having been at any time the slightest loss of consciousness, Laennec passed away. How faithfully his family had watched over him, and how simple was the feeling of Christian confidence in all of them, may very well be gathered from the letter of his cousin Ambrose to Laennec's brother Meriadec in Paris.