Put him upon even the average diet of many people in this progressive and highly civilized United States the year round,--with its thin milk, its pulpy, half-sour butter, its tough meat, its half-rancid pickled pork, its short three months of really fresh vegetables and good fruit, and six months of eternal cabbage, potatoes, dried apples, and prunes,--and he will fail to build up the vigor necessary to fight the disease, even in the purest and best of air. The saddest and most pitiful tragedies which the consumptive health-resort physician can relate are those of wretched sufferers,--even in a comparatively early stage of the disease,--whose misguided but well-meaning friends have raised money enough to pay their fare out to Colorado, California, Arizona, or New Mexico, and expect them to get work on a ranch, so as to earn their living and take the open-air treatment at the same time. Three things are absolutely necessary for a reasonable prospect of cure of consumption. One is, abundance of fresh air, day and night. Another, abundance of the best quality of food. And the third, absolute--indeed, enforced--rest during the period of fever. Let any one of these be lacking, and your patient will die just as certainly as if all three were. _Not one in five_ of those who go out to climates with even a high reputation as health-resorts--expecting to earn their own living or to "rough it" in shacks or tents on three or four dollars a week, doing their own cooking and taking care of themselves--recovers. They have a four-to-one chance of recovery in _any_ climate in which they can obtain these three simple requisites, and a four-to-one chance of dying in any climate in which any one of these is lacking. Instead of nature being able to cure the consumptive unaided, as a matter of fact she has neither the ability nor the inclination to do anything of the sort. There is no class of patients whose recovery depends more absolutely upon a most careful and intelligent study and regulation of their diet, of every detail of their life throughout the entire twenty-four hours, and of the most careful adjustment of air, food, heat, cold, clothing, exercise, recreation, by the combined forces of sanitarian, nurse, and physician. So that, instead of feeling that only by reverting to savagery can consumption be prevented, we have no hesitation in saying that it is _only under civilization, and civilization of the highest type, that we have any reasonable prospect of cure_. Finally, we are getting over our misgivings as to the intentions of the hereditary brigade. It is certainly not our enemy, and may probably turn out to be one of our best friends.