A college-mate of Trudeau’s, Edward H. Harriman, was then staying at Paul Smith’s. Harriman, Livingston, and “Uncle” Paul Smith took turns nursing the sick doctor through nights which he was not expected, in nature, to survive. And yet he outlived them all! He improved at Paul Smith’s, then tried a winter at St. Paul, Minnesota. Here he suffered a relapse and was brought back to the Adirondacks, where he again improved. It was at about this time that, being joined by Mrs. Trudeau and their two children, Ned and Charlotte, the family passed through a terrible ordeal on a journey from Malone to Paul Smith’s. A blizzard arose, and the trip, which usually occupied less than a day, took over forty-eight hours. Paul Smith handled the team and wagon. After plunging through miles of snowdrift in the teeth of a biting norther, the horses fell down exhausted. The family’s baggage had previously been abandoned at Barnum Pond. Paul Smith made the sick man as comfortable as possible, wrapped the children in blankets, and buried them for warmth in the snow. When the blizzard abated, the family reached the hunter’s place, after two days of unspeakable hardship. Surviving this ordeal, seeming even to have thrived upon it, Dr. Trudeau began to consider seriously the possible advantages in pulmonary diseases of exposure to pure cold air. He proposed to spend a winter in the Adirondacks, where the frigid season is prolonged and the thermometer occasionally stands at forty degrees below zero. His friends and medical advisers considered his proposition as a kind of suicidal mania, all except Dr. Loomis and Mrs. Trudeau. Dr. Trudeau had been impressed with the theory of Brehmer, the Silesian, and of Dettweiler, a patient and pupil of Brehmer, that the consumptive was not harmed by inclement weather, provided he accustomed himself to living out of doors, at rest. With the approval of Loomis and Mrs. Trudeau, the doctor carried out his experiment, the results of which practically revolutionized the science of treating tuberculosis. Trudeau so improved that presently he began to practice medicine among the Adirondack natives. He continued to do so for several years, often traveling forty miles in a day or night and in all sorts of weather, to usher, perhaps, some little woodsman into the world, or even to allay anxiety by his mere presence. It has been said that his bedside manner did more than physic in ninety per cent of his cases. Half of his bills were never rendered and a quarter of the other half never paid; but tears would come into the eyes of many a woman when she saw him in after years; and men called him “the beloved physician.”