“Then you are surprised to learn that I came within six weeks of dying of consumption, thirty years ago, are you, doctor?” The questioner was a bright, healthy little woman of fifty who, in the course of a consultation about a consumptive niece, had expressed herself as having little hope of her recovery, “because she wouldn’t do as I did when I had the disease——and she isn’t nearly as sick as I was.” Straight as an arrow, active and merry, looking more like forty than fifty, Mrs. E. was the last person that any one would select as belonging to a “consumptive family,” or of having suffered with the disease, in her own person, and yet her mother died of it when this daughter was about 19, and the latter’s decline was attributed to inherited tendency and long confinement in the sick-room, during the last year of her mother’s life. “Yes, I have told Lettie how I cured myself after the doctors gave me up, but she will not undertake it——not now, at least——perhaps she may when she gets where I was. Do you want me to give you my recipe for the cure of consumption, Doctor? Tell you the whole story? Well, the way is simple, and the story a short one, and if it will help any one I shall be very glad. I needn’t tell you all about mother’s case——hers was the old-fashioned consumption; she was sick a good many years, but the last year she was almost helpless and would have no one but me to take care of her. Well, I bore up until she died, and then I gave out; I could not go to the grave——I was in bed during the funeral. I had not realized——none of the family had——how poorly I had become; but now it was plain enough. I kept my bed most of the time——could not get rested. I had been sick several weeks when my brother was brought home ill, was taken with typhoid fever, and there was no one to nurse him. I roused myself up and declared that I was able to do it; and I carried the point, in spite of all father could say. Well, he was sick nine weeks, but I gave up before he recovered. I carried him through the worst of it, however, before I took my bed; and then I was very sick indeed. For a while they thought I could live but a few weeks, but I rallied and got more comfortable. I raised a great deal, and for several months remained about the same, apparently; but the autumn came, and when we began to shut the house up I seemed to grow worse; my cough was still very bad, but I couldn’t ‘raise’ much, and I suffered terribly for breath. The doctor who had been attending me——the one who had tended mother——at last said he could do no more for me, and for some months we had no physician, and then father called a new one——a young doctor who was fitting himself for practice in our village. He came to see me, examined my lungs, and I fainted away in the effort. He went out——leaving no medicine——and had a talk with father. He said that he did not care to take the case; that there was no hope for me; my lungs were badly ulcerated, and I had but few weeks to live.