to find it serviceable in some to which I had not thought of applying
it,[11] and its sphere of usefulness is therefore likely to extend
beyond the limits originally set by me. It will be well here, however,
to state the various disorders in which it has seemed to me applicable.
As regards some of them, I shall try briefly to indicate why their
peculiarities point it out as needful.

There are, of course, numerous cases in which it becomes desirable to
fatten and to make blood. In many of them these are easy tasks, and in
some altogether hopeless. Persons who are recovering healthfully from
fevers, pneumonias, and other temporary maladies gather flesh and make
blood readily, and we need only to help them by the ordinary tonics,
careful feeding, and change of air in due season.

It may not, however, be out of place to say here that when the
convalescence from these maladies seems to be slower than is common, and
ordinary tonics inefficient, massage and the use of electricity are not
unimportant aids towards health, but in such cases require to be handled
with an amount of caution which is less requisite in more chronic
conditions of disordered health.

In other and fatal or graver maladies, such as, for example, advanced
pulmonary phthisis, however proper it may be to fatten, it is almost an
impossible task, and, as Pollock remarks, the lung-trouble may be
advancing even while the patient is gaining in weight. Nevertheless, the
earlier stages of pulmonary tuberculosis are suitable cases, and with
sufficient attention to purity and frequent change of air in their rooms
tubercular sufferers may be brought by this means to a point of
improvement where open-air and altitude cures will have their best
effects.