On the other hand, if the impure matter by which the blood is loaded
be of the kind that causes the pulmonary solidifications of pneumonia,
the latter disease is very likely to be developed if a cold on the
lungs be caught.
The liability of any individual to attacks of acute pneumonia is
therefore determined very largely by the presence or absence in his
blood of the matter already alluded to. If his blood be free from it,
no cold, however severe, is competent to originate the disease.
There can be no question but that good living and sedentary habits
have a strong tendency to befoul the blood; the former renders
effective respiration all the more necessary for the removal from the
blood of whatever nutritive matter has been taken beyond the needs of
the system, and the latter inevitably diminishes the respiratory
motions to the lowest point consistent with physical comfort. From
these conditions originates the active predisposing cause of
pneumonia, to which we have already alluded.
The disease is more fatal in the very young and in the aged; the
mortality seems to bear a direct ratio to the respiratory capacity; in
young subjects the breathing powers have not been fully developed like
the other physical capacities, while in the old the respiratory volume
has been diminished by the stiffening of the chest walls and of the
lungs by the senile changes already detailed.
There can be no question but that protection from cold and judicious
attention to the health generally, by suitable exercise and diet, has
a powerful tendency to prevent that overloaded condition of the blood
to which I believe acute pneumonia to be chiefly due; still I have no
doubt but that the most active preventive measure that can be adopted
is keeping up the respiratory capacity to the full requirements of the
system, a precaution which is specially necessary to ease-loving and
high-living gentlemen who are past the prime of life.
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