Tuberculosis, in spite of all our efforts against it, remains in Defoe's striking phrase the "captain of the men of death." Pneumonia has preempted its {351} place in the statistics of mortality, but this is to a considerable extent because tuberculosis at the end masquerades as an acute pneumonic exacerbation. Not less than one in eight, probably more, of all those who die, die from tuberculosis. It is the most serious of diseases. In spite of its eminently physical character it probably affords the best possible illustration of the place of mental influence in therapeutics. We have had any number of new cures for tuberculosis, introduced by serious physicians who were sure from the results they had secured that they had found an important new remedy. After a few years each of these cures in succession has been relegated to the limbo of unused remedies because found inefficient. At the beginning they produced a beneficial influence because of the suggestion of therapeutic efficiency that went with them. When this suggestion failed because the physician who administered the remedy lacked confidence, the real place of the supposed specific as merely another mind cure was recognized.

Indeed, many of the remedies that have been introduced have not been merely harmless drugs, but not a few of them have probably had rather a detrimental physical effect than a beneficial influence. In spite of this, the influence on the patient's mind has been sufficient to neutralize whatever of harmfulness there might have been and to arouse new courage and new energy. The consequence of this has always been that the patient was tempted to live more in the open air and to eat more. These are the two efficient remedies for tuberculosis. With the additional life in the open air and increase of food his appetite grew, for nothing so adds to appetite as the exercise of it, and with the gain in weight there was a cessation of cough, a reduction of fever, a disappearance of night sweats and a definite increase in resistive vitality which gradually helped to overcome the disease. Manifestly, then, the use of mental influence in tuberculosis is very significant.