One thing was permanently regarded as ultra. He did not believe in breakfasting; and therefore kept every patient, who wished to come under his most thorough treatment, from the use of food till about the middle of the day. This permitted of but two meals a day, which, however, is one more than has sometimes been recommended by O. S. Fowler, the phrenologist, and even by a few others.
The main error, however, of this air-cure practice,--if error there was in it,--consisted in the idea of its applicability to everybody, in every circumstance. For though it may be true that as large a proportion of inveterate cases of disease would disappear under such treatment as under any other, yet there are probably not a few to whom it would be utterly unadapted.
An Ohio clergyman, just setting out in his ministerial career, consulted me, one day, about his health and future physical prospects. His nervous system and cerebral centre had been over-taxed and partially prostrated; and his digestive and muscular powers were suffering from sympathy. In short, he was a run-down student, who, in order to be resuscitated, needed rest.
It was not, however, the rest of mere inertia that he required, but rest from those studies to which his attention had been long and patiently confined. His bodily powers were, indeed, flagging with the rest; but then it was impossible for him to be restored without _some_ exercise. In truth, it was not so much a _rest_ of body, mind, or heart that he needed, as a _change_.
I will tell you what a course he had been, for five or six years, pursuing. Though his father was reckoned among the wealthier farmers of Ohio, yet, having a large family to sustain and educate, he did not feel at full liberty to excuse his children from such co-operation with him as would not materially interfere with their studies. Hence they were required--and this son among the rest--not only to be as economical as possible, in all things, but also to earn as much as they could, especially during their vacations. They were not, of course, expected to do any thing which was likely to impair their health, but, on the contrary, to take every possible pains to preserve the latter, and to hold labor and study and every thing else in subserviency to it.