TO THE READER
The key to the volume which follows—or rather the encouragement to the collection of its contents into a volume for re-publication—is the very large correspondence of inquiry drawn upon my by the appearances of the articles, on after another, in the "Home Journal." I find, by the number and earnestness of the strangers who have thus written to me, that there is a very large Public of Unrest, composed of Invalids—consumptives more particularly—whose main and most hopeful inquiry is for some new catholicon of health. From any more fortunate or successful fellow-patient, whose cure would seem to be remarkable, the experience is sought, with exceeding interest and particularity.
"Convalescent" as I find myself to be, at present, however, or in as fair health as may reasonably be expected at the beginning of one's fifties—and this after being pronounced by many physicians an incurable case of consumption—I have no special medicine to commend. It is in answer to many correspondents that I here say I can advocate no particular theory of pulmonary treatment. With a reasonable amount of advice from any school of medicine, with a sensible watch of Nature's curative instincts, and with proper self-government, persevering exercise, and control of appetites, the most "incurable" may often take the "favorable turn." There is but one little secret, of which I may confess to have accidentally learned the value in my own experience of recovery—accidentally, because I practised it, not for cure but by way of resigning myself to a destiny I believed to be irretrievable—and in this very un-medical secret there may often be a cure for consumption. It is that the patient, after paying reasonable attention to the symptoms and treatment of his dsease, should ignore and out-happy it! With good spirits, occupation, and the disease taken little or no notice of, recovery is, at least, much more likely. This book will, perhaps do its best office, in showing how that indirect cure operated upon me.
Of topics which interested me, of excursions I took, etc. etc. during this year or two of convalescence, the chronicles are also here given. It forms altogether a volume of most digressive miscellanies, for which, of the general reader, indulgence should be asked. But it is it to my parish of Invalids, that, I must confess, I principally address and commend it.