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Show f4. His TlVt Some Diseases of X T r. . X Positive Good to X X Oeneilt t Humanity. t J t By a curious natural law of compensation compen-sation various diseases tend to prolong life and improve the general health. Gouty and rheumatic persons, it is said, have especial cause to be thankful. thank-ful. Perhaps this knowledge will help them to be more cheerful than they usually are at seasons of festivity. Gout and rheumatism are exceedingly exceeding-ly painful diseases, and, of course, in some cases prove fatal, but they confer many a blessing upon mankind; and rheumatism particularly is well known to doctors as a preventive of many other diseases. It is a notorious fact that gouty subjects generally live to a ripe age, and albeit they suffer very severely at times, they gene-ally enjoy exeellentgeneral health, the very causes of the gout keeping their blood in good condition and making it unendurable to many kinds of microbe?. Take half a dozen persons over the age of seventy who suffer from rheumatism rheu-matism or gout, and half a dozen others oth-ers who suffer from neither, and you will find that, except for their rheumatism rheuma-tism or gout, they enjoy very much better health than the non-sufferers, and stand a splendid chance of outliving outliv-ing the latter. ' Moreover, gout and rheumatism greatly enhance a sufferer's suffer-er's chances of retaining his mental faculties until the end. A large percentage per-centage of centenarians who die with all their wits about them, and with excellent ex-cellent memories of the days of their youth, have suffered for many years from rheumatism, and been particularly particular-ly free from other diseases. The loss of a leg or an arm is also said to do you good in the long run. It certainly seems that when a man is deprived of a leg or an arm, the vitality vital-ity and vigor of the lost member remain re-main with him to increase the vitality of the remainder. Numbers of elderly persons in more or less feeble health are kept alive by coughs,' such, for instance, as bronchitis. bron-chitis. Chronic coughs are peculiarly common to old people, and hundreds who complain of the distress caused " them by such affections are really indebted in-debted to th. ir coughs for their length of life. The reason of tins is that most elderly persons suffer with weak hearts and feeble circulation of tho blood, and weak hearts become weaker and weaker merely as a result of their weakness. A constant cough corrects this, keens the heart beating more strongly than ii otherwise would, and the strong heart beat keeps the blood circulating more quickly, and the vital organs are thus kept in a state of activity which could only be maintained main-tained by artificial means and for a limited time but for the troublesome cough. |