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Columbia that his health is excellent. He has been ploughing, hoeing and gardening
for twelve hours a day, and has found it rather a strain. He is now driving a milk
waggon fourteen miles a day into the town. Another patient, formerly a lecturer
in the City, also wrote from British Columbia. He "is not following any special
treatment, but lives almost entirely out of doors, and sleeps in a tent for ten months
of the year. He is training as a farmer."
A former theological student, who emigrated to South Africa in 1907, reports
that his health is good, and that he is teaching school subjects and carpentering
at a mission station in Basutoland.
A lady patient, contemporary with the last-mentioned at the Sanatorium,
also emigrated to South Africa. She obtained a good appointment in a school in
the Orange River Colony, and is at present employed, and enjoying good health.
Several patients have obtained work in Buenos Aires, some as agents for London
business houses, and two as surveyors. The reports received from all these patients
are satisfactory.
From the reports received from these patients, the capacity to adapt himself
to the peculiar social and economic conditions of a new country is, apart from the
question of health, about the most important asset which an emigrant can possess.
A practical knowledge of some trade, or in the case of patients going out to farms,
or ranches, a practical acquaintance with the everyday work on a general farm,
is also most desirable, if not essential, for success.
At the Victoria Hospital for Consumption in Edinburgh—which was one of the
first to institute the open-air treatment—of 782 patients received since 1887,25 per
cent. were, to all appearances, cured, while 50 per cent. were ameliorated to a certain
extent.
Dr. Burton-Fanning, Physician to the Kelling Open-air Sanatorium states,
that without the exercise of strict selection of cases for treatment, about one quarter
recovered their health sufficiently to return to work. Another quarter are not
strikingly or materially improved. The remaining one-half are distinctly benefited,
but are unable to lead ordinary lives.
When only favourable or strictly selected cases are dealt with, it may be claimed
that about three-quarters of them are restored to fitness for work.
It will be seen then how strikingly results are affected by the selection of cases
for the treatment. Success may be said chiefly to depend upon submitting the
patients to treatment while their disease is in its early or tractable stage.