About 200 years ago (in 1672), Sir Thomas Browne, the author of that famous book, the Religio Medici—which every physician ought to read—wrote his almost equally famous "Letter to a Friend upon Occasion of the Death of his Intimate Friend." In this letter there is much curious and interesting writing in regard to consumption, to which disease the subject of it fell a victim. Of him Sir Thomas Browne says that he is "by this time no Puny among the mighty Nations of the Dead; for tho he left this World not very many days past, yet every hour, you know, largely addeth unto that dark Society; and considering the incessant Mortality of Mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole Earth so few as a thousand an hour."
He describes, in like quaint terms, the symptoms of consumption and the signs of approaching death, and reflects the common