CONSUMPTION: HOW IT IS SPREAD BY AIR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 184, 4 August 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

CONSUMPTION: HOW IT IS SPREAD BY AIR.

Although we do not believe that consumption is hereditary, we recognise that it may be congenital—that is, a child may be born actually suffering from the disease. We accept this as a possibility, for we know that a small percentage of calves —less than f per cent, of those born of tubercular mothers —have been found to have tuoercular disease (consumption) at birth. We know, too,, that infants are occasionally born covered with the eruption of smallpox when the mother is ouffering from the disease. Congenital tuberculosis can only occur when the bacillus is free in the mother's blood, and this must be rare, unlers slie suffers from general tuberculosis —a rather rare and fatal condition. We are safe to conclude that consfeniial tuberculosis is rare, so rare ia fact that we are safe to neg-lect the cases of children born with the disease ;

Tubercle bacilli are present iv Jhe air of most public assemblies, but as a rule.they are few in compart?}i to the bulk of air. They are much more numerous in the sickroom of a consumptive, who spits on the handkerchiefs which are allowed to. dry ir. (he air. The air from a consumptive's lungs while he is breathing quietty does not contain bacilli, but when lie coughs little jets of spit are ejected into the air. These minuxe jparticles of spit are the source of danger, for bacilli are apt to be present in them, as they are in all the spit from a consumptive patient. Care on the part of the patient and his attendants never to allow the spit to become dry diminishes greatly the risk the patient himself runs of the disease'spreading to other parts of his lung by self-in-fection.

Everyone is familiar with the appearance produced by sunlight in a dusty room. Professor Tyndal showed long ago that the very visibility of ai ray of sunlight is due 'to the presence of particles floating in the air. If the air is inclosed so that the particles fall the light passes through all right, but it is invisible as.it passes through the enclosed ar. These tiny particles are invisible in themselves to the human eye unaided, but they show up the light; and they are capable of working- irreparable mischief. They are so small that they float freely fn the air and enter the lungs with it, but are apt to touch the moist surface of the air passages and be ejected with what we call spit or expectoration.- Should they succeed "in obtaiuing a footing, they are attacked by defensive cells, and the small mass is called "a. tubercle." This consists of sniall round ijcells, surrounding larger cells, which again encircle one or more larger cells, which we call' giant cells. The round cells are common to all inflammation?:, but tlie others may also be said to be peculiar to a tubercle. These cells generaly contain bacilli in various stages of digestion, but sometimes they are very lively. WVn this is so the disease is in an active spreading state, while the degenerate bacilli are evidence that the activity is decreasing,