TUBERCULOSIS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 270, 13 November 1943, Page 4

TUBERCULOSIS

The Health Department has been publishing a number of anti-tubercu-losis warnings recently, and while I in no way wish to disparage the excellent campaign.. I would like to comment on those parts of the advertisement which read: "that no one is born with tuberculosis, and further that the -fact that tuberculosis 'runs in families' has given rise to a false impression that it is hereditary." Pearson, an authority on the disease, states: "The disposition for pulmonary tuberculosis is certainly inherited and the intensity of the inheritance is sensibly the same as that of any normal physical character yet investigated in man." Of the four hundred cases of tuberculosis which I investigated at the Auckland Health Department some years ago, some 60 per cent of the patients had a previous family history. Secondly, modern biological research, especially that of Baumgarten and his school, has shown that the disease can be transmitted by the sperm and ovum. Baumgarten found, in one instance, the tubercle bacillus in the ovum of a female rabbit, which had been artificially fecundated with tuberculosis semen. And although not strictly a case of hereditary transmission, a constant method of transition in congenital tuberculosis is through the blood current between the mother and the pre-natal child. I do not state these facts solely as a partial refutation of what I consider a mistaken view held by the Health authorities, but that those who have the disease "in the family" might be forewarned to take all precautions. lATVOS.