SANATORIA PATIENTS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20083, 12 November 1930, Page 13

SANATORIA PATIENTS.

to tbb xomw or in pats'! Sir, —The recent appeal for funds t» help ex-patients' from Cashmere baas brought forward certain expl*a»tioß» that .will, I think, be welcome. W« now hear that tuberculosis is mot iafeetkwa in the same sense that scarlet fever is, for instance. A little more infonnatioa along the same lines would help, I thinkto a better underst&ndinjj of the position! For instance: (1) la tabercaioeM a diminishing disease, its incidence declining with the growing immunity «C • the : race, or is it like cancer—on tbe increase and only kept down by treatment? (2) What, roughly, ia tbe «x----peeted margin of error when dector*, tuberculosis experts, examine peeps* undet the early diagnosis scheme T If tuberculosis is not so frightnslty infectious, and if the margin of errar in expert diagnosis of early cases, is. as I believe, so high that it makes the examination worthless, sorely the aaMtorium authorities will cease advocating the early segregation of suspect children.—Yours, etc, AXTI-SCAKE. November 30th. 1930. jTh". I. C. Macintyre. Medical Superit'tendent of the Cashmere Sanatoria, to whom this letter was referred, stated in reply to the first qiieiiakwi that tuberculosis was unquestionably a diminishing disease. The decline was slow, but probably within -a few generations it would entirely disappear, r%e leprosy or plague. The second (rejection, be thought, was impoasaUe t» answer, as it depended on many a**d rjiried factors.}