CONSUMPTION.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 569, 26 July 1909, Page 9

CONSUMPTION.

SEGREGATION OF SUFFERERS (By Telegraph.—Special Correspondent) Auckland, July 24. A tall gaunt man named Wm. Green stood up in tho Polico Couit on Thursday aftcinoon to answer a charge or stealing fivo sovereigns from a man in an Auckland hotel. Ho v/as big-boned and fashioned on moro generous proportions than tho avciage of men, but disease had played havoc with him. His checks were sunken, and a mere suspicion of flesh cohered his bones. "The accused has only a few months to live,' said Mr. J. R. Lundon, tho counsel who appeared for him "Ho has been discharged as an , incurable consumptive."., ' The history of accused since he came to tho Dominion as far as ascertained is as . follows: Ho came to Now Zealand in con- | sumpiion early in 1906. Arriving at Wellington, he was refused a landing until a friend in New Plymouth signed a bond for £100 for his maintenance, " and he then landed at Lyttelton. He 'wont to Now Plymouth, where his friend was, and was soon m the hospital. Ho then drifted "to tho Haivera and Wanganui hospitals successively. i Uβ wont to Napier, and there ran counter Ito the law and received a term of two months' imprisonment. Ho had only served 1 three weeks when ho had to bo sent to the hospital, and vtas tliero for nine monthß. Ho was next in the Wellington Hospital Ho came north in the hope of getting into the Cambridge Sanatorium. Ho was in tho hospital in Auckland, and was recently admitted to the Costle> Home, and was an inmate of that institution at the time When the theft of which he was convicted took place The grave menace to public health that exists in allowing at large a man in the last stages of consumption, when ho will naturally be inclined to expectorate freely, was brought under the notice of the InspectorGeneral of Hospitals yesterday. The doctor admitted that such a man was a danger to those coming into contact with him, and i>aid tho case in' point epitomised a very grave problem. As tho law stood at present, there was no power to compel a man, however far gone ho might dq in consumption, to go to a sanatorium or remain there against his wish No country had jot tried such an advanced proposal, and it involved sovcral vory weighty considerations. In tho first place, public opinion had to bo reckoned with, and tho question of the segregation of consumptives practically touched tho wholo community, because there was scaredj a family not connected moro or less nearly with a consumptive. In tho second place, tho question of accommodation arose. Tho consumptives nunibered two or three per thousand of the population, and to house them would bo a formidable task and ono beyond the accommodation now available. To confine all consumptives would touch society in a tender spot. It would mean taking all sorts of men from tho communitj. ,Tho Health Department was doing its best with tho powers it now possessed, and took every occasion to exert an educative influence on tho people. A leading medical practitioner in Auckland desonbed public opinion as an almost insuperable barrier to the segregation of consumptivos People expressed the greatest repugnanco to their relatives being taken from thorn and placed in homes and hospitals. Doctors were compelled to notify the Health Department of cases of consumption ooming under thoir notice, but there seemed to bo a sort of tacit understanding that the , notice sent to tho local body im ordinaiy cases of infectious disease could bo dispensed with in tho caso of consumptives Tho evil effects were well known, it being common knowledge how ono member of the family after anothor often went under these conditions. Consumption was always an acquired diseaso, horoditv was only a factor in. determining vulnerability to it.