THE TRANSMISSION OF CONSUMPTION.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1803, 25 December 1896, Page 3

THE TRANSMISSION OF CONSUMPTION.

The advisability of legislating with regard to consumptives and their admission has bet n considered in more than one colony; and these facts from the * Journal of Hygiene’ are likely to provoke further thought on the subject“ Forty years ago Mentone was a happy village in France, where lived peasantry happy in their farms and in their superb physical state, conditioned by the climate. It was discovered that the region was a most healing one for consumptives, and it became the Mecca for the unfortunates of Europe so stricken. The inhabitants abandoned their farms to wait upon the strangers. The strong, healthy women forsook their dairies and became the washerwomen of the consumptives’ clothes. No precautions were taken ; the disease was not then understood as now, the theory of tubercle bacillus not having been discovered. The place to-day is bacillus-ridden, a pest hole, death itself. The hitherto strong inhabitants are emaciated, a coughing, bleeding people, filled with the germs of consumption. The soil and air are both contaminated with the tubercle bacilli. It is no longer a health resort.” The ‘ Scientific American’ adds that the same fate awaits many other similar localities unless active measures are taken to destroy all germs. This will be a most difficult task, because consumptives themselves, as a rule, are not thoughtful of the danger they spread or of the rights of others. They should bear in mind that if all the others had been careful they, too, might have escaped.