IS CONSUMPTION INFECTIOUS?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7020, 17 May 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

IS CONSUMPTION INFECTIOUS?

Sosie highly interesting particulars regarding the infectiousness of consumption have recently been given to the world in the report on this disease which has recently bten issued at the instance of the British Medical Association. The committee entrusted with the issue of a circular inviting the opinions and experiences of the medical profession regarding the communicability of consumption received 107S replies. No fewer than 673 were simple negatives, these replies meaning that no case in which an opinion could be founded had come under the notice of the person making the return. But the remaining answers contain valuable material enough. Of the remainder, three classes were constructed — affimalax'e answers, numbering no fewer than '.'.61; doubtful answers, 39; and negative answers, 105. Analysis of the affirmative returns reveal some astonishing factß, calculated to make us think seriously enongh of our duty both to the sick and to the hale. We read, for example, of 192 observers reporting cases of communication of consumption believed to have occurred between husband and wife; and it is distinctly Btated in 130 of such cases that there existed no family predisposition or tendency to consumption in .the partner who caught tbe infection. Again, the cases of communication between persons entirely unrelated are still more convincing. A young man dies of consumption, having been nnrsed by his sister. The latter falls ill with the disease, and dies in turn ; and her companion a girl in excellent health, contracts consumption from her friend. A servant in whom it is admitted there may have been a constitutional tendency to the disease, nursed a solicitor who had contracted consumption from his wife. The servant died soon afterwards of the disease. A dressmaker living in a lonely cottage had three girl apprentices from 17 to 19 years of age, not related, and these girls took week in turn to remain in the house sleeping with the mistress. , The dressmaker died ofconsumption during their period of apprenticeship, and in less that two years afterwards, all three girls died of the same disease. Facts like these might be well-nigh indefinitely multiplied, but as quoted, they serve to show that the chances are enormously in favour of the idea that consumption ib iniectuous, and that the germs or " bacilli" are conveyed from the patients to the healthy in the breath, and like "ill seeds," find only too frequently a soil in which to breed and grow. Science, however, does not leave us hopeless in face of such revelations. With a knowledge of causes at hand, we may be certain that both prevention and remedy will not be lone left in the domain of the unknown —Pall Mall Gazette.