"WHITE PLAGUE” DANGERS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8559, 23 October 1913, Page 7

"WHITE PLAGUE” DANGERS

STARTLING FACTS DISCLOSED. Press Association. AUCKLAND, October 22. “The white plague is being sown and scattered broadcast over Auckland,” said Dr Florence Keller at a meeting of the Hospital Board last night, when bringing forward a motion to the effect that a site be immediately secured for a suitable home for tubercular patients. Dr Keller explained the urgent need for such a home, and related appalling facts which had recently come under her notice. In a small fruiterer’s shop_ in Ponaonby she found a young girl in an advanced stage of the disease. The girl’s sole Attendant was her mother, who would carry out rags used by tbo girl for expectoration purposes, burn them •n the kitchen grate, and then, with “tubercular germs literally teeming from her finger-tips, go into the shop and sell a child a penny apple, which ho immediately eats.” Another example was related by the doctor. The tubercular subject in this case was the daughter of a board-inghouse-keeper. When Dr Keller «aw her she was over some vegetables which she was preparing for the boarders’ meals, and coughing immoderately. In another instance a woman in an advanced stage of tuberculosis was \iving in a small cottage with an aged ■mother and six children, who must ■necessarily be infected with the germs. The motion was carried.