Tuberculosis : How the Disease is Continued.

Otago Witness, Issue 2572, 8 July 1903, Page 80

Tuberculosis : How the Disease is Continued.

We have reviewed all the chief sources of the bacilli which are essential to the onset of the disease — the spit of people suffering from consumption, the milk of cows whose uddeis are involved in the tubercular process, and the flesh of animals suffering from the disease — the chief being the flesh of the ox and cow — and you ask how it is that people who do not live with consumptives, and eat only coo Tied food of either the milk or the meat older, can possibly catch the disea.se.

We are apt to forget that not only those people who are admittedly consumptives can spread the di^ea^e. foi there are not a few, which till now have been considered cases of chronic bronchitis, tint are really cases of chionio pht'iKis involving the bionr-hi chiefly perhaps, and wheie the disease does not attack the most common hite. at the apex of the lung, and ci\e the most usual signs on physical ixamination. These ca^es are amongst <he most dangerous means of spread of the disease, since the subjects of them are very apt to think there is no harm in spitting at any time and place, and their spit is often swarming with bacteria, as deadly as those produced in the cavitß". of tho case of tvpiral consumption

Not only is tins '-o. but even the person who knows that he has consumption does not al\\av»i take that care of the spit which he vliould do. and tlieie are stjll a good number of infective b.ictciia floating about in the .i if of our pubic place 1 -. They are diminishing, no doubt, but they are st ill \eiy gu.it. Kvcn shops, except the best, are not free from the loult of the spitting on the floor.

The lowr cla*-? of hou;-f'«. no doubt, a* vis found on investigation in Liverpool, are, mmy of them, saturated with infection, oncl are not subjected to the cleansing influences of soap and water, fresh air and sun'lnne, which do so much to render life endurable and healthful to the city resident. These houses become so saturated with infection when a case of consumption has been treated in one of them to a fatal issue that it is now admitted to

be necessary to have them thoroughly disinfected and cleaned, and most of the sanitary authorities do this on being informed of a death from this cause. — Liverpool Mercury.