Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/296

284 and all the symptoms and ultimately all the postmortem morbid appearances of tubercular disease of the lungs.' Next to the hard labour, Green lays most stress on the bad ventilation of the cells, and on the highly defective construction of the prison in other respects.

"The great frequency of consumption in convict prisons may seem to be due to many of the prisoners bringing the disease with them; but that such is not the case follows from the well-authenticated fact that most of the deaths from phthisis among prisoners do not occur until later years of their term of confinement. At Millbank Penitentiary signs of a pulmonary affection on admission could be made out, as Baly tells us, in only 12 prisoners among 1502 who entered in 1842, and in only 15 among 3249 who were received in 1844. Among the convicts of 1842 there were 510 women sentenced to transportation who remained at Millbank not longer than three months, and of these two fell ill with phthisis or scrofula during that time; whereas of the remaining prisoners admitted, no fewer than forty-seven became consumptive before the completion of their terms of two or two-and-a-half years. It is further to be kept in mind, that most of the convicts sent to Millbank had already served longer or shorter terms in smaller prisons elsewhere, and not a few of them more than one term; so that in a certain proportion of those who were found phthisical on admission to the central prison, the seeds of the disease might have been implanted while they were undergoing sentence previously.

"There is no doubt that prisoners are exposed to a large number of noxious influences capable of affecting their health or of creating more or less of predisposition to take phthisis, or of augmenting a predisposition already there, and among these a bad or insufficient diet, as we have already seen, might play a not unimportant part. But even under those circumstances, it is evident that the real factor is a protracted detention, or a detention with brief remissions, in crowded and ill-ventilated work-rooms and sleeping-places. That is the one detrimental thing that obtains with more or