Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/44

34 almost any part of the body. Thus, consumption is only a special manifestation of the general disease—tuberculosis. The germs are not merely thorns in the fleshy producing a local inflammation, but they are plants which multiply rapidly, and form in their growth poisons as dangerous to life as if they were elaborated in one large plant instead of millions of small ones.

The germ of leprosy is very like that of tuberculosis. In both diseases, little masses of inflammatory tissue form around the bacilli, and then, not having the vitality of normal structures, these break down, involving other parts in their own destruction. Leprosy attacks chiefly those parts of the body which are exposed, like the hands, feet, arms, and legs, though it occasionally invades the mucous membranes, and it is seen in the nose, mouth, and throat. Tuberculosis, on the other hand, seeks the deeply seated organs by preference, though it, too, may affect the throat; and many of the so-called scrofulous sores are tubercular. Leprosy thrusts out its hideous deformities and disgusting ulcers to the gaze of the passer-by; tuberculosis hides its devastations beneath an exterior which may be even beautiful. The greater sufferer from fever, lassitude, and pain is the consumptive. So, too, is his mental suffering greater, since the leper is usually a person who has lived in filth and squalor, while the tubercular patient is more likely than not to be one who has worked hard to gratify some ambition and who feels more keenly than bodily pain the necessity of abandoning active life. Leprosy is not a rapidly fatal disease, usually lasting from nine to twenty years after its recognition. Consumption fortunately does not allow its victims to linger so long, but kills in from one to four years in the great majority of cases.

In order to see how formidable an enemy we have in tuberculosis, let us contrast it with some other diseases which are even more dreaded. Leprosy is rare in most civilized countries; even in Asia Minor it causes less than one per cent of the total death rate. Typhoid and scarlet fevers are each held responsible for three per cent; diphtheria and pneumonia, for five per cent each. The deaths from consumption alone, omitting such tubercular troubles as hip-joint disease. Pott's disease of the spine, some forms of meningitis, intestinal marasmus, caries of bone, and many abscesses, make up, according to one authority, about twenty per cent of the total death rate of this country. It is estimated that one third of all deaths occurring in the medical wards of hospitals are due to tuberculosis, and that a fifth of all surgical cases treated—many of which are cured—are tubercular. We may bring these statistics home by saying that you and I were born with one chance in five of dying of some form of tuberculosis. If our chance of being instantaneously and decently killed by an