Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/474

464 patients. This was most rigorously done in the Middle Ages by means of numerous leper-houses, and the consequence was that leprosy, which had spread to an alarming extent, was completely stamped out in Central Europe. The same method has been adopted quite recently in Norway, where the segregation of lepers has been ordered by a special law. But it is extremely interesting to see how this law is carried out. It has been found that it is not at all necessary to execute it strictly, for the segregation of only the worst cases, and even of only a part of these, sufficed to produce a diminution of leprosy. Only so many infectious cases had to be sent to the leper-houses that the number of fresh cases kept regularly diminishing from year to year. Consequently the stamping-out of the disease has lasted much longer than it would have lasted if every leper had been inexorably consigned to a leper-house, as in the Middle Ages, but in this way, too, the same purpose is gained, slowly indeed, but without any harshness.

These examples may suffice to show what I am driving at, which is to point out that in combating pestilences we must strike the root of the evil and must not squander force in subordinate ineffective measures. Now the question is whether what has hitherto been done and what is about to be done against tuberculosis really strikes the root of tuberculosis so that it must sooner or later die. In order to answer this question it is necessary first and foremost to inquire how infection takes place in tuberculosis. Of course, I presuppose that we understand by tuberculosis only those morbid conditions which are caused by the tubercle bacillus. In by far the majority of cases of tuberculosis the disease has its seat in the lungs, and has also begun there. From this fact it is justly concluded that the germs of the disease—i. e., the tubercle bacilli—must have got into the lungs by inhalation. As to the question where the inhaled tubercle bacilli have come from, there is also no doubt. On the contrary, we know with certainty that they get into the air with the sputum of consumptive patients. This sputum, especially in advanced stages of the disease, almost always contains tubercle bacilli, sometimes in incredible quantities. By coughing and even speaking it is flung into the air in little drops—i. e., in a moist condition—and can at once infect persons who happen to be near the coughers. But then it may also be pulverized when dry, in the linen or on the floor for instance, and get into the air in the form of dust. In this manner a complete circle, a so-called circulus vitiosus, has been formed for the process of infection from the diseased lung, which produces phlegm and pus containing tubercle bacilli, to the formation of moist and dry particles (which in virtue of their smallness can keep floating a good while in the air), and finally to new infection if particles penetrate with the air into a healthy lung and originate the disease anew. But the tubercle bacilli may get to other organs of the