Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/479

Rh subcutaneous injection which yields quite specially characteristic and convincing results. For half a year past I have occupied myself with such investigations, but owing to the rareness of the disease in question the number of the cases which I have been able to investigate is but small. What has hitherto resulted from this investigation does not speak for the assumption that bovine tuberculosis occurs in man.

Though the important question whether man is susceptible to bovine tuberculosis at all is not yet absolutely decided, and will not admit of absolute decision to-day or to-morrow, one is nevertheless already at liberty to say that, if such a susceptibility really exists the infection of human beings is but a very rare occurrence. I should estimate the extent of infection by the milk and flesh of tuberculous cattle and the butter made of their milk as hardly greater than that of hereditary transmission, and I therefore do not deem it advisable to take any measures against it.

So the only main source of the infection of tuberculosis is the sputum of consumptive patients and the measures for the combating of tuberculosis must aim at the prevention of the dangers arising from its diffusion. Well, what is to be done in this direction? Several ways are open. One's first thought might be to consign all persons suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs whose sputum contains tubercle bacilli to suitable establishments. This, however, is not only absolutely impracticable but also unnecessary. For a consumptive who coughs out tubercle bacilli is not necessarily a source of infection on that account so long as he takes care that his sputum is properly removed and rendered innocuous. This is certainly true of very many patients, especially in the first stages, and also of those who belong to the well-to-do classes and are able to procure the necessary nursing. But how is it with people of very small means? Every medical man who has often entered the dwellings of the poor, and I can speak on this point from my own experience, knows how sad is the lot of consumptives and their families there. The whole family have to live in one or two small, ill-ventilated rooms. The patient is left without the nursing he needs because the able-bodied members of the family must go to their work. How can the necessary cleanliness be secured under such circumstances? How is such a helpless patient to remove his sputum so that it may do no harm? But let us go a step further and picture the condition of a poor consumptive patient's dwelling at night. The whole family sleep crowded together in one small room. However cautious he may be the sufferer scatters the morbid matter secreted by his diseased lungs every time he coughs and his relatives close beside him must inhale this poison. Thus whole families are infected. They die out and awaken in the minds of those who do not know the