Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/482

472 necessary when consumptives die or change their residences has to be effected. Fortunately it is not at all necessary to notify all cases of tuberculosis, nor even all cases of consumption, but only those that, owing to the domestic conditions, are sources of danger to the people about them. Such limited notification has already been introduced in various places—in Norway, for instance, by a special law, in Saxony by a Ministerial decree, in New York, and in several American towns which have followed its example. In New York, where notification was optional at first and was afterwards made obligatory, it has proved eminently useful. It has thus been proved that the evils which it used to be feared the introduction of notification for tuberculosis would bring about need not occur and it is devoutly to be wished that the examples I have named may very soon excite emulation everywhere.

There is another measure connected with notification—viz., disinfection, which, as already mentioned, must be effected when consumptives die or change their residence in order that those who next occupy the infected dwelling may be protected against infection. Moreover, not only the dwellings but also the infected beds and clothes of consumptives ought to be disinfected. A further measure, already recognized on all hands as effective, is the instructing of all classes of the people as to the infectiousness of tuberculosis and the best way of protecting oneself. The fact that tuberculosis has considerably diminished in almost all civilized states of late is attributable solely to the circumstance that knowledge of the contagious character of tuberculosis has been more and more widely disseminated and that caution in intercourse with consumptives has increased more and more in consequence. If better knowledge of the nature of tuberculosis has alone sufficed to prevent a large number of cases this must serve us as a significant admonition to make the greatest possible use of this means and to do more and more to bring it about that everybody may know the dangers that threaten them in intercourse with consumptives. It is only to be desired that the instructions may be made shorter and more precise than they generally are, and that special emphasis may be laid on the avoidance of the worst danger of infection, which is the use of bedrooms and small ill-ventilated workrooms simultaneously with consumptives. Of course the instructions must include directions as to what consumptives have to do when they cough and how they are to treat their sputum. Another measure, which has come into the foreground of late, and which at this moment plays to a certain extent a paramount part in all efforts for the combating of tuberculosis, works in quite another direction. I mean the founding of sanatoria for consumptives.

That tuberculosis is curable in its early stages must be regarded as an undisputed fact. The idea of curing as many tuberculous