Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/358

354 family predisposition to the disease. This percentage accords fairly closely with the published statistics of Dr. Williams and Dr. Cotton, who give, as the result of their investigations into this point, 34 per cent, and 36 per cent., respectively. In an inquiry carried out by Dr. Squire he found that while about 33 per cent, of consumptives present a family history of tuberculosis, statistics give grounds for attributing the disease to occupations and surroundings in by far the greater number of these cases, and place the possible influence of heredity at about 9 per cent, instead of 33 per cent.

It is certain that persons who have recovered from consumption breed perfectly strong and vigorous children, who remain throughout life free from the disease, and it is preposterous to suggest that if we succeeded in saving the lives of the 40,000 persons who die annually of consumption we should have thereby added to the burdens of the community. We should thereby directly and indirectly have secured enormous economic advantages in the productive industry of the persons saved, and in their contributions to the maintenance of those dependent on them. Mr. Baldwin Latham estimates the saving to this country in twenty years, by sanitary work, in funerals avoided, sickness prevented, and wage-earning powers retained, at £267,141,060; and of that huge sum a big slice must go to the credit of tuberculosis.

Then again, vulnerability to consumption does not necessarily imply either bodily or mental weakness. The disease is most fatal in the prime of life, and strikes down, not merely the feeble and incapable, but the strong and vigorous, catching them at some moment of temporary debility. The intellectually gifted seems to be peculiarly susceptible to it, and it has robbed the world of incalculable benefits in the fruits of genius. It is not by any means merely an eliminator of waste material, but a ruthless destroyer of some of the finest elements of our species, and we need have no misgivings in resisting it and in doing our best to extirpate it altogether. The enormous reduction that has taken place in the mortality from consumption has been an unmixed good, and its final disappearance from amongst us, which is not a chimera, but a reasonable anticipation, will be attended by nothing but gain to mankind.

Dr. Maudsley thinks we shall never be able to keep bacilli out of the body. Well, as regards the tubercle bacilli, we mean to try! And his gloomy prognostications in this matter are considerably discounted when we find associated with them some disparagement of antiseptic surgery and of the sterilization of food because, forsooth, there are hundreds of different kinds of bacilli in the human mouth and intestines, and because the nutritive value of certain kinds of food may be reduced by sterilization. Our operating theaters, as they exist to-day, and every kitchen range, are a standing protest against Dr. Maudsley's