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113
THE PREVENTION OF CONSUMPTION.
The hypothesis that consumption is contagious, entertained
on the continent long before it found acceptance in
this country, is now generally accepted as the expression of
a scientific fact. The subject had received attention in
these reports so far as 1881—in which year it was stated
that " Modern researches, which have thrown great light on
the origin of tubercle, raise a presumption that tuberculosis
may really be an infectious disease—a specific fever of
slow progress, with a veiled resemblance to other specific
eruptive fevers." These researches, it was added, "encourage
the hope that, in time, a remedy may be found for this scourge
of the human race." Later, a solid basis for the theory of
contagiousness, was established by the discovery, by Koch, of
an organism—indifferently spoken of as germ, microbe, or
bacillus—which is now acknowledged to be the immediate
agent in the genesis of tuberculosis in all its varied forms.
The first reference to this bacillus was made in the annual
report for 1890. Heredity, which formerly was thought to be
the all-sufficient explanation of the occurrence of " decline,"
in successive members of the same family, is now relegated to
a secondary position, as a factor in the causation of consumption
; mainly, if not wholly, as creative of a predisposition
which favours the development of the bacillus tuberculosis—an
organism which, as a rule, does not flourish save in a suitable
soil, i.e., where unhealthy or unwholesome conditions of life
induce deterioration of general health. This view of the
cause of the spread of tubercular disease amongst the badly
housed and ill-nourished poor, as well as the means of combatting
the disease, found expression in the report for 1879,
wherein it was observed that "abundance of sunlight and pure
air, efficient drainage and its corollary, a dry soil, good food
and warm clothing, and temperance in all things, are powerful
antidotes, to the bane of tubercle, which is fostered by the