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120
The number of deaths bears a fairly close proportional
relation to the sanitary condition of the respective districts;
the mortality, moreover, being highest amongst the poorer
classes.
Less detailed information respecting the mortality
from tubercular diseases in 1899 will be found in the table
at page 130.
The Action of the Vestry.—The first monthly
report in 1899 dealt somewhat fully with" the prevention of
consumption." The importance of the subject being recognised,
the report was referred by your Vestry to the sanitary
committee, who remitted it to a sub-committee, which included
all of the medical members. The sub-committee, after much
consideration, reported on the reference as follows:—
"1 It may be stated that Tuberculosis is a communicable disease. Consumption,
its most common form, is usually spread, from person to
person, by the inhalation of the specific germ (microbe or bacillus) of
the disease, derived from the dried expectorated matter of a consumptive
person, and floating in the atmosphere as dust. But consumption and
other forms of tuberculosis may be propagated from animal to man by
the ingestion of insufficiently cooked flesh, or the raw milk of tuberculous
animals. In young children infected milk is the principal cause of those
forms of the disease known as tabes mesenterica (or consumption of the
bowels), and tubercular meningitis (or inflammation of the membranes
of the brain), etc.
"2. But multitudes of people inhale the germs, and eat the flesh, and drink
the milk, of tuberculous animals, without themselves becoming the
subjects of tuberculosis—in the absence of any predisposition to the
disease. Others have inherited a predisposition: many more, probably,
contract a predisposition owing to the circumstances in which they are
placed, or for which they are personally responsible. The development
of tuberculosis in individuals is largely due to this predisposition, which,
in turn, is favoured by whatever tends to the lowering of the general
health; as, for instance, filthy habits of life and sensual excesses;
poverty, which means insufficiency of food and clothing; overcrowding,
which implies the re-breathing of polluted air,in rooms, which, too often,
are ill-lighted and unventilated, and to be found in houses that are