View report page

Each death and notification has been enquired into. Many of
the latter naturally become the former in a few months, so that the
enquiries into deaths, as a general rule, furnish the most reliable
facts. From these enquiries it appears that 111 cases (out of 251
deaths) were infected by relatives, which is 44.2 per cent. of the
total.
When it is considered that there may be no outward signs of
early phthisis, that it is frequently to the patient's interest to
conceal the disease, and that the greater number of cases go about
for years without medical attendance, or are detected only in the
later stages or at death, this percentage of cases where a definite
history of personal contact was made out must be counted as high.
In many of these cases the history indicated family infection
through several generations. The number of cases with a history
of probable infection by persons not related must always be small,
since it is the cause of death among relatives which in the greater
number of instances furnishes the clue to infection, and this clue
is always wanting where the histories of fellow workmen, lodgers,
etc., in past years are enquired into. But there is abundant
evidence to show that infection may be derived from such sources.