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other 90 cases there was no such history. It is probable that the
importance of a family history in consumption has been overrated.
It has endowed the patient with a distress bordering on
fatalism-it has tended to convince him that it is useless to fight
against the scourge, and that preventive measures are useless, do
not prolong life, or retard the progres of the disease.
It is exceedingly rare to find a child born with consumption or
tuberculosis actually present in its tissue at birth. Many have
doubted the existence of such cases and await further proof.
What seems to be fairly well established is the inheritance
in the various parts of the body of a medium, or what may be
called, for lack of a better term, a soil favourable to the growth
of the tubercle germ. If now by favourable sanitary surroundings,
good food, and warm clothing the body may be armed and
strengthened it is quite possible that it may be able to destroy the
germ even if it were implanted, or at least inhibit its growth and
propagation.
Many cases of family infection are doubtless cases of infection
not at birth but at later epochs when the child crawls, inhaling the
dried expectoration voided by its parents, or eats from the same
plate, using the same uncleaned utensils as its consumptive
parents, or drinks from the same uncleaned cup, as many of the
children of the poor are apt to do.
Source and Predisposing Causes—The presumptive
source, where it could be ascertained, was generally a case with
which the patient had been in close contact over a long period of
time. Thus, a husband had contracted it from his wife. One
man had taken it from a consumptive boy-oth had slept in the
same bed for five years.
A girl had nursed her mother with phthisis for a few months
before her death and later became herself consumptive.
A father ill with consumption, living and sleeping with his
family in one room, used to nurse and fondle his child of three
years who subsequently developed the disease.