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73
be very glad to have the opportunity of entering a sanatorium,
102 did not wish to accept.
Home Circumstances and Social Conditions.—Ninetynine
families were in great poverty, 20 others were destitute, that
is to say, 119 households, or 28 per cent, of the whole number,
bore evidence which convinced the casual visitor of the existence
of very straitened circumstances.
This raises an important issue. Public Health measures can,
and will, prevent the spread of phthisis to others provided the
home circumstances are favourable and the patients are willing.
Progressive sanitation will help to prevent fresh cases in the comparatively
well-to-do, but, in its larger sense, the prevention of
phthisis in the poor is a social problem—the relief and prevention
of poverty.
Eighty-seven patients were total abstainers, 170 were said to be
moderate drinkers, 33 drank to excess.
Ninety-seven families, comprising 325 children and adults, lived
and slept in one room. For these, the prevention of infection
would be a matter of great difficulty, if not almost impossible.
Overcrowding was discovered in 21 households.
In 348 homes, excluding common lodging-houses, there were
1,399 other members of the family besides the patient—these
would be naturally in close contact with him and very liable to
be infected. In addition to these close contacts, there were 2,211
remote contacts living in these houses, so that there would be
altogether 3,610 persons more or less exposed to infection from
the phthisis patients living in their houses.
In making this estimation in the case of tenements in buildings,
regard is only had to the patients in the affected households.
This number does not include the occupants of the tenements
on the same landing as the patient.