View report page

88
be very glad to have the opportunity of entering a sanatorium
143 did not wish to accept.
Home Circumstances and Social Conditions.—One
hundred and six families were in great poverty, 24 others were
destitute, that is to say 130 households, or 30 per cent. of the
whole number, bore evidencs which convinced the casual visitor
of the existence of very straitened circumstances.
This raised 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.
One hundred and sixty-one patients were total abstainers, 204
were said to be moderate drinkers, 30 drank to excess.
One hundred and five families, comprising 358 children and
adults, lived and slept, each family, in one room. For these the
prevention of infection would be a matter of great difficulty, if
not almost impossible.
Overcrowding was discovered in 45 households.
In 393 homes, excluding common lodging houses, there were
altogether 1,466 other members of the family besides the patient
—these would be naturally in close contact with the disease and
very liable to be infected. In addition to these close contacts,
there were 2,389 remote contacts living in these houses, so that
there would be altogether 3,855 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.