View report page

118
fresh air, and good plain food. Cleanliness and fresh air are
commodities cheap enough for the poorest people, and need to
be continually insisted upon by the Tuberculosis Officer in his
visits to the patients' homes. Good food is sometimes more
difficult to procure where the family resources are very slender,
but even in these cases if the housekeeper buys only nourishing
and inexpensive articles of diet, it is surprising how far a little
money will go in the buying of food, even in these days when
we hear so much about the increased cost of living.
Nevertheless, there will still be some cases where the
purchase even of inexpensive good food is beyond the family
purse, and it is in these cases that the Dispensary acts as an
intermediary between patients and contacts, and voluntary
organisations which have it in their power to extend pecuniary
assistance where needed. Other contacts, where the line of
demarcation between contact and patient becomes almost
indefinable and the individual may be said to have progressed
beyond the pre-tubercular stage, will need to invoke, or have
invoked for them, the help of the goddess Hygeia.
Such contacts, if children, will be drafted to open air schools,
and in the case of adults, to farm colonies for a longer or shorter
period. In some cases the provision of an out-door shelter and
proper use thereof will be sufficient to bring back the individual
to normal health. Only a very small proportion, viz., those
showing actual signs of consumption will need to be sent to a
Sanatorium.
From the contacts and pre-tubercular cases we pass on to
those individuals suffering from Tuberculosis in an early stage.
These include children with enlarged tubercular glands, which
show no evidence of breaking down, and the youth or adult with
slight morning or evening cough, and one or two crepitations near
one or other of the apices of the lung, but showing practically
no other physical signs. Let it be said at once that so varied