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39
PHTHISIS.
This disease has been one of the most deservedly popular health
subjects under discussion during the year. Public meetings have
been held in almost every important town throughout the country,
under, in many cases, the most distinguished patronage. The
importance of the subject cannot be over-estimated when it is
considered that some 70,000 persons die every year from the disease
in this country, and that considerably more than a quarter of a
million persons are affected with it. It is however some comfort to
know that within the last 50 years the mortality from this disease
has diminished by one half, due, it is only fair to assume, to
improved methods in relation to public and private health, the
better feeding of the people attainable by higher wages, and let us
hope to the improvement in the habits, exercise, and cleanliness of
the community generally. Although this improvement has been
observed in the country as a whole, London has not progressed in
anything like the same satisfactory manner. Our overgrown city,
with its marked contrasts in density of population, has in many of
its parts remained more or less stationary. Our parish with a fifth
of its population on the side of " overcrowdedness " has a death rate
from Phthisis which places it very near to the worst areas. The
disease is due to the introduction into the lungs of the tubercle
bacillus, a microscopic vegetable parasite, through the medium of
the expectoration from an infected person which has become dry, and,
as dust floating in the air, is inhaled into the lungs. The disease is
infectious, but practically so only to a limited extent, and to persons
in a lowered state of health. It is not transmitted from parent to
child as some diseases are, yet in certain individuals there is a
distinct hereditary susceptibility which favours the growth of the
bacillus in the lungs of persons suitably prepared to receive it.
The chief causes of the disease are—
1. Poor food of a vegetable kind.
2. Dark and ill-ventilated dwellings whore sunlight and
fresh air cannot enter.