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25
TUBERCULOSIS.
The tremendous mortality from Tuberculosis amounting to
some 60,000 deaths per annum in England and Wales alone is
very largely preventable, and attention has been drawn for many
years, by those who have studied public health matters, to the
urgent necessity which exists for adopting measures that are
calculated to diminish this appalling waste of health and life
and the misery and expense entailed by it.
Consumption (Tuberculosis of the Lungs) slays over 40,000
individuals every year in England and Wales, and a very large amount
of the disease is contracted from preceding cases.
Infected milk is a fertile source of Tuberculosis, and it can be
clearly shown to give rise to a large mortality from the disease
among infants. Sterilised milk can now be purchased, or parents
can protect their offspring and themselves in a very great measure
by using no milk which has not been previously well boiled. But
after all this sterilisation and boiling of milk is only a makeshift
remedy and the truer aim of the prevention of tuberculosis lies in the
direction of preventing the germ of the disease being conveyed in
milk. Of the samples of milk taken and examined in this country
the records show that at least 10 per cent. of them contain the germ.
That a necessary article of food, and one on which the bulk of our
infants are reared, should be allowed to disseminate disease,
broadcast without any effectual preventive measures being taken, is
without exception, the greatest blot upon our sanitary administration
of to-day.
The stamping out of tuberculosis from cattle should be carried
out on a national scheme which will involve some considerable expense
at the commencement. Cattle will have to be rigorously inspected,
infected animals isolated or slaughtered, and the flesh either
destroyed or appropriately dealt with according to the stage of the
disease. No milk must be drawn from infected animals.
The necessity of combined and organised efforts on the part of
the medical and veterinary professions, assisted by the public and the
owners of cattle, must be recognised if the eradication of tuberculosis