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In Great Britain alone, at the present time, probably a quarter of a
million persons are suffering from consumption, and are thereby more or
less unfitted for the proper discharge of the duties of life.
The causes which predispose to consumption are such as bring about
a low state of health : the susceptibility to it, often inherited, may also be
induced by unhealthy conditions of life, evil habits, etc., as overcrowding
in close, unventilated, dirty, dark, damp dwellings; bad or insufficient
food ; and intemperance.
The disease may be prevented by the adoption of means for the
improvement of the general health of the community, and by the removal
of insanitary conditions in houses, etc.; in many cases, moreover, it is
curable, especially in the early stages.
The Tubercle Bacillus or Microbe.
Science has of late years proved beyond doubt that consumption is
caused by a minute living organism, the "bacillus of tubercle," and that
the presence in the body of the tubercle bacillus is most rarely inherited,
but is introduced from without. What is inherited is the non-resistile
condition of the vitality of certain cells in the body which are unable to
destroy the tubercle bacillus, when it has become accidentally introduced
into the system. To prevent consumption it is necessary, firstly, to avoid
all those means by which the tubercle bacillus may be introduced into the
body, and, secondly, to avoid all those causes which may enfeeble the
vitality of the cells of the body, and so render them unable to destroy the
bacillus should it become introduced.
Consumption is caused by the presence in the body, and especially in
the luugs, of a microbe derived usually from a person suffering from the
disease.
This microbe under favouring circumstances—for example, in dark,
dirty, damp houses, and unventilated, dusty, overcrowded rooms, workshops,
factories, etc.—is capable of living outside the body for a long time.
It exists in enormous numbers in the spit coughed up from the lungs
of consumptive persons.
It may be present in the fiesh, etc., of tuberculous animals, and it is
certainly present in the milk of cows suffering from tubercular disease of
the udder.