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It is, however, some comfort to know that within the last fifty years
the mortality from the 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, statistics show that Loudon has not progressed in quite so
satisfactory a manner. Still in London during the last fifty years, the
diminution in the death rate from Phthisis has not been small, for in
the decade 1851-1860, the death rate from Phthisis was 2.86 per 1,000
living, whilst for the year 1901 it was 1.71, a reduction of 40 per cent
This favourable tendency in the disease has not been seen in every
district or Borough of the Metropolis. For instance, in at least five
of the districts the deaths from Phthisis have steadily year by year gone
on increasing. If one looks at the figures for 1895, it will be seen that
the Parish of St. George the Martyr had a death-rate of 3.1; St. Saviour,
3.28; Strand, 3.16; Holborn, 3.13; whilst the salubrious Hampstead had
one of 1.01. Coming to the last year of these districts as Vestries, viz.:—
1900, St. George the Martyr was 3.65; St. Saviour, 3.15; Strand, 3.68;
Holborn, 2.77; and Hampstead, 0.85.
Our Borough with nearly a fifth of its population overcrowded, had a
death-rate from Phthisis of 2.83 for 1902.
These high death-rates from the disease call for the deepest attention
of the Public Health Authority.
Through the researches of Professor Koch of Berlin, we know that
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.
To healthy adults living under fairly good conditions, and not coming
into close contact with phthisical sufferers, there is no danger of infection
but healthy persons run a distinct risk if the contact between them and
those infected is intimate and prolonged.
Professor Koch in his paper which he read at the British Congress
on Tuberculosis held in London in 1901, stated that the main source
of the infection of Tuberculosis is the sputum of consumptive patients,
and that the measures for the combating of Tuberculosis must aim at the
prevention of the danger arising from its diffusion. Professor Koch's
description of the poor consumptive with his family in one room