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children have to be fed and clothed—he has no money. And then commences the
disintegration of his home. Little by little the furniture goes; everything,
beginning with the ornaments which mark his affection for his home, reaches
the pawnshop periodically. He is compelled from time to time to move to less
and less expensive rooms, until eventually you find him and his family huddled
together in a mean room in a mean street, which he, in his days of health, would
have scorned. And then finally, every joy and pleasure and hope fled, death
lays its relentless hand on him whose heart once swelled with honest pride in
his home and his family, who are now left dependent on the tender mercies ot
the world, and—the rates!
Is it any wonder that Sir Lauder Brunton should exclaim in the face of
such a state of affairs as the preceding figures and facts disclose, —" The
mortality is awful; the misery it causes its victims and their families is
appalling; the actual expense, and still more the loss of productive power
which it entails upon the country is enormous. And yet the whole of this evil
is preventable ; it only exists in consequence of ignorance and apathy."
And it is thus that a poor human being—the God-made machine is
scrapped before half his working days have been completed, and civilization, by
its failure to provide means whereby this disease might be warded off, has
allowed it! Compare this with the care taken of a man-made machine. Is
there a manufacturer, a trading company, an engineering firm who possess a
machine, who would act in this way who would allow it to get rusty or
useless through lack of care, attention, and forethought, so that before half its
life had been completed it had to be carted to the scrap-heap? Only a fool
would do so. Yet, until recently, this has been the fate of the God-made
machine in all countries—and almost up to now in Islington. A higher civilization,
which made its advent with the twentieth century, appeals for something
nobler and better from the nations in their treatment of the tuberculous;
and the nations everywhere are responding to that appeal.
Tuberoulosis—A Class Disease.—If you study the map which lies
on the table, you cannot fail to notice that the red spots, which indicate cases
of pulmonary tuberculosis, are mostly aggregated in those districts in which
the artizans and working classes dwell, while in those parts of the borough
where people better circumstanced, socially and monetarily, reside, they are
few and far between. This shows that the disease attacks one class of the
people much more than another. The disease may, therefore, be almost
designated " a class disease," although actually it is not. There is, however,
no doubt that it is far more prevalent in those districts where the people are
poor, and where the tenement houses are most fully occupied, for there you will
find the underfed, the poorly clothed, and the debilitated of the population.