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(c) Deaths.
It has been difficult to find a wording sufficiently
brief, and at the same time explicit, but the above
description offers, at least, a working basis. For the
Working Classes, this classification of the results of
treatment seems to be adequate in most respects. All
treatment should have one end in view, viz., to get the
patient back to work. Permanent arrest of the disease is
infrequent, owing to the conditions under which most of
the patients live, and such patients require, therefore,
constant "patching-up." To be able to keep an individual
patient in class (i.) for 1 year means that the
treatment has succeeded for that year. The classification
adopted cuts out the personal element As the
statistics accumulate, more especially if the same system
be adopted in different districts and areas, these records
as to fitness or unfitness for work will be useful and will
enable the work done under one Scheme to be compared
with that done under another, in so far as practical
results are concerned.
Table V. gives particulars of the natures of
treatment, sub-divided into (1) Routine; (2) Institutional,
and (3) Tuberculin.
The value of treatment by tuberculin is still a controversial
subject and the majority of experts are against
its indiscriminate use, being of opinion that its value,
as such, is not proved. There is no criterion enabling
a decision being come to as to whether or not a patient
is likely to improve, far less be cured, by means of
tuberculin therapy. In connection with the Lambeth
Scheme, its use, in suitable cases, has been found to be
an aid to other methods of treatment, but only an aid,
the patients improving up to a certain point. Even with
the most careful selection of cases according to recognised
principles, some patients prove to be intolerant
to tuberculin in the smallest doses. The preparations
of tuberculin used have been (a) bacillary emulsion
(B.E.) and (b) Tuberculin Beraneck (T.Bk.) the latter