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28
CONSUMPTION.
As the result of the experience of another year of the voluntary
notification of Consumption, one is impressed with the fact that
although much good has undoubtedly been achieved by that measure
there is a great need for the adoption of further measures. In the first
place the voluntary notification of the disease enables the Sanitary
Authority to deal with only a limited number of cases. During the
year 1902, for instance, we received 26 notifications of this disease ;
whereas there must have been in the community many scores of
further cases who wou'd have benefited greatly from the little which
we are able to do. In the Borough we make provision for bacteriological
examination of suspected expectoration, for the disinfection
of infected dwellings and articles of clothing, etc., the gratuitous
distribution of disinfectant for spittoons, etc., and for the distribution
of handbills and placards, and it is doubtless a great pity that the
sphere of this useful work should be prescribed or limited to the
few cases voluntarily notified to us. It is very desirable therefore
that the disease should shortly be made compulsorily notifiable and
this fact would considerably aid in the struggle against the disease.
The public is in my opinion now educated up to such a measure.
Nothing has been more surprising to me than the circumstance that
in every one of the houses visited by myself the patient and those
about him are fully aware of the communicability of the complaint.
Perhaps the fear of infection has gained too great a hold of the public
mind and there is a tendency to exaggerate the comparatively slight
infectivity of the disease. Doubtless it is better to exaggerate this
than to err in the other direction, but there is the risk that it may
lead to hardship in the relations and treatment of the patient and
so it is most desirable to point out to all concerned, as in the handbill
issued by the Council, that if a few simple precautions are taken a
consumptive patient need not be a source of danger to anybody.
Voluntary notification is still to a great extent a makeshift, but it has
served the useful purpose of educating public opinion so as to prepare
it for a measure of compulsory notification.