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In the majority of cases visited, the rooms occupied by the sick
persons have been found to be fairly clean and ventilated, but as a
rule even in these cases one has been able to make suggestions for
improving the existing arrangements and reducing the risk to others.
But it has happened in more than one instance that a patient in the
last stages of the disease has had to occupy a room shared by several
others. In those cases no suggestion which we were able to make
could do away with the enormous risks the other occupants were
daily called upon to face, and what is urgently required is that some
provision should be made in connection with each sanitary authority
in London and elsewhere for the isolation of those cases who are a
source of great danger to others. It is impossible to get these
patients into one of the few Sanatoria for consumption which at
present exist. Many of them are patients who will certainly never
recover and they are almost paupers. The provision of isolation for
these patients is in my opinion more urgently demanded than
sanatoria for the cure of patients who are in the earlier stages, and
who in the large majority of cases need not be a source of danger to
others.
CANCER.
There are indications that Cancer may possibly be a communicable
disease ; not in the same degree as Small-pox or even
Consumption, but that healthy individuals may in rare cases be
capable of contracting the disease from a previous sufferer. Partly
on this account, but mainly because of the increasing prevalence of
the disease, a great effort is now being made to learn the origin of
the disease. In Cancer we have a terrible disease furnishing a progressive
increase in mortality—more especially among males. No
one can reasonably doubt the reality of this increase. It can
be demonstrated as not due to any altered age and sex distribution
of the population of this country and the statistics of other