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reducing the risk to others, but it his often happened that a
patient in the last stages of the disease has had to occupy a room
shared by several. In these cases no suggestion which I was able to
make could do away with the enormous risks the other occupants were
daily called upon to face.
"What is therefore urgently required is that some provision
should exist in each sanitary district in London and elsewhere for the
isolation of those who are a source of great danger to others."
"The crowded home is at present the only place available for
the very large majority of the poorer consumptives, who, from the
circumstances of their poverty and surroundings, constitute themselves
the chief centres for the spread of the disease."
"An economic error is committed by any community which erects
institutions for the treatment of what are, generally speaking, the less
dangerous cases, while doing nothing for the isolation of the more
dangerous ones which may be responsible for the infection of many
fresh units.
"In short, institutions are wanted which are not provided primarily
for the benefit of the patient, but for the isolation of the patient for
the benefit of others, and which may therefore fairly be supported
out of public funds. There are no such institutions in London, and
until they are provided we lack one of the most essential provisions
for coping with the disease.
"It is a provision strictly comparable to our present fever hospitals,
which are constructed primarily to cheek the spread of disease, and
therefore the same authority should provide isolation homes for
consumptives." (Annual report for 1903.)
About the middle of the year the Royal Commission appointed to
consider the relation of Bovine to Human Tuberculosis, and which was
appointed in consequence of Professor Koch's expression of opinion in
1901, issued an interim report, in which the following opinion was
expressed:—"That tubercle of human origin can give rise in the