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42
disease. In many cases, want of proper and sufficient food and
exposure to wet and cold predisposed to the infection.
Although in England and Wales generally the loss of life stated
to be caused by tuberculosis is now less than half of what it was some
50 years ago, it still accounts for one in ten of the total deaths
registered. Consumption, which causes seven.tenths of tuberculous
mortality, selects its victims of both, sexes, whilst in the prime of life,
and therefore at precisely that stage when their economic value as
mothers or fathers or as breadwinners is highest. From the Registrar.
General's Report it appears that in the five years ended 1907 the
urban consumption rate at all ages was higher than the rural rate
by 25 per cent. among males, but was lower by 1 per cent. among
females.
The several counties of England and Wales suffering excessively
in this respect are tabulated in order in the Registrar-General's: Annual
Report for 1908, and from this it will be seen that of the 15 counties
known to possess rates of mortality above the average for England
and Wales as a whole, not fewer than seven are Welsh. The rates
vary remarkably; for whilst in the county of Suffolk the average
phthisis-rate in the last five years has not exceeded 1,177 per 1,000,000
living, it was nearly double that amount, or 2,270 per 1,000,000 in
the county of Cardigan.
The compulsory notification of Consumption has been adopted
for a limited period' in the City of Glasgow and it will be useful to
compare the experience of this City with that of Sheffield and Bolton.
While the voluntary notification of the disease has proved a failure,
generally speaking, it has enabled a limited amount of good to be
performed by the Sanitary Authority; and it has impressed upon all
those who have thus been brought in contact with many cases of this
disease among the poorer people, two outstanding matters demanding
remedial efforts. In the first place the large proportion of those
who come under administrative control are suffering from the disease