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then the tuberculous patients have reaped a great advantage, not
only of better health but also of a useful knowledge of how best to
regulate their lives in future.
The Sanatorium is an important link, but only a link, in a comparatively
long chain of preventive measures. By itself it can do
little to prevent Consumption; with the working-classes it cannot
accomplish much in the way of cure of the disease; the disease will
often be arrested, but if the individual is allowed to return to those
conditions under which he contracted the disease he will almost certainly
relapse.
A great deal is being done, but our efforts are quite insufficient
for the great purpose in hand and absurdly inadequate in many
respects, and this is largely so because we have neither the resolution
not the statesmanship to make them adequate. The dreadful scourge
would be almost eradicated within a few years if the importance of
this effort to the individual and the State were fully appreciated,
for our knowledge of all the circumstances which favour the disease
and promote its spread has reached a very complete stage. The lines
upon which the campaign should proceed are in the direction of forming
public opinion in favour of a better housing and better living, a
milk-supply free from the germ, and a better provision for the early
discovery of cases and the sufficient isolation of the late cases of the
disease. All this must necessarily involve a great expenditure, but,
then, on the computation of the great statistician, Farr, who estimated
the average value of a human life at £150, the money loss to England
and Wales from these preventible deaths (quite apart from the 3 or 4
years of previous sickness) amounts to nearly six millions of pounds
annually. The fact that over 30 per cent, of the deaths from Consumption
occur in Poor Law Institutions is testimony of the pauperising
effects of the disease. As almost all the sufferers are admitted
at a late stage of the disease, these Institutions have doubtless played
a useful part in isolating cases which are the most dangerous to others.