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131
The compulsory notification of the disease has disclosed
several instances (3) in which the patients had not been informed
by the doctor notifying the disease that they were suffering from
it. It is unfair to place the onus of conveying this information
upon the sanitary official; and the advice which he can offer is
not likely to be heeded if the patient doubts whether he is suffering
from the disease. In 1 case the request was made that
I should not visit, because it was undesirable to acquaint the.
patient of his condition. Where this is the wish of a medical
practitioner the request is, of course, complied with.
The diagnosis of the medical attendant was disputed by the
patient in 1 case, but a bacteriological examination proved
the medical attendant to be in the right; the correctness
of the diagnosis was subsequently disproved in four other
instances. In practically all the cases the diagnosis was confirmed
by a bacteriological examination of the sputa. In 3 instances the
patients were dead within two or three days of notification; and
in 5 instances the patient had been removed to the Infirmary or
to Hospital by the time a notification certificate reached us. In
5 cases the patient had left the address from which they were
notified; and in 2 cases false addresses were given.
Some further points of interest in connection with the notified
cases of Consumption are: That in 1 case the patient had spat
blood occasionally for 25 years; that one individual ascribed his
infection to having shared a bed for 9 months with a consumptive,
and another individual to having worked at a small bench
for 2 years with a sufferer from the disease; that in the case of
the non-pulmonary forms of Tuberculosis, in which the bones
and joints were affected, parents commonly attributed the onset
of the condition to falls and injuries; and that, to instance what is
probably one of the chief determining causes of consumption,
namely, poverty, a consumptive mother (a widow with three
children) was found to be living upon a total income of 15s. 6d.
per week, 6s. 6d. of which had to go in rent.
Tuberculosis is a symptom of social pathology, and those
optimists who talk of exterminating the disease in the near future