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58
ST. PANCRAS BOROUGH COUNCIL.
Public Health Department.
Pulmonary Tuberculosis (Consumption).
ADVICE TO CONSUMPTIVES.
Description of Consumption.
Consumption is not an inherited disease, but susceptibility' to take it may
be sometimes inherited, sometimes induced by wrong habits or unhealthy
conditions ; susceptibility is induced by insufficient or ill-assorted food, by
strong drink, by scanty clothing, by sexual excesses, by any debilitating
habits or illnesses, or by such unhealthy conditions as overcrowding, want
of ventilation, closeness, darkness, dirtiness, and dampness in dwellings.
It is not an incurable disease; if treated sufficiently early and thoroughly it
is frequently cured, and in some pronounced cases the disease may be arrested,
but at any stage of the disease, from early to far advanced, a consumptive,
if not careful, may not only infect others, especially members of his own
family, but may also re-infect himself.
Consumption is a wasting disease caused by germs, which grow and
multiply in the lungs. The germs give rise to coughing and spitting. In
coughing, some of the germs are sometimes shot into the air in the spray
of the cough, and in spitting they are always discharged from the lungs
in large numbers in the spit or phlegm.
Consumption is spread by the germs in the phlegm or spit and also in
the cough-spray. They are occasionally coughed in spray directly into the
mouth, nose, or eyes of another person, or are passed from mouth to mouth
in kissing on the lips, or in drinking from the same vessel, or eating with
the same table articles, but most frequently they are spread by being spat
out in the phlegm or spit upon the surface of a covered or enclosed place
where they dry up into dust which is wafted about and breathed into the
lungs. This infected dust is most dangerous, and the most important point
in the prevention of consumption is that the phlegm spat out by a consumptive
should never be allowed to dry and should be burnt or boiled as soon as
possible.
Consumption germs are destroyed by sunlight, dayl ght, and fresh air;
by the most scrupulous cleanliness in every detail of living; and by burning
or boiling or washing away the phlegm and spit discharged from the nose
and mouth of a consumptive.
Consumption is cured, arrested or improved by living and sleeping in
the open air, that is, by plenty of sunlight and fresh air, which is food for
the lungs; by feeding well, that is, by plenty of wholesome, nourishing food
for the body (especially fatty food) ; by clothing warmly, that is, so as to
enable living and sleeping comfortably in the open air to be carried on; and
by graduated outdoor work so as to restore the bodily vigour, which is the
most effective means of resisting consumption.