View report page

59
be a good bargain. An objection to a general segregation of tuberculous persons in colonies is the breakup
of family life which such a measure would entail.
Self-contained villages for the disabled in the war will shortly exist; that they will pave the way
for some similar provision for the tuberculous is, I think, certain. The experience gained in these villages
will be invaluable, although the problems of the disabled from injury and the disabled from disease are
not identical.
Homes for advanced cases.
Homes for cases suffering from advanced tuberculosis of a character which shall attract these
unfortunate people are a pressing need. They must be really homes and not institutions in the sense
that the working classes employ this term.
I have had time but to sketch briefly this big subject. I have purposely not referred to the allimportant
question of prevention. If we may trust to all we read nowadays, the future will see sweeping
reforms which will make for a lessening of the incidence of tuberculosis; better condition of work and
better houses, more equitable distribution of profits, revised hours of labour, and some degree of equalisation
of rich and poor in respect of the amenities of life ; in short, greater appreciation that the good
health of the worker is the best asset of the employer and of the State. This is all to the good. Still,
the millennium is not yet; the day is far off when tuberculosis will be a spent force. In the meantime,
therefore, while pressing forward with measures calculated to check the spread of tuberculosis, we must
not lose sight of the individual consumptive, but, with no less purpose, persevere to find means to brighten
his outlook.
Noel D. Bardswell.
Importance
of preventive
measures.
55580 y 2