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results, not only as regards education but as regards health and the method of
keeping healthy. The children have taken their correct places at the ordinary
elementary schools to which they have returned and in some cases even have
shown themselves qualified to enter a higher standard. This is due to the
individual attention lavished on them by Mrs. Fitzgerald.
To obtain suitable work for the disabled man and woman on leaving Sanatorium
is and not improbably always will be a difficult problem. Perhaps more so
for the man than the woman. An open air job is always recommended but the
number of these is limited even if such occupations as motor driving and delivery
vans, insurance agent, painting, gardening, gardening in cemeteries, park keeping,
road sweeping, porter outside stores or mansion flats, are included. All of these
are more or less suitable but to some extent must be made to fit the man. For
instance, motor driving if the starting of the heavy vehicle could be done by an
able man; paintirig without high ladder work; a delivery van provided only small
parcels are dealt with. Park keeping and cemetery keeping are quite suitable.
Gardening too is suitable, perhaps one of the most, as it is in this kind of work
in which they are instructed in Sanatoria. Gardening work in a cemetery if the
digging of deep graves is excluded, does not entail any arduous work and it seems
a pity that most of these jobs, even by borough councils, are given to the able
bodied. House to house visiting as an insurance agent either seeking new clients
or collecting premia, becomes vry tiring after a day's tramping. Road sweeping
too is a dirty job and not therefore particularly suitable. The porter at the door
of shops or mansion flats is fairly suitable but .the lifting of heavy packages should
be avoided.
As regards the clerical worker, he should if possible return to his work
especially if the office is a well-ventilated one. The difficulty here, however, is
that his fellow workers are unwilling to work anywhere near him and do not
realize that the careful consumptive is a danger to no one. It still seems fatal for
anyone to expectorate into a blue flask, but no notice is taken of the man who
spits on the floor or pavement.
The housing of the consumptive and his family is perhaps more of a difficult
proposition even than obtaining work, and it seems as if the only solution is
colonization, a suggestion put forward with some diffidence having in mind views
recently expressed as to the imminence of the danger of transforming this country
into an island of prisons, hospitals and lunatic asylums."
Bacteriological Diagnosis of Consumption. — The number of specimens of
expectoration sent by medical men for bacteriological examinati&n, from cases in
which there was some doubt as to the diagnosis, was 749, as against 653 in 1928.
Of these, 93 were found to contain the bacillus of consumption, while the
remainder were free.
Non-Pulmonary Tuberculosis.—The great bulk of the total notifications—26
as against 22 in 1928—in the case of this form of tuberculosis came from institutions
where the patients were undergoing treatment. Visits were paid to the
homes and, where necessary, advice with regard to the obtaining of treatment was
offered.
Particulars as to the parts affected by the disease will be found in the table
on page 50.