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Approximately one-eighth of the total number of deaths of Shoreditch parishioners
during 1898 were due to consumption and the other forms of tuberculosis. The
death-rate for the year attributable to tuberculosis was 2.84 per 1,000 inhabitants.
The deaths from consumption, together with the deaths and death-rates from
all forms of tuberculosis for the years 1892-90, are contained in the subjoined
table:—

Heavy though the mortality is at the present time it is considerably less than it
was thirty or forty years ago. This reduction is doubtless to a large extent attributable
to the measures carried out for the general improvement of the sanitary
condition of the parish.
Consumption and the other forms of tuberculosis are all more or less infectious.
They are caused by a microbe which may infect the human being by means of the
air breathed, or by food, especially milk and meat.
Persons suffering from consumption should expectorate or spit the material they
cough up into little pieces of paper or rag, which should be burnt at once, or into
suitable receptables containing water or a disinfectant, so that measures may betaken
to destroy the infectious matter. The material coughed up oftentimes contains the
microbes of the disease in large numbers and if any of it is allowed to become dry
and as dust float in the air it renders such air dangerous to breathe. It is therefore
a matter of great importance, not only in the interest of the patients and their friends
but also to the community generally, that every precaution should be taken in cases
of consumption to destroy the expectoration or material spat up with the least possible
loss of time. Tuberculosis is a disease which is widely spread amongst cattle.
Especially so is this the case among dairy stock. An instance is given in the recent
report of the Eoyal Commission on Tuberculosis where out of 90 cows in a dairy in
Cheshire which were subjected to the tuberculin test no less than 70 were found to be
suffering from tuberculosis. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the danger attending the
use of milk obtained from such a dairy as this. Milk in this country is very largely
consumed, especially by children, without being cooked, boiled milk being less pleasant
to the taste than milk in the raw state. It is, however, important to bear in mind
that the milk upon which infants are fed ought always to be boiled. Boiling the milk,