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or the disease removed from our midst, it will be done not by the
medical treatment of cases as they arise, but by the general application
of administrative measures of a preventive nature. This is
further evident from the following considerations.
If we consider a typical case of pulmonary consumption, we
find that in its early stage there are very few prominent symptoms,
malaise, wasting with slight cough and expectoration being the
chief. The case is not as a rule infectious during this stage, but
later on as the disease progresses, with increase cough and expectoration
and other symptoms, the risk of conveying infection increases.
In the latest stage when cavities are formed in the lungs, with
profuse expectoration and constant cough, and the disease is
hastening to its end, the infectiousness of the disease becomes very
pronounced.
In the first or early stage the disease may be arrested, and the
lung may take on a healing process which may leave the patient
quite cured. Many cases have been known where this has happened
spontaneously, and may where by appropriate medical treatment
the same result has been achieved. But as the disease becomes
more advanced, these spontaneous cures and cures the result of
medical treatment become more rare. The disease in many cases
in the second stage, and even early in the third stage, has by medical
treatment, including sanatorium treatment been arrested, and the
patients improved in health, so much as to permit them to resume
their ordinary avocations, or in some cases take on work more
suitable to their condition; but in the majority of these cases
relapses have occurred which have ultimately had a fatal issue.
In the latest stage no medical treatment can be regarded as curative,
and the only effect aimed at by treatment is to render the last days
of the consumptive free from pain and distress.
Summing up, it may be said, that many cases if discovered
in the early stages, before there is much consolidation of tubercule