474 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cated by these figures is due to the first beginnings of these measures. 

 Considerably greater success is to be expected of their further de- 

 velopment. Biggs hopes to have got so far in five years that in the 

 city of JSTew York alone the annual number of deaths from tuber- 

 culosis will be 3,000 less than formerly. 



Now, I do indeed believe that it will be possible to render the 

 sanatoria considerably more efficient. If strict care be taken that 

 only patients be admitted for whom the treatment of those establish- 

 ments is well adapted and if the duration of the treatment be pro- 

 longed it will certainly be possible to cure 50 per cent, and perhaps 

 still more. But even then, and even if the number of the sanatoria be 

 greatly increased, the total effect will always remain but moderate. 

 The sanatoria will never render the other measures I have mentioned 

 superfluous. If their number becomes great, however, and if they per- 

 form their functions properly, they may materially aid the strictly 

 sanitary measures in the conflict with tuberculosis. 



If now, in conclusion, we glance back once more to what has been 

 done hitherto for the combating of tuberculosis, and forward to what 

 has still to be done, we are at liberty to declare with a certain satis- 

 faction that very promising beginnings have already been made. 

 Among these I reckon the consumption hospitals of England, the 

 legal regulations regarding notification in Norway and Saxony, the 

 organization created by Biggs in New York (the study and imitation 

 of which I most urgently recommend to all municipal sanitary authori- 

 ties), the sanatoria, and the instruction of the people. All that is 

 necessary is to go on developing these beginnings, to test and, if possible, 

 to increase their influence on the diminution of tuberculosis, and 

 wherever anything useful has yet been done to do likewise. If we 

 allow ourselves to be continually guided in this enterprise by the spirit 

 of genuine preventive medical science, if we utilize the experience 

 gained in conflict with other pestilences, and aim, with clear recognition 

 of the purpose and resolute avoidance of wrong roads, at striking the 

 evil at its root, then the battle against tuberculosis, which has been so 

 energetically begun, cannot fail to have a victorious issue. 



