58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Tuberculosis 



While tuberculosis is a disease of all ages, its ravages are peculiar and 

 widespread at the beginning of life. Children contribute their fair 

 share of the awful record of one seventh of all the deaths in the world. 

 Certain peculiarities of tuberculous manifestations in early life, such as 

 the special involvement of lymph glands, bones, joints and peritoneum, 

 rather than a limitation to the lung, have made the disease an interest- 

 ing and hopeful study at this time. In order to successfully treat the 

 condition, early recognition, before much destruction of tissue has taken 

 place, is imperative. Early diagnosis, by means of inoculation, means 

 a successful cure in a large proportion of cases. Hump-backed chil- 

 dren, from tuberculosis of the spine, and permanent lameness from 

 hip-joint disease, are rapidly becoming misfortunes of the past. Not 

 only the way in which tubercle bacilli act in various tissues, but the 

 methods of their transmission, are now known, thanks to animal experi- 

 mentation. The knowledge of its spread by meat and milk has led to 

 careful inspection of carcasses and an improvement and cleaning up of 

 the milk supply in large areas of country by commissions and munici- 

 palities. The whole tuberculosis crusade, in which children are so 

 largely the beneficiaries, would have been impossible without the use of 

 rabbits and guinea pigs. The communicability of tuberculosis has thus 

 been proven and efficient steps taken to prevent its spread. The treat- 

 ment by abundant fresh air, sunlight and forced nutrition has naturally 

 followed a better understanding of the disease. Seaside and mountain 

 sanitoria, that are now so successfully treating the various forms of 

 bone and gland tuberculosis in children, are but the end products of 

 demonstrations that started in animal experimentation. Trudeau with 

 his series of inoculated rabbits, keeping some in the open air with full 

 nourishment that recovered, while those that were confined and under- 

 fed died, started the ideas that have had such fruitful results. In a pe- 

 riod of twenty years, the death rate from tuberculosis in New York 

 was reduced approximately forty per cent., and in Boston fifty-five per 

 cent. This means the escape of hundreds of children from death or 

 permanent disability. 



Finally, a most hopeful result of animal study has shown that tuber- 

 culosis is not inherited. Thus has been removed the hopelessness that 

 went with such a belief as regards the child. A knowledge that this 

 dreaded disease is usually preventable and often curable acts as a stim- 

 ulus to renewed and successful efforts for its final elimination. 



Cretinism 



The scant relief possible for most forms of idiocy is well known to 

 both physicians and teachers. In recent years one kind of mental de- 



