THE GEE AT WHITE PLAGUE. 299 



sandth of an inch — an organism which multiplies so rapidly and so 

 invisibly and insidiously that the consumptive, in coughing, emits 

 several billions of it during twenty-four hours. 



There would be no excuse truly for putting such sinister details 

 as these before the laity were it not that the condition of things, which 

 we term consumption or tuberculosis, is a tremendous, much-pervading 

 human factor. I have intimated that of all death-dealing agencies, 

 Koch's bacillus claims the greatest number of victims; the cholera, 

 typhus, the plague of the middle ages, small-pox — are not in the run- 

 ning with consumption. The last, although its ravages have not 

 been so picturesquely gruesome, has claimed many more victims than 

 any of the others; it has probably been coeval with human existence, 

 and very likely has afflicted our primordial ancestors. 



To-day every third or fourth adult dies of consumption. In the 

 periods between birth and senescence every seventh death is caused by 

 it. The point about these two propositions is this: Very few of us 

 die only of old age ; almost every one dies of one disease or another, so 

 that it would not seem to matter much what the particular disease 

 might be that would carry us off. But, although all periods of life 

 are precious — infancy and childhood and old age, as well as any other 

 — it is during adult life that consumption gets in its fell work, in the 

 periods when young people should entertain wholesome anticipations 

 of matrimony, when husbands should be strong to work for and main- 

 tain their families, when wives should have strength to rear their 

 children, and when men and women generally should have physical 

 and mental capacity so that they may accomplish the world's work. 



No one knows better than the physician how truly touching may 

 be the condition of things we are considering at the first of these 

 periods — the period of early manhood and womanhood, when poetry, 

 music, flowers, sunshine, and the new-born instinct to love and power 

 to inspire love, are gloriously dominant, when sentiments ring true, 

 when thoughts of compromise with unworthy factors, of subordinating 

 ideals to considerations of interest, have not yet been conceived; when 

 the love exists which welcomes sacrifices and feels that if it is ever to 

 manifest itself, it should do so most gladly and most abundantly when 

 the beloved is sorely stricken; the love that feels bound to triumph 

 over all obstacles, and which snaps its fingers contemptuously in the 

 face of fate. One is proud for human nature when such spirit is ex- 

 hibited. Nevertheless it is then that this dreadful disease demands 

 with deplorable frequency to be reckoned with. And it is then that 

 the mature physician discerns the practical certainty that marriage, 

 in cases where consumption exists or is suspected, will be followed by 

 intensified illness, and perhaps death (which might not otherwise have 

 occurred), on the part of the sick one; the possibility of infection of 



