3 oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the healthy mate; the likelihood of unhealthy offspring, or of its early 

 and perhaps — under the circumstances — fortunate death; and other 

 indications suggesting disaster at the very beginning of married life, 

 when all the circumstances, if any time in life ever required it, should 

 be favorable and founded upon virility of mind and body. 



The tubercle bacillus gets into the body either with the air we 

 breathe, or with tuberculous food-stuffs, or rarely through wounds. 

 Wherever it implants itself an inflammation may occur about it, with the 

 result that a tubercle is formed {tuber is Latin for root or bulb). 

 This tubercle is in size from that of a millet seed to a hickory nut or 

 larger. Its development is called tuberculosis. Under favorable cir- 

 cumstances it becomes surrounded by fibrous tissue, somewhat like the 

 scar which would follow a wound of the skin; and then the tubercle 

 will be comparatively harmless to the organism. However, 'cheesy 

 degeneration' may result, two or several adjacent tubercles may break 

 down together, a cavity may form, containing purulent material in 

 which, on being coughed up, the bacilli are discerned by the microscope. 

 These bacilli and these tubercles may exist in any part of the body — 

 the skin, the bones, the joints, the lymph glands. And they, or the 

 products of their disintegration, may be carried by the lymph and 

 blood channels to other parts; and it is probable that in many cases 

 the pulmonary type of tuberculosis is not originally a lesion of the 

 lung tissue, but a product transferred from a point of implantation 

 elsewhere. 



If tuberculosis does not undergo fibrosis it is likely to be developed, 

 through the agency of some acute 'predisposing cause,' into the com- 

 plex of symptoms which we term consumption. Those thus afflicted 

 become progressively very weak and very much emaciated. Their 

 hearts beat rapidly and they are apt to have a pink flush on their 

 cheeks, which is quite unlike the blush of. a healthy person, but which 

 is in reality an indication of the fever that is consuming them. The 

 rest of their faces is very pale and thin and is suffused with a clammy 

 sweat. Their cheek bones are prominent. And their eyes have a 

 quite unnatural brilliancy, seeming large and beautiful. But their 

 luster is not of health — rather of disease and too often of death. It is 

 such eyes that the poet Bryant has portrayed in a touching and melan- 

 choly sonnet. And the consumptive spits blood sometimes, and is 

 short of breath, and has a persistent, hacking cough, that harasses 

 him dreadfully, and does not let him rest. 



The reader is now likely to wonder how, with all these teeming 

 billions of bacilli about, any one ever escapes the disease. The fact is, 

 the bacillus allows very few of us to die without leaving some trace of 

 its activity in our system. Jeder Mensch hat am Ende ein bischen 

 Tuberculose, as ISTaegali demonstrated in 98 per cent, of the bodies 



