3 o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is easily to be comprehended how tuberculosis can become en- 

 grafted upon such an organism. The French government has grappled 

 most nobly with the problem indicated in this state of affairs. It has 

 established in various parts of France hospitals for tuberculous chil- 

 dren, many of whom are no doubt only scrofulous. Several of these 

 institutions are on the sea coast, at Berck-sur-Mer and at Hendaye; 

 and the children are assured the benefit of the sea air, and of ozone, 

 lots of sunshine, plenty of pure food-stuffs — bread, meats, milk and 

 eggs; careful nursing; and excellent medical care of their 'white swell- 

 ings' of the joints, tuberculous affections of bones, and of the many 

 other conditions requiring the physician's attention. Thus, instead of 

 early deaths, or of the prospect of growing up weaklings, many of these 

 children are vouchsafed happy lives and strong constitutions, thereafter 

 resistant to infection, and have inculcated in them habits of cleanliness 

 and hygiene which they are sure to disseminate after their graduation. 

 In this manner there are secured to the state many worthy and splendid 

 citizens who would otherwise be lost to it. It is really a movement 

 worth the consideration of the political economist. 



Excessive alcholism stands in a causative relation to tuberculosis 

 because of the resulting tissue impoverishment. The pulmonary type 

 is almost invariably found in persons dying in the course of chronic 

 alcholism. ' L'alcoolisme fait le lit de la tuberculose/ states the 

 physician, Landouzy. 



It is difficult to explain the effects of alcohol. Like most of the 

 simplest things in life, no definite agreement has ever been reached 

 concerning its mode of working. It is evident, for instance, that there 

 is no hardier stock than the wine-drinking countries; and it would 

 seem that alcoholic fluids that are of good quality and purity, and are 

 taken temperately, are conducive generally to health. 



In all likelihood the bad effects fairly attributable to alcohol lie 

 largely in the vicious quality of what is consumed, and in the state of 

 affairs which it connotes: unsanitary habits, poverty, lack of nutrition 

 or bad food, ill- ventilated living rooms; and, most of all, a condition 

 of the organism exhausted by overwork, in which the reserve force is all 

 that is left to carry on the struggle for existence. We may imagine a 

 man in whom the tidal strength, such as we use in dealing with the 

 ordinary affairs of life, is gone, and who has to depend upon his reserve 

 strength to cope with an extraordinary difficulty which would over- 

 whelm him, but for which, if we had to deal with it, our reserve 

 strength would be altogether adequate. Such a man is in the condi- 

 tion of the camel to whom the last straw is fatal. So alcohol is often- 

 times taken first with a view to keeping a defective organism up to the 

 working point, perhaps in a tuberculous subject, or in one in whom all 

 the conditions are receptive to tuberculosis; alcohol is then taken in 



