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different places." The concluding chapter summarises the evidence respecting 

 the comparative distribution of the three types of tubercle bacilli in various animal 

 species and the part, if any, played by each in the various kinds of tuberculosis 

 in man. 



Dr. Cobbett's book is a notable contribution to the study of essential factors 

 in the prevention of tuberculosis — the disease which he justly describes as " the 

 commonest, most fatal, and perhaps the saddest, of those which oppress mankind." 

 And amidst all contending claims it is shown that one conclusion is certain : 

 " The principal desideratum is that the public should learn that tuberculosis is 

 contracted from consumptive patients, and without panic and without inflicting 

 unnecessary hardship should in the light of this knowledge take steps to protect 

 themselves and their children." This is the great lesson we need to realise in 

 these sacrificial days of war and in face of the testing which is coming in the near 

 future under after-war conditions. 



This notice of a remarkable book is too inadequate, but it will doubtless be 

 sufficient to indicate that all students of tuberculosis and every worker for the 

 prevention and arrest of this dire plague should study the work in its entirety. 

 Such knowledge as is here so effectively garnered and conveniently presented 

 affords the surest grounds for optimism, and will go far to justify the anticipation 

 expressed in the author's closing chapter, although the opinion presented appears 

 to have been formulated before the outbreak of war and its consequent spread 

 of tuberculosis : 



" The importance of tuberculosis is not to be measured only by the fact that it 

 causes in England and Wales alone the death of over fifty thousand persons each 

 year, large as this number is. A very considerable proportion of those deaths 

 occur in the prime of life, or only a little earlier, and in addition to these deaths 

 tuberculosis produces a great number of cripples. This mortality, large though it 

 is now, is smaller than it was half a century ago. Since that time the number of 

 deaths caused each year by tuberculosis has diminished steadily and substantially, 

 and the ratio of deaths has fallen by more than 50 per cent. This death-rate is 

 now declining rapidly and at an ever-increasing velocity. It is not too much to 

 say that if this decline should continue to progress more or less along the line it 

 has followed in the recent past, tuberculosis will have become a rare disease 

 before the end of the century. The eyes of some, indeed, discern already on the 

 far-away horizon signs of its complete eradication. The vision may prove to bea 

 delusion, but at any rate even the most matter-of-fact of us may look forward with 

 confidence to a time, at no very distant date, when society will be relieved of this 

 incubus, which at present causes the death of one person in every ten in this land 

 and cripples and disfigures many another." 



T. N. Kelynack, M.D., 

 Editor of The British Journal of Tuberculosis. 



Shell-shock and its Lessons. By Pkok. G. Elliott Smith, F.R.S., F.R.C.P., 

 M.D., and T. H. Pear, B.Sc. [Pp. xi + 135.] (Manchester: at the 

 University Press, and London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1917. Price 2s. dd. 

 net.) 



The public in this country is so acutely sympathetic towards the urgent need for 

 relieving our soldiers and sailors who have been invalided from the Forces, that 

 the National Health Insurance Commissioners have issued special instructions to 

 Medical and Panel Committees throughout the land for their continued treatment. 

 It is fully recognised that curing a man's disabilities is the first step for him to 

 become a useful citizen afterwards, and possibly, of all the disabling causes, the 



