348 BOARD (IK AUUICULTUKE. 



The medical prcri.'.ssioii as lar back as its history reaches lias believed 

 consumptiou an iufoctious disease, but upt until 18S1 was the bacillus 

 causing it isolated. Since then the profession has made continual warfare 

 upon it, but our warnings fall upon deaf ears. The laity will not aid 

 us and the slaughter of the innocent goes on. Many people believe you 

 must inherit it and when a moniljer of the family falls a victim they all 

 wonder where they got it. I wish I could impress you so you would never 

 forget it that every church, every theater, every large store, every pen- 

 itentiary, every jail, every railway station, every passenger car, every 

 street car (the greatest spitters on earth inhabit the cars), every place 

 where people congregate have tubercle bacillus living in the dust upon 

 its walls, in the dust that is in the carpets and the cracks of the floors. 

 This dust has only to be stirred up and breathed into the warm body 

 where the best medium (heat, moisture and nourishment) for its propaga- 

 tion exists to revive it into activity. The bacillus retains its virulence 

 months and years in both a dry and moist state outside the body. Now 

 as consumption is a germ di.sease and fws the bacillus does not propogate 

 outside the body it is a preventable disease. You all know when you 

 reason the matter that it would be much easier to destroy the bacillus 

 outside the body than after it has found lodgment within it. 



Dr. Hurty has told you about the building and ventilation of your 

 houses and the importance of pure air. As the sputum is the infectious 

 part your effort must be to utterly 'destroy it. A consumptive should 

 never spit except into a spit cup. This may be of pasteboard and 

 btn-ned before the • sputum dries. The handkerchiefs used should be 

 burned as soon as discarded. The air of the room of a tuberculosis 

 patient Avhose sputum is properly taken care of is not a source of danger 

 to a family. Scientific experimentation has proven sunlight a powerful 

 germicide. 



"W. C. Mitchell and H. C. Crouch of Denver reported the results of 

 exposure of tuberculous sputum to sunlight for six hours daily for vary- 

 ing periods. Of guineapigs innoculated with sputum exposed more than 

 thirty-five hours none died; whereas sputum exposed only twenty-five 

 hours was uniformly fatal to them." Sputum exposed upon a sun exposed 

 street will dry, be carried in the air and drawn into the lungs of evei-y 

 traveler before twenty-five hours have passed, and like the parable of the 

 sower who went forth to sow, some will fall upon stony ground, perhaps 

 the most of it, but some, God pity, will fall upon good ground, ground 

 especially prepared by a recent cold, a system debiliated by recent 

 pneumonia, will take root and the harvest will be a thousand fold. Al- 

 ready the harvest in Indiana alone for January, February, March and 

 April has been more than 1,500 souls as the monthly bulletins issued by 

 the State Board of Health show. 



If consumption should get into your herds, every man would arise 

 to exterminate it. How much more is a man's life worth than a beast's. 



