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IHE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



nurses taking care of them, inside of one 

 of these rooms in the Babies' Hospital. 



This is another room in one of the 

 hospitals of the city, the cooking room 

 on the top floor of the Manhattan Eye 

 and Ear Hospital. I will show you one 

 or two other pictures of the children's 

 ward of the hospital. You see some of 

 them have had operations upon their 

 eyes; others upon the ear, nose or throat, 

 and they are in here for cure after these 

 operations. This is a picture of the 

 operating room in the Manhattan Eye 

 and Ear Hospital, with the head nurse 

 attending. 



Many of these photographs I have had 

 taken myself, others I have procured 

 wherever I could get them. 



There is a picture of a woman who is 

 ill with consumption, and I throw it on 

 the screen that I may call your attention 

 to one fact in connection with consump- 

 tion, and that is that we are trying in 

 this city to stamp it out ; and I want to 

 say also that the care that has been given 

 by the Board of Health during the past 

 three or four years has lessened the 

 death rate ot consumption nearly i,ooo a 

 year. It may seem an incredible thing, 

 but in Europe about a million people die 

 of consumption every year. In the 

 United States in, 1890, 91,000 thousand 

 people died of consumption. In the City 

 of New York in that same year over 

 6,000 people died of consumption. About 

 one-quarter of all the deaths in the world 

 are due to consumption. Now, if as 

 many people as that died of cholera or 

 smallpox, why the newspapers would be 

 just wild with indignation, and protest 

 after protest would be made by the peo- 

 ple ; and yet here is a disease going on 

 all the time and carrying off hundreds 

 and hundreds more people than any of 

 the diseases above named, and yet we 

 have very little to say about it. When 

 we come to think that consumption is 



due to a germ, and that germ is con- 

 tained only in the sputum, and that it 

 the sputum could be destroyed before it 

 ever has a chance to become dry, it 

 would only be a question of time before 

 we could stamp it out of the country. 

 But if the sputum is allowed to become 

 dry and pulverized and get into the air, 

 then germs are liberated and absorbed 

 into the system and spread the con- 

 tagion. If we could only destroy the 

 sputum ! We used to think people in- 

 herited consumption. That theory has 

 gone by. You cannot inherit disease 

 very well. Disease does not belong to 

 me or to you, and it is not going to be 

 propagated except in very rare instances, 

 and especially in consumption. I don't 

 think people ever inherit consumption. 

 But you can inherit a tendency to dis- 

 ease, and you can inherit certain family 

 characteristics. If your father or mother 

 had a big nose you may have a big nose 

 too, and if they had little noses you 

 might inherit a little nose; but to inherit 

 disease, I do not think you do — not to 

 any very great extent. This woman 

 you can see with all these coverlets and 

 all those things around the room. If she 

 was careless about destroying sputum 

 the room is liable to be contaminated. 

 There are two or three things we must 

 do in this country. One is to show the 

 people that they must not expectorate 

 upon the floors of public buildings or 

 street cars or stores, or upon the floors 

 of their own houses. That is one thing 

 that must be stopped, and I see that 

 some of the street-cars last week have 

 put up an order of the Board of Health 

 forbidding expectoration upon the floors. 

 We must help them. And if we could 

 only teach people who have consumption 

 in their homes to see that the sputum is 

 completely destroyed, it would not be 

 very long before the death rate would be 

 very greatly reduced. It is being re- 



