NO. I AIR AND TUBERCULOSIS — HINSDALE I3 



The United States has 165,000,000 acres of national forests and 

 France and Germany combined, 14,500,000 acres. 



The site of a model sanatorium for tuberculosis has the purest 

 air or air nearly devoid of floating matter. It is only on very high 

 mountain tops or in mid ocean, or in the Polar ice fields that we 

 can have air free from suspended matter. The good results obtained 

 in the higher Alpine sanatoria and in long sea voyages, in given 

 cases of tuberculosis, are attributable in some degree to this absence 

 of irritating or polluted atmosphere. In the more northern sanatoria, 

 of which the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium is a type, the long 

 winter in which snow covers the ground for possibly five 

 months, is always recognized as the best season for patients. The 

 gain in health acquired during one winter equals that of two sum- 

 mers. The added freedom which the snow covering provides against 

 dust a.n'6. other atmospheric impurities may have its hygienic influ- 

 ence for the cure of tuberculosis. 



MICRO-ORGANISMS IN RESPIRATORY PASSAGES 



It is interesting to learn something of the fate of micro-organisms 

 when inhaled by a person in health or by those whose respiratory 

 passages are already sufifering from irritation or disease. It has been 

 calculated that upward of 14,000 organisms pass into the nasal cavi- 

 ties in one hour's quiet respiration in the ordinary London atmos- 

 phere.' Tyndall showed by his experiments with a ray of light 

 in a dark chamber that expired air, or more exactly the last portion 

 of the air of expiration is optically pure. In other words, respiration 

 has freed the inhaled air from the particles of suspended matter 

 with which it is laden. These experiments coincide with those of 

 Gunning of Amsterdam in 1882 and those of Strauss and Dubreuil 

 in 1887. Grancher has made many experiments with the expired air 

 of phthisical patients and has never found in it the tubercle bacillus 

 or its spores. Charrin, Karth, Cadeac, and Mallet have had corre- 

 sponding results. 



These germs are probably all arrested before reaching the trachea ; 

 they halt in the upper air passages. The interior of the g-reat majority 

 of normal nasal cavities is perfectly aseptic. On the other hand 

 the vestibules of the nares, the vibrissse lining them and all crusts 

 formed there are generally swarming with bacteria. All germs are 

 arrested here and the ciliated epithelium rapidly ejects them. 



'On Researches by Drs. St. Clair Thomson and R. T. Hewlet. Lancet, 

 January 11, 1896. 



