38 " SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 63 



movement in Ireland to show how close are its relation to the broader 

 field of general hygiene and sanitation and to show that such work 

 pays ; and furthermore what great service one person of noble birth, 

 by her foresight, solicitous care and untiring devotion, can initiate 

 and carry out. As Prof. Thompson says: There is no doubt that 

 it will rank as one of the greatest philanthropic efiforts of our time. 

 Take the Isle of Man. This island in the Irish Sea has a popula- 

 tion of over ten thousand and for six hundred years has been singu- 

 larly free from the admixture of English, Irish, or Scotch blood. 

 The island has a more equable climate than any other part of the 

 British Isles. The mean annual temperature is 49° F. There is com- 

 parative absence of frost, fog, or snow. But careful records since 

 1880 show that the Manx tuberculosis death rate is about double 

 that on the mainland.^ 



1880-82 1883-1897 



Isle of Man 31-63 25.70 per 10,000 



1S87 :893 



England and Wales i5-o8 I3-07 per 10,000 



14.28 12.17 per 10,000 



1889 1895 



14.35 12.43 per 10,000 



1890 1S96 



15.06 11.39 per 10,000 



The Bahamas and Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean have a sub- 

 tropical marine climate that experience shows to be far too relaxing 

 and enervating for tuberculous patients. 



The Philippines and all other tropical islands are likewise entirely 

 unsuited for tuberculous patients for the same reasons." Newfound- 

 land, with a harsh, damp, colder air, is equally bad. 



Dr. Newsholme, of Brighton, President of the Epidemiological 

 Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, in an elaborate inquiry 

 into the principal causes of the reduction of the death rate from 

 phthisis in different countries, came to the conclusion that the one 



'Charles A. Davies, M. D. : Tuberculosis in the Isle of Man (Tuberculosis, 

 London, Oct., 1900). 



' According to Dr. Issac W. Brewer, U. S. A., " Notes on the Vital Sta- 

 tistics of the Philippine Census of 1903-" American Medicine, Oct., 1906, the 

 death rate from tuberculosis is one-third that in the United States. 



