54 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 63 



gate population of 5,540, in which there have been no deaths in all 

 of the five years. 



The map shows several inland towns with a large death rate ow- 

 ing to the presence of tuberculosis hospitals, asylums, and other insti- 

 tutions. These are marked with an H (not readily seen in the 

 reduced map) and include Rutland, Sharon, Lakeville, Bridgewater, 

 North Reading, Medfield, Westborough, Westfield, Taunton, Dan- 

 vers, and Monson. 



As Mr. Mills says : 



Forty years ago the death rate from consumption in Massachusetts was three 

 times as great as it is now ; thirteen years ago it had been reduced one-half in 

 the previous forty years ; to-day it has been reduced one-half in the past twenty 

 years. There is no other State in the Union, in which records have been 

 kept, where the reduction has been so much. From 1885 to 1909 it was more 

 than twice as great as in England, Scotland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Bel- 

 gium, Switzerland and Italy. The reduction is Prussia was 90 per cent of 

 that in Massachusetts and that in Austria only 57 per cent. The registration 

 system in Massachusetts is of the highest grade and in no other State or 

 country of the world has such effective work been done and so much accom- 

 plished in reducing the death rate from tuberculosis as in that Commonwealth. 



FOGS ON THE PACIFIC COAST 



It is this element of fog which renders so much of the Pacific 

 coast of the United States unsuitable for tuberculous patients. The 

 morning fogs are conspicuous features of the climate and are 

 acknowledged sources of danger to tuberculous cases. They pene- 

 trate as far as Los Angeles and Pasadena in the south, some eighteen 

 miles from the coast ; they are common in San Francisco, and are 

 carried by ocean atmospheric currents through the Golden Gate, 

 sweeping the bay and up the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. 



There are portions of the California coast, as for example in the 

 neighborhood of Santa Barbara, where the mountains are near the 

 shore ; and beyond the mountains are deserts and necessarily an 

 exceedingly dry atmosphere. The night air from the mountains 

 brings with it a dry Continental quality ; the morning breezes bring 

 a more humid air and possibly fog. In such localities fog is quickly 

 scattered by the sun's heat and never penetrates very far inland. A 

 suitable residence for tuberculous patients on the Pacific coast, as 

 every native knows, is not found on the shore line but at some eleva- 

 tion above the sea fairly well up on the hillsides or in well-situated 

 valleys, like the Montecito Valley, where the dryer air of the interior 



