Chapple. — On Tuberculosis in Man and Animals. 531 



This disease, then, can only be controlled by preventive mea- 

 sures, and these may be divided into individual prevention 

 and State prevention. Under individual prevention such pre- 

 cautions should be taken as the destruction of all sputa by 

 burning, the comparative isolation of phthisical patients, the 

 thorough purification of apartments used by such, the boiling 

 of suspected milk, and the thorough cooking of suspected 

 meat. The natural resistance of the body-tissues of all young 

 and growing people should be increased by chest exercises, 

 such as singing, rov;ing, and varied gymnastics ; while hy- 

 gienic laws should be thoroughly and consistently taught in 

 all schools, and be allowed to replace much of the rubbish 

 now crammed into young heads. 



State legislation can and should be made a most important 

 factor in the control of this much-dreaded disease. State 

 enactments for the prevention of disease are amongst the 

 proudest advances in modern legislation, aiid the Public 

 Health Act of London, 1891, is a triumphant monument to 

 the life and labours of members of a noble profession, and to 

 wise and philanthropic legislators, who have eagerly seized 

 upon their scientific discoveries and embodied them in humane 

 enactments for the diminution of suffering, the promotion of 

 happiness, and the public good. When we think of what 

 medical science has done for London alone we wonder at the 

 few there are who give her thanks. She has given to the 

 lowly habitations of this great city the light of the sun and 

 the pure air of heaven ; she has led sparkling water from the 

 hillsides to the meanest homes ; she has pulled down the 

 hovels of the poor and built them palaces ; she has cleansed 

 her streets and put guardians in her gates ; she has banished 

 typhus, controlled small-pox and cholera, and poured the 

 balm of Gilead into a million \vounds ; she has saved the 

 health and life of countless numbers, and exceeded every other 

 humane factor in her contribution to the cup of human hap- 

 piness. And all this through the agency of public-health 

 legislation. 



But very much still remains to be done, and could more 

 readily be accomplished if there were a closer bond of unity 

 between medical science and legislation ; and the want of this 

 is not the fault of the former, for science prays and beseeches 

 long and patiently before her haughty sister will condescend to 

 listen. 



Perhaps in no part of the world is public health so well 

 and extensively administered as in England and Scotland ; 

 and there is now a well-founded and growing demand for a 

 Government Department of Public Health, with a Minister 

 at its head. At no distant date the Mother-country will have 

 accomplished this great reform. Our New Zealand Govern- 



