214 PHTHISIS AND SANATORIA. 
diseases of the neck. Many operations were performed on chil- 
dren for removing glands and so on. A number of the children 
came from the closes about High Street and Queensberry Square. 
He would like them to think what the loafers in that square and 
“Monument rangers’’ were doing. They were loafing about 
there, spitting broadcast, and some of them them were known to 
be suffering from phthisis. The sputum became dry and was 
carried about as dust. The children, playing about, inhaled 
that dust and the bacilli of phthisis which it contained ; and so 
they contracted the disease. ‘Touching on conditions tending 
to promote the spread of consumption, Dr Ross mentioned the 
want of sufficient sunlight and of free movement of air in the 
closes of towns. He finally showed a set of slides illustrating 
the construction of sanatoria and the results of the treatment. 
In reply to a question as to how Dr Ross accounted for the 
large amount of consumption in Ireland as disclosed by one of 
the slides, the smaller amount in Scotland, and the still smaller 
amount in England and Wales, 
Dr Ross said he was afraid the answer to that question would 
involve a pretty long dissertation. Generally speaking, it was a 
question of housing and living. They knew what the housing 
and living were in the lower parts of Ireland; and what it was 
in certain parts of Scotland had recently been shown by the 
medical report on the prevalence of this disease in the Lewis. 
In England a number of Boards of Guardians had been in the 
habit of giving out-door relief to consumptive paupers and allow- 
ing them to live with their families, where they became centres 
of infection. Some years ago they changed their policy, and 
insisted that consumptive paupers should go into the workhouse 
infirmaries. Coincident with that, there had been a considerable 
fall in the death rate from this cause in England and Wales. 
Factory legislation and sanitary improvement had helped very 
much. 
