BY THE HON. A. NORTON. Ill 



a hereditary habit ? I know members of famihes which have 

 been afflicted from generation to generation with diseases that 

 are popularly spoken of as " hereditary " from the fact that so 

 many individuals of them are similarly afflicted ; others must be 

 able to recall similar cases, and many learned authorities might 

 be quoted, were it necessary, in support of this view. I refer to 

 the subject here in connection with the figures I have already 

 quoted of mortality amongst children because I am disposed to 

 think the danger which is said to be incurred from using unboiled 

 cows' milk, like that connected with the use of tuberculous flesh, 

 has, to use Dr. Woodhead's words, probably been " much ex- 

 aggerated." It by no means follows because tuberculous disease 

 of the breast in yonng married women is extremely rare that the 

 tubercular germ is conveyed to children by means of cows' milk. 

 Many mothers, I am told, use preserved milk in preference to 

 fresh cows' milk ; but, m any case we must not overlook the 

 indisputable fact that many mothers, and many others who come 

 in contact with young children, are phthisical. The milk from 

 a phthisical mother's breast may be quite free from tubercal bacilli, 

 but she and the father and their other children, as well as servants 

 and numberless friends rapturously kiss "the baby's" lips, 

 breathing into its very lungs, if any of them be phthisical, the 

 germs of death. As for the infection of the intestine or the glands 

 connected with the intestinal track, which in children is so 

 common, Woodhead suggests how this may come about when, 

 referring to cases of ulceration of the intestine, he adds — "which 

 appears to be due to the action of bacilli contained in the sputum 

 passing down the gullet through the stomach in cases where the 

 gastric juice is not very active, and so to the intestine in which 

 ulceration occurs in the course of the tubercular process as the 

 result of the pathogenic activity of the bacilli," Fraenkel also, 

 referring to the same subject, says — " Similar changes are fre- 

 quently observed with phthisical patients who swallow their 

 sputum, thus affecting the intestinal canal." A child so unfor- 

 tunate as to .have been born with an inherited tuberculous habit 

 would, of course, be exposed to a maximum danger of becommg 

 infected, not perhaps through its own sputum, but through the 

 anxiety of mother or nurse to protect it. As already stated, the 

 breath of any phthisical person who kisses the child's lips may 



