fUBERCULOSIS, 75l 



and with public sentiment favouring- the new practice, all our 

 dead, subject to strict precautions, should be cremated. 



If we agree upon scientific g-rounds that the adoption of 

 cremation would be advantageous to the living, steps might 

 be taken in our larger centres of population to form local 

 societies on the lines of the Cremation Society of England. 

 Those who favoured incineration could then meet from time 

 to time and take steps, as opportunity offered, to appropriately 

 urge upon the public the advantages of the procedure over 

 earth burial. 



Private enterprise — should the various governments not 

 be induced to construct cremation works — might step in and 

 supply the desired accommodation. The initiative only could 

 be undertaken by an association of persons, and as the practice 

 grew in favour it would have to jiass under State control. 



4.— ON THE MODES OF INFECTION IN 

 TUBERCULOSIS. 



By EUGEN HIRSCIIFELD, M.D., Hon. Bnttcrlulo(jist to the Brisbane 



Hospitfil. 



Of all the diseases which are caused by microbic infection 

 none seems to be of greater importance for the jiubhc health 

 than tuberculosis in tlie various forms it attacks the human 

 being. When we consider that one-seventh of all cases of 

 death are due to tuberculosis, and in the most active age, 

 between 15 and 35, every third case of death is caused by this 

 disease, we easily understand that so deep an emotion was 

 created lately by the announcement of the alleged cure of it 

 from the same man who had made his name known all over 

 the civilised world by his pi-evious important discoveries in 

 the same subject. About nine years ago Professor Koch 

 first demonstrated that consumption of the lung was caused 

 by the invasion of a minute vegetable being, the so-called 

 tubercle bacillus, and that in whatever organ the bacillus 

 penetrated exactly the same process takes place as in the 

 lungs, which on account of its tendency to destruction and 

 decay is popularly known by the name of consumption or 

 phthisis (both words indicating that a consumption of lung 

 tissue takes place). He proved beyond doubt that there is no 

 tuberculosis without the presence of the tubercle bacillus and 



