TUBERCULOSIS. 753 



22iicl, 1890, of the British Medical Journal. The patient 

 was a female child, the third in a family of healthy children, 

 born to healthy parents, and nourished entirely at its mother's 

 breast. Up to the age of eight weeks the family had lived 

 with friends at Washington, but they then removed to a 

 house in Baltimore which, up to date three weeks before 

 their arrival, had been inhabited by a woman who was attend- 

 ing the John Hopkins Dispensary on account of pulmonary 

 phthisis ; tubercle bacilli had frequently been found in her 

 expectoration. That the infection of tuberculosis can cling 

 for prolonged periods to I'ooms which have been occupied by 

 patients suffering from tubercidar phthisis is well known. 

 When nine weeks old, this breast-fed infant of healthy parents 

 began to live in a house thus infected ; when less than four 

 months old it was found to be suffering from fever and con- 

 solidation of the right lung. Its illness quickly ended in 

 death, and the necropsy showed tuberculosis of the pleura on 

 the right side, the middle and lower lobes of the right lung 

 uniformly stuffed with tubercles; the spleen contained innumer- 

 able tubercles, the liver and kidney many. In connection 

 with this the British Medical Journal very rightly says that 

 such cases as the one here quoted afford striking evidence 

 of the justice of the demand that some precautions should be 

 taken to prevent one of the most common forms of tubercular 

 infection. Two very striking examples of the infectiousness 

 of phthisis came under my observation in my own practice at 

 Brisbane in the last few months. In one case, which was 

 observed at the same time hy another medical man who 

 arrived at the same conclusion, a gentleman contracted con- 

 sumption from his wife who died of it some years ago. This 

 case was all the more remarkable because inherited predis- 

 position was absent in this case, no case of consumption 

 having occurred previously in his family. The disease showed 

 here some peculiarities, inasmuch as it progressed but very 

 slowly, the otherwise healthy organism not prepared for the 

 reception of the virus by inherited weakness resisting more 

 strongly than it is usually the case. Another similar case is 

 the following : — A young gentleman who was suffering from 

 very far advanced tuberculosis of the lungs and of the throat 

 was advised to go out to Queensland for his health, as usual 

 being far too late to derive any Ijenefit from the change of the 

 climate. He came to Brisbane where he stayed with a cousin 

 of his about 20 years old, with whom he was constantly 

 together, driving out, eating at the same table, &c. About 



