OCTOBER 83 



prove to be the case even with regard to vaccination as 

 a necessary preventive against small -pox epidemics, 

 the great decrease of which may have been effected by 

 many other circumstances. The itch, scurvy, and leprosy 

 have practically also disappeared in England with im- 

 proved food and cleanliness. Nowadays, why should not 

 a case of small- pox be stamped out as the plague was this 

 year in Vienna ? Before Jenner's great discovery, even 

 the most primitive methods of preventing infection were 

 unknown. It is only within the last twenty years that these 

 have been brought to anything like perfection, and only 

 in the last ten years with regard to crowded localities. 



To return to tuberculosis. In spite of Tyndall's 

 wonderfully clear, instructive, and interesting letters to 

 the ' Times,' published more than twenty years ago, and 

 which explained most thoroughly the infectiousness of 

 consumption, the public have remained curiously ignorant 

 on the subject. As an illustration of this, a sad case 

 occurred this year not far from here. A signalman who 

 was mortally ill of consumption remained at his work, in 

 his signal-box on the line, as long as it was possible for 

 him to get there. When the day came that he had to 

 give in and remain at home to die, a young and healthy 

 man replaced him in the signal-box, which had in no 

 way been disinfected or whitewashed, and which, from its 

 construction, was a sun -trap and the best dust-and- 

 germ- producer that could be. A cattle-truck would 

 have been differently treated ! The young man caught 

 the disease, and died in a few months. 



I find, in talking even to educated people, a consider- 

 able tone of resentment on this subject. ' What ! ' they 

 say, 'are our consumptives to be treated like lepers?' 

 The poetry that hung about consumption in the early 

 days of this sentimental century, its association with the 

 South, with Madeira's orange groves and the sunshine 



