TSETSE FLY 



5S9.5 



TUBERCULOSIS 



the Russian department of justice. But his love 

 for music caused him to enter the Conservatory 

 of Saint Petersburg, where he studied from his 

 twenty-first to his twenty-fifth year. In 1866 

 he was appointed director of the Moscow Con- 

 servatory. There his first attempts at com- 

 posing were almost complete failures, but in 

 1874 his beautiful Quartette in F gained public 

 favor. Various other compositions were given 

 a hearing in Russia, but the first genuine suc- 

 cess for Tschaikovsky was in Boston, where his 

 Concerto in B Flat Minor was played by Billow 

 in 1880. About the same time his opera, Eugene 

 One gin, was presented at the Moscow Con- 

 servatory and proved successful. 



Life might have been very pleasant for him 

 from that time, but an unfortunate marriage 

 in 1877 soon began to pervert his whole nature, 

 and by 1880 he was becoming a morose and bit- 

 ter man. In 1879 he had attempted to commit 

 ;le by standing up to his neck in an icy 

 river, but the tender nursing of his brother 

 saved him. For some time afterwards he was 

 in Saint Petersburg and Paris. In 1881 his 

 close friend, Rubinstein, died, and Tschai- 

 kovsky, in deeper despair than ever, dedicated 

 his Trio in A Minor to the dead musician. He 

 kept away from the public as much as possible, 

 and lived in seclusion at Klin, Russia, where 

 much of his best work was produced. In 1893 

 appeared his masterpiece, The Sixth Symphony, 

 now known as the Pathetic, and the composer 

 came forth temporarily from his seclusion to 

 receive the degree of Doctor of Music from 

 Cambridge University. He died of cholera in 

 Saint Petersburg. Among his best works are 

 h" six symphonies and the operas Maid of 

 '.f, Mazeppa and Charodaika. 



TSET'SE FLY, a biting fly related to the 

 stable fly, found in Africa. It lives on the blood 

 of mammals, and is a deadly pest because it 

 carries a parasitic organism that causes sleep- 

 mi: sickness (which see). This disease has 

 caused the death 

 of thousands of 

 natives in 



of tin- V. 

 Nyanza, and 

 ntii'i sections in 

 equatorial Africa. 

 i>ite of the 

 insect is some- 

 times fatal to cattle and horses, producing a 

 disease called nagana, but animals which re- 

 cover are usually immune from f icks. 



TSETSE FLY 



Tsetse flies do not lay eggs, but multiply by 

 producing full-grown larvae, which change im- 

 mediately into pupa. 



The problem of exterminating these pests has 

 engaged the attention of many scientists. It 

 has been suggested that they could be wiped 

 out by wholesale slaughter of wild animal life 

 in the infested districts, since they feed chiefly 

 on the blood of mammals, but this plan has not 

 been deemed practicable. Clearing out swamps 

 and marshes where they breed has been at- 

 tempted on a small scale, but effective work 

 on this line would be a gigantic task. In a 

 certain section of Portuguese West Africa the 

 laborers carry cloths covered with glue on their 

 backs when working in infested districts, turn- 

 ing themselves into animated pieces of fly 

 paper. This plan is reported to have greatly- 

 diminished the number of cases of sleeping sick- 

 ness in that region. 



TUBERCULOSIS, tubur ku lo'sis, or CON- 

 SUMP 'TION, an infectious disease, sometimes 

 called the white plague because of its preva- 

 lence and virulence. It causes about one-sev- 

 enth of the deaths in the human family. The 

 disease occurs in several forms, but the one in 

 which the lungs are affected is the most com- 

 mon. No age, race or sex is immune from 

 tuberculosis attacks, and its ravages are so 

 serious that in several countries associations 

 for the study and prevention of the disease 

 have been formed. In the United States alone 

 more than $22,000,000 was spent in the . 

 paign against tuberculosis in the yi r l.l.">. In 

 that year there were 98,194 victims, of whom 

 85,993 died of lung, or pulmonary, tuberculosis. 

 These figures, however, represent a marked de- 

 crease from those of a decade previous, 

 specific organism which causes the disease, the 

 bacillus tuberculosis, was isolated by Dr. Robert 

 Koch in 1882. 



Lung Tuberculosis. The most important 

 source of infection is the dried sputum of tu- 

 bercular victims. Carried about in the air by 

 dust, the germs are taken into the nose and air 

 tubes and thence into the lungs in the act of 

 breathing. Milk ami meat of tubercular cattle 

 are other agents causing the spread <>f H.,- dis- 

 ease. Except in rare cases, it is not directly 

 transmissible from parent to child, but children 

 whose parents are t r are more liable to 



the disease than arc others. Certain habits and 

 liMng conditions which lower th.- vitality and 

 make the body less resistant to disease may 

 cause a predisposition to tuberculosis. Impure 

 air, lack of nourishing food. led living 



