44 BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE 



suggestion made that licences should be with- 

 drawn in the case of those holders who did not 

 wash the floors of their public rooms and keep 

 them in a sanitary state. At the present time, in 

 this country, it is perhaps more to the private 

 conscience of the individual and the pressure of 

 public opinion than to penal enactments that we 

 must look for effective reform in this direction, 

 for the objection of the English to official sani- 

 tary control is deeply rooted. It is to be hoped, 

 however, that with the spread and popularisation 

 of the knowledge acquired through the arduous 

 labours of so many scientific authorities, it may 

 come to be regarded as a matter for both public 

 and private morality that every step should be 

 taken which lies in the power of each member 

 of society to minimise the opportunities for the 

 spread of a disease which by its very familiarity 

 we have until the last few years accepted as 

 incurable and the ravages of which as inevitable.* 



* Since the above was written, the first international conference 

 of the Central Committee for the Prevention of Consumption has 

 been held in Berlin. The official report of the English National 

 Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis was presented to 

 the Congress, and the encouraging announcement was made 

 that the Corporations of Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool had 

 made expectoration in tramcars a punishable offence ; and that the 

 Glamorganshire County Council had passed a bye-law providing as 

 penalty for- expectoration in public buildings a fine of ^5, which 

 enactment had been sanctioned by the Secretary for the Home 

 Department. 



