TUBERCULOSIS 163 



(305.3) from consumption in the registration States." 

 This is ascribed to the large proportion of coloured 

 population. 



Recent researches have led Professor Koch to the 

 conviction that tuberculosis is more often communi- 

 cated by means of the minute drops of sputum 

 forcibly ejected by consumptive patients during par- 

 oxysms of coughing than by the masses of sputum 

 which have been coughed up and expectorated. How- 

 ever this may be, there can be no doubt that the main 

 source of infection is to be found in the sputum of 

 persons suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. In 

 tuberculosis of the bowels, tubercular meningitis, and 

 tubercular joint affections, the patient must have been 

 infected by such material, or by tubercle bacilli in arti- 

 cles of food, such as milk or meat from tuberculous 

 animals. But such cases do not assist in propagating 

 the disease. An infant, crawling upon the floor of 

 an infected house, is especially liable to infection 

 through the medium of the dust, which naturally set- 

 tles upon the floor, and to develop tubercular menin- 

 gitis, which is the form of tubercular infection to 

 which young children are most subject. Older child- 

 ren are more likely to contract tubercular joint 

 disease " hip disease," or " white swelling " of the 

 knee joint," or tubercular disease of the spinal col- 

 umn (" Pott's disease "). The child with tubercular 



