AND PREVENTION OF PHTHISIS. 09 



extent, may hold its ground to the present hour, was 

 that this wasting malady arose from some peculiarity 

 in the individual constitution, independent of infection 

 from without. Enormous mischief has been done 

 through exaggerated and incorrect notions regarding 

 the influence of predisposition and inheritance. Mem- 

 bers of the same family were observed to fall victims to 

 this scourge, but each was regarded as an independent 

 source of the disease, to the exclusion of the thought 

 that the one had infected the other. Two or three days 

 ago an old man here at Hind Head told me that he 

 had lost three children in succession through phthisis; 

 and he mentioned another case where five or six robust 

 brothers had fallen, successively, victims to the same dis- 

 ease. " I am sure," said the man, with a flash of intelli- 

 gence across his usually unintelligent countenance, " it 

 must be catching." Cornet describes some cases which 

 irresistibly suggest family infection. In 1887 he visited 

 a patient, the father of a family, who, six years previous- 

 ly, had lost by consumption a little girl fourteen years 

 old. A year and a half afterwards a daughter of the 

 same man, twenty-one years old, fell a victim to the dis- 

 ease. One or two years later a robust son succumbed, 

 while, a fortnight before Cornet's visit, a child a year 

 and a half old had been carried away. Without doing 

 violence to the evidence, as Cornet remarks, these cases 

 may be justly regarded as due to family infection. For 

 many years the father had suffered from a phthisical 

 cough, and directly or indirectly he, in all probability, 

 infected his children. 



In connection with this subject, I may be permitted 

 to relate a sad experience of my own. It is an easy 

 excursion from my cottage in the Alps to the remark- 

 able promontory called " The Xessel," on which stands a 

 cluster of huts, occupied by peasants during the sum- 



