214 THE INVISIBLE WOULD 



finds its natural food. Here it slowly grows. 

 Here it slowly multiplies. In the course of a long 

 time, usually many years, the microbe multiplies 

 into great numbers. By their life processes they 

 generate the consumptive poison. This poison per- 

 meates the entire system. The onset of the dis- 

 ease now has full sway. All its symptoms come to 

 the front, tubercles in the lungs, the ragged 

 cough, the night sweat, the hectic flush, the once 

 robust form now a bending skeleton, final relief 

 in the eternal sleep. Or by a lucky hemorrhage 

 the sleep comes earlier, suddenly. 5,357,142 such 

 cases every year! 



What can be done to sweep this scourge from the 

 world? 



First of all, understand what consumption is. 

 Tell the truth to the people, the whole truth, 

 nothing but the truth. Tell it in newspapers, in 

 magazines, in lecture rooms ; from the pulpit. Tell 

 it over and over again, until the people know it 

 all. Darkness is death ; light is life. Let the light 

 shine. 



Consumption is not hereditary. The parent 

 never communicates the germ to the unborn child. 

 Nature forbids that outrage. But the germ may 

 be communicated to the child at any time after 

 birth. True, the disease frequently runs through 

 a family; but this is solely because the first mem- 

 ber who has it communicates the germ to the other 

 members. In every case the germ comes from a 

 previous case. 



