62 DUST AND ITS DANGERS. 



in-doors, this disease claims its numerous vic- 

 tims when once it gains a foothold. 



Our attention is not ordinarily called to the 

 large numbers of persons who sicken and die 

 from consumption, because we have become so 

 accustomed to it that it is taken as a matter of 

 course, one of the inevitable ills of life. When 

 yellow-fever or small-pox or Asiatic cholera 

 threaten to spread among us, we are on our 

 guard at once, and from the medical profession 

 and the press come such warnings that no 

 pains are spared in public or in private to stay 

 their progress. And yet the number of victims 

 of these occasional and dramatic epidemics is 

 quite insignificant as compared with those of 

 our omnipresent consumption. 



We dread small-pox and carefully guard 

 ourselves against its spread, but in the State 

 of New Jersey, which is typical of many others, 

 in 1904 there were one hundred and fifty times 

 as many deaths from consumption as from 

 small-pox. 



We find in the report of the Health Depart- 

 ment of New York City for the year 1907, 

 that in this town out of 79,205 deaths from 



