CONSUMPTION AS A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE. 33 



which, they may meet in every-day life. As the numbers of 

 women in the universities increase, and the influence of educated 

 wives and mothers is more widely felt, there will be an adaptation 

 of university work to the needs of women as well as of men. The 

 now scarcely perceptible tendency to emphasize the profession of 

 wifehood and motherhood in its proper relations will be increas- 

 ingly controlling in all education of women. Surrounded by the 

 atmosphere of generous culture, molded by men and women of 

 varied abilities, guided in the special preparation for her future, 

 the young woman will soon be able to obtain as broad and as 

 specialized a training as her profession shall require a training 

 which shall put her in touch with the best of the world for the 

 benefit of her home and her children. 



CONSUMPTION CONSIDERED AS A CONTAGIOUS 



DISEASE. 



BY A. L. BENEDICT, M. D. 



A FEW years ago the newspapers were discussing rumors of 

 the advent of leprosy in this country. Many were appre- 

 hensive of an epidemic of this disease, whose very name suggests 

 all that is unclean, horrible, and loathsome. Although official re- 

 ports made it certain that the lepers who had reached our shores 

 were few, and that comparatively simple precautions could pre- 

 vent the spread of the disease, public sentiment demanded the 

 most rigorous quarantine and the sending back of those lepers 

 who had already landed. 



But there is in our midst another leprosy whose victims we 

 meet, not outside" the city wall warning us of their presence with 

 the cry " Unclean ! unclean ! " but who walk the public streets, 

 whom we meet in our places of business and amusement, in social 

 gatherings, and, too frequently, in our very homes. It is doubt- 

 less a surprise that consumption should be mentioned in terms 

 applicable to leprosy, but investigation shows that a close analogy 

 may be drawn between the two diseases. Consumption or phthi- 

 sis, as either word implies, is a consuming or wasting disease, 

 characterized by a progressive failure of strength and an almost 

 certain tendency toward death. Although the exact lesions differ 

 in different cases, the essential nature of consumption is in inflam- 

 mation, excited by a small germ which, magnified five hundred 

 times, is just visible as a minute hyphen, usually tilted up at one 

 end. 



The same germ the Bacillus tuberculosis may lodge in bones, 

 joints, the intestines, the membranes of the brain, and, in fact, in 



YOL. XLVIII. 8 



