164 MICROBES AND HEALTH. 



transmissibility may be suspected can also be ac- 

 counted for as coincidences in a disease which is so 

 widespread as consumption. 



"THE OPINIONS OF AUTHORS OF TREATISES ON PUL- 

 MONARY CONSUMPTION REGARDING THE CON- 

 TAGIOUSNESS OF THIS DISEASE. 



"In this connection it is of interest to know the 

 conclusions which those have reached on the question of 

 contagion who have made phthisis a life-long study, who 

 have written special treatises on this disease, and who 

 are, therefore, entitled to an authoritative opinion on 

 this subject. Laennec, in his illustrious work, says: 

 'We frequently observe, among the poorer classes, a 

 numerous family sleeping in the same apartment with 

 a consumptive patient, and a husband occupying, to 

 the last, the same bed with his wife without any com- 

 munication of the disease. The woolen apparel and 

 the beds of consumptive subjects, which it is the custom 

 to burn in some countries, are not even generally 

 washed, much less destroyed, in France, and yet I have 

 never seen the disease communicated by them.' Portal 

 says that he was brought up in the contagious belief 

 but abandoned it. Ancell believes that 'the doctrine 

 of contagion has at all times been based on very vague 

 and insufficient evidence, such as isolated cases of the 

 occurrence of the disease in individuals who had pre- 

 viously been in constant attendance upon the sick, 

 or in husbands or wives, where both had slept in the 

 same bed until the fatal termination of the disease in 

 the one first affected. In appealing to these facts as 



