CONSUMPTION. 167 



tagion/ Dr. Douglass Powell says : 'My own personal 

 experience and observation convince me that, apart 

 from artificial conditions such as those brought about 

 by experiment and in the ordinary circumstances of 

 life, phthisis is not an infectious malady/ Dr. Wilson 

 Fox clearly condenses his views, as follows: 'There 

 are few writers who have not admitted the possibility 

 of some contagion, but I venture to think that the 

 evidence, as it stands, shows that even if this possibility 

 has an authentic foundation the extent and degree to 

 which contagion ordinarily extends are singularly 

 small/ Dr. Theodore Williams declares: 'My own 

 experience is that for the last twenty years I have care- 

 fully watched for cases of infection in hospital and 

 private practice, and though I have come across a cer- 

 tain number of apparent cases they have nev&r stood 

 the test of close inquiry, there being always some addi- 

 tional element to explain the causation of disease/ 



"THE MEANS OF PREVENTION THAT HAVE BEEN IN- 

 VOKED IN THE PAST BY THE CONTAGION 

 DOCTEINE. 



"It is doubtful whether the history of any medical idea 

 is invested with more curiosity and interest than that 

 which hangs over that of the contagiousness of phthisis. 

 The doctrine is a very old one dating back to Aris- 

 totle's time but in the last quarter of the eighteenth 

 century it had gathered such force and importance in 

 some of the Italian states that stringent laws were 

 passed concerning the disinfection of the rooms in which 

 consumptives died, and of the clothes which they had 



