174 MICROBES AXD HEALTH. 



eludes that the danger of infection from the dried 

 sputum is small." 



"Cornet has shown that among street-sweepers who 

 follow the business for many years, tuberculosis is less 

 common than among other classes/' The cities are 

 where the largest number of people expectorate upon 

 the streets and sidewalks, and those sweeping and clean- 

 ing such thoroughfares would be subject to more 

 danger, if any existed, than any other class of people 

 on earth, yet the professor says, "tuberculosis is less 

 common with these people." The professor closes by 

 saying, " According to the Registrar General the death- 

 rate from consumption in England and Wales was in 

 1838 thirty-eight per ten thousand of the population. 

 In 1895 it was fourteen." 



"Note that during. this period of fifty-seven years the 

 population had more than doubled, while the facilities 

 for travel and comingling of sick and well had been 

 at least quadrupled, that during the larger part of this 

 time no attention whatever had been given to the 

 thought of contagion, no isolation, no destruction of 

 sputum, or any such precautions; that despite the fact 

 that the possibilities for infection had been increased 

 many fold, the disease had decreased." 



Colorado Springs is a great resort for consumptives, 

 and there are enough germs distributed around this 

 place to infect the population of the entire earth, yet 

 the disease is seldom, if ever, acquired there. 



An article in the Physician and Surgeon for Novem- 

 ber, 1899, states: "There is no doubt that the germs 

 of consumption are with us always; they are universally 



