2o6 Medicine : 



and kept long enough ; that most of those in 

 a more advanced stage improve while there, 

 frequently relapsing afterwards, and that those 

 who are badly diseased ought not to be sent at 

 all. Is that, after all, to say much more than 

 might be said of sensible treatment before the 

 erection of sanatoriums ? In the end, means must 

 be found to mend the fit constitutional soil and 

 breeding-ground of the bacillus, if it is to perish 

 of inanition for want of its human food. The 

 startling proposal that subsidiary institutions 

 should be set up, in which those who are not 

 cured may be taken care of for the rest of their 

 lives, can hardly please the burdened ratepayer, 

 who may think that a nation's chief aim ought to 

 be to have healthy bodies and minds which can 

 endure all changes and extremities, not such as 

 must be protected artificially from them. 



Can we, again, eliminate the predisposing influ- 

 ence of heredity ? Actual tubercle may not be 

 inherited — nobody thinking clearly on what he 

 thought ever thought that it was — but the porr 

 constitutional soil inviting and suiting the bacillus 

 still passes from parent to child ; and we do not 

 get rid of the essential fact by changing the name. 

 Do we, indeed, in the end get such a valuable 

 addition to the life-capital of the nation ? It is 

 easy enough, noting that some 60,000 consump- 

 tives die annually in England and Wales — I don't 

 vouch for the figures — fancifully to rate the value 

 of each life at an arbitrary figure, and then by 



