62 DUST AND ITS DANGERS. 



in-doors, this disease claims its numerous vic- 

 tims when once it gains a foothold. 



Our attention is not ordinarily called to the 

 large numbers of persons who sicken and die 

 from consumption, because we have become so 

 accustomed to it that it is taken as a matter of 

 course, one of the inevitable ills of life. When 

 yellow-fever or small-pox or Asiatic cholera 

 threaten to spread among us, we are on our 

 guard at once, and from the medical profession 

 and the press come such warnings that no 

 pains are spared in public or in private to stay 

 their progress. And yet the number of victims 

 of these occasional and dramatic epidemics is 

 quite insignificant as compared with those of 

 our omnipresent consumption. 



We dread outbreaks of small-pox and care- 

 fully guard ourselves against its spread, but in 

 the State of Michigan, which is typical of 

 many others, in 1886-87 there were from forty 

 to fifty times as many deaths from consump- 

 tion as from small-pox. In the State of New 

 York in 1887 there were reported 96,453 

 deaths, and 11,609 of these were from con- 

 sumption. 



