36 TUBERCULOSIS, HEREDITY 



or more attacks of tubercle and recovered — in the bulk 

 of cases without any treatment at all. Now if by 

 increased technical skill in diagnosis you can ascertain 

 these cases, call them incipient, and send them into a 

 sanatorium, you can ' cure ' 80 /^ of them, but nature has 

 done much the same thing outside sanatoria for a long 

 time past. Perhaps rest and good food will do it more 

 quickly — I cannot say. But the sole test of the ' cura- 

 tive ' effect of sanatoria must be based on those cases 

 recognized as tuberculous in the past — where we can 

 compare the mortality in the past and the mortality of 

 to day. 



It has further been asserted that England is unsuited 

 to sanatorium treatment, or that the methods adopted 

 on the Continent are more satisfactory. Now while 

 the German sanatorium data rarely admit of satisfactory 

 actuarial discussion they may be compared directly with 

 the English as showing whether there is any marked 

 difference in their results. The following tables show 

 that there is very little to choose between the two! In 

 one case, of the discharged patients 57 % are actually 

 dead 3I years after leaving ; in the other case 55-6 % are 

 dead or unfit to work in four years after leaving! I 

 have been struck, in fact, by the closely similar results 

 obtained by sanatoria for the same class of patients, how- 

 ever treated, and wherever the sanatorium is situated, 

 when the data are such that we can apply any rational 

 method to their discussion. 



TABLE XIV. WEICKER'S DATA. 

 Cases discharged from Sanatoria, Germany 

 (admitted in the earliest stages of the disease). 

 7.6 % unfit to work or dead in i to i| years. 

 19-0 % „ „ „ 2 to 2i „ 



33"3 % »» >> ft 3 '® 3* »> 



55-6 % ,, „ „ 4 „ 



