TUBERCULOSIS AS AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIOLOGIC FACTOR 1 85 



Figures for foreign countries are often made for pulmonary tuber- 

 culosis alone and cannot be compared exactly with those given in Table 

 I. From a very valuable report on Tuberculosis in the United States, 

 published by the United States Bureau of the Census, some inter- 

 esting data have been put together in Table 11. 



Reduction in Death Rate from Tuberculosis. — With a higher 

 standard of living in the past twenty or thirty years there has been 

 a great decline in the death rate from tuberculosis. On account of 

 unreliable statistics it is impossible to know what the rate from any 

 particular disease was at a period before 1870. Even in England 

 and Wales, where the most accurate figures are available, we cannot 

 use returns of earlier years because nearly all lingering diseases were 

 recorded as "phthisis" (pulmonary tuberculosis). The reduction 

 in mortality from this disease is indicated in Table III, which is 

 adapted from the report on Tuberculosis in the United States already 

 mentioned. 



TABLE III 



Annual Death Rate from Tuberculosis (All Forms) per 100,000 Population for 

 Registration Area of the United States 



* For eight years only; the other figures in the same columns are for ten-year periods. All figures from 

 official sources. 



The countries and cities of Europe, with few exceptions, show a 

 considerable decrease in the death rate from tuberculosis of the lungs 

 in recent years. While in these same countries and cities there has 

 also been a lowering of the general death rate, i.e., the total rate 

 from all causes, it appears that the percentage decline has been 

 greater for tuberculosis than for the other causes as a whole. Table 

 IV from Newsholme^ shows the decline in mortality from pulmonary 

 consumption in a period of about twenty years. 



» Newsholue, Arthur, The Prevention of Tuberculosis, London and New York, igo8. 



