JOURNAL AND PROCEKDINGS 



TUEERCULOSIS 



Ho'w Our Present Day lisiowledge of the 

 Disease Flas Developed. 



Read Before the Hamilton Scientific Association, 

 April -Jth, 1907. 



BY JAMES ROBERTS, M.D., M.H.O. 



PART I. 



Among the death-dealing agencies? that have been 

 instrumental in relegating mankind back to the traditional 

 dust, ascribed as the basis of his origin, tuberculosis towers 

 giantlike above all the others in potency. 



No color, race or creed is immune to the inroads of this 

 disease. Some of the gigantic intellects and geniuses of the 

 world — and with a sense of sadness and despondency it is 

 that one contemplates the fact — have succumbed untimely to 

 it's attack. 



If it be true, as has been said, " that death loves a shining- 

 mark," equally touching and pathetic is the fact that in such 

 a large percentage of cases, the virus of this most loathesome 

 malady should poison the shaft with which lie singles out the 

 elite among the world's nobility as the victims of his 

 predilection. Schiller and Keats in poetry; Stephenson, 

 Crane and Artemus Ward in prose ; Chopin, Nevin and Von 

 Weber in music ; Rachel in the drama ; Baruch Spinoza in 

 philosophy ; Rene Theodore Laennec in medicine — these are 

 but a mentioned handful among the master spirits of the 

 world, destined in the very zenith of their influence and their 

 usefulness to be victims of the Great White Plague. 



Phthisis, which is the technical term for pulmonary 

 consumption and used synonomously for it, was a term used 

 by the ancient writers of medicine to indicate what we of the 



