D. B. WARD, M. D. 199 



the bacilli about, and we get them in our lungs. If we 

 are susceptible to the disease either by inheritance or by- 

 some iDarticular depression of vitality we too take it and 

 then we too go about, unconsciously, perhaps, doing our 

 best to spread it. Suppose some other disease were to 

 spring up among us which would claim not one victim in 

 seven but one in one hundred. What an uproar and ex- 

 citement there would be ! Then would the average citi- 

 zen as usual write articles denouncing the board of 

 health and demanding the immediate and complete iso- 

 lation of all the unfortunate victims of the new disorder. 

 Don't you tbink that would be the case? Isn't it so 

 whenever the cholera lands here ; and did the worst epi- 

 demic of cholera ever known anywhere kill as many as 

 die of this other equally infectious disease ? A good deal 

 is being done already by the destruction of tuberculous 

 cattle to decrease the spread of tuberculosis in the human 

 race, and I am strongly inclined to believe that the diffu- 

 sion among the people of the knowledge that the disease 

 is infectious will do much more, and that in one or two 

 generations this terrible blight will be controlled by 

 sanitary measures, even if we find no way to cure it. I 

 am hardly sanguine enough to believe that it will be ever 

 entirely stamped out. Before .Tenner's time every third 

 face in Europe was pitted with small-pox scars and one 

 in ten of the population died of small-pox. We can 

 hardly realize that now, when the loathsome plague is so 

 scarce as to be hardly dreaded at all. Yet in spite of 

 vaccination the disease still exists and where it attacks the 

 unprotected it is as virulent as ever. If we can do as 

 well with consumption, I think we should be satisfied. 

 The bacillus of tuberculosis is a rather slender rod which 

 looks as if it were made up of a number of short seg- 

 ments joined together. It has one peculiarity which is 

 shared by no other except the bacillus of leprosy, and 

 that is, that if it is stained with one of the basic aniline 



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