Am'jun^'i909ftrm'}  Drugs  and  Druggist  in  Tuberculosis.  277 
the  civic  virtues  and  is  fully  worthy  of  any  office  you  may  be  able 
to  give  him/' 
Tuberculosis,  as  all  of  us  know,  has  proved  to  be  one  of  the 
greatest  scourges  with  which  mankind  have  been  afflicted,  not  only 
on  account  of  its  not  yielding  to  medical  treatment,  but  also  be- 
cause of  the  insidious  and  at  the  same  time  infectious  character  of 
the  disease.  In  the  case  of  the  other  infectious  diseases,  as  scarlet 
fever,  typhoid  fever,  and  smallpox,  the  victims  have  been  carried 
off  by  hundreds  and  even  thousands  in  the  course  of  a  few  weeks 
or  months,  and  thus  mankind  have  been  appalled  at  their  ravages, 
while  with  tuberculosis  the  victims  pass  away  one  by  one,  and  the 
people  in  general  do  not  realize  the  large  number  of  victims  claimed 
annually  by  this  disease  in  the  very  heart  of  civilization.  In  other 
words,  we  are  still  frightened  when  we  hear  of  a  case  of  smallpox 
and  more  or  less  indifferent  when  we  hear  of  a  death  from  con- 
sumption, and  yet  in  the  State  of  New  York  in  1907,  to  mention 
one  example,  ten  persons  died  of  smallpox  to  over  fourteen  thousand 
of  consumption.  This  simply  means  that  the  victory  in  the  battle 
against  smallpox  has  been  won,  while  in  the  case  of  tuberculosis 
the  battle  has  only  fairly  begun. 
In  the  former  group  of  diseases,  according  to  modern  methods, 
the  patients  are  isolated,  and  danger  of  others'  contracting  the  dis- 
ease is  reduced  to  a  minimum,  but  with  tuberculous  patients  no 
such  general  methods  of  isolation  have  been  adopted,  and  the 
patient  may  go  on  spreading  the  infection  for  months  and  years 
by  handling  money,  books,  and  other  objects  that  are  handled  by 
other  people,  by  spitting  and  coughing  in  their  presence,  or  by 
expectorating  on  sidewalks  and  in  other  public  places. 
I  fancy  that  if  the  material  expectorated  on  our  streets  were 
by  any  process  to  become  petrified  and  thus  preserved  for  the 
inspection  of  future  generations,  we  would  be  looked  upon  as 
barbarians.  As  it  is,  it  is  inconceivable  that  any  one  of  ordinary 
knowledge  or  decency  would  spit  directly  on  the  sidewalks  where 
others  have  to  walk ;  and  so  we  are  led  to  infer  that  it  must  be 
either  the  ignorant  or  vicious  who  habitually  indulge  in  this  prac- 
tice. But  granting  that  it  is  the  latter  class  who  are  thus  guilty, 
it  is  almost  equally  inconceivable  that  such  a  practice  should  be 
tolerated  in  any  enlightened  community. 
It  is  known  to  all  of  us  that  whatever  has  been  said  about  the 
hereditary  transmission  of  tuberculosis  and  its  contagious  character, 
