Tuberculosis.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 May 1922, Page 4

Tuberculosis.

“RATIONAL SCHEM7 OF PRE- ‘ MENTION.” • VIE \YS. 0 FLONDON ,DOCT<) R. i, ,'AUCKLAND,. May 5 j In view* of Dr,,CL J. Blackinore’s appeal..on behalf of consumptives, in. New Zealand, .extracts from a speech by-Dr Maurice .Davidson, before ..the Institute of Hygiene in London at the end of MarelL.arc of.particular interest. j “The prevention of consumption in the .strict, and. absolute c ,sense of the word is nil impossibility,” said Dr Daviiison, .(‘for it,presupposes complete elimination ~,of . .the tuhercle-hatillus from .the . s.urfaee .of the globe, an achievement obviously ,y,utsi.de the .ocntemplation of any intelligent • person. Under our piescnt system we attempt tv reduce the incidence ,of tuberculosis by treating and endeavouring to cure

■early eases, and by checking the spread of the disease by controlling as much as possible those already diseased persons who form a source of danger, to others.” Systematic and scientific prevention of the, spread of tuberculosis in a community could only he carried out b.v the permanent isolation of a very large section of the total. population, a tiling hardly within the scope of practical politics. Even if it were passible, for instance, to place all affected people on an island, and so eliminate all active sources; of infection, such an achievement would he altogether undesirable, .because it would remove one of the prime factors of race immunity, and so lay people hare at some future period to an overwhelming epidemic of tuberculosis, which, falling oil virgin sail, would bring about a holocaust to which the present mortality would he negligible in comparison. * This did nut mean that their attitude should lie one ul laissez-faire. The practical altitude of the authorities must he somewhere between two extren os—that of endeavouring tn rliiiiina'e eiilirely infectious individuals from the community, mid that ot leaving them uncontrolled. ■ The lirst extreme would be as .wrong as.the second, because it would involve measures of such a coercive iiatiiie as could not lie contemplated, and chiefly hccaii-o it would lower the resisting power ot the <iimiiiuiiity to tuberculosis by removing one of the principal factors upon which such resistance depended. To keep infection within reasonable hounds, the chief necessity at present seemed to he the provision of adequate institutional nri augments foi advanced eases of consumption among the uneducated classes, and, further, a sufficient stiffening of the hacks of the authorities to enforce

t ! e power they already possessed of seeing that adequate use was made of such institutions. “A more stringent application of the law is desirable,” s-iid the duet or in conclusion. “The public oltdi fails to* grasp that it is the advanced and incurable case, and not the early and curable case, that matters most in a rational and methodical scheme of prevention.”