Tuberculosis.

Manawatu Herald, 29 March 1904, Page 2

Tuberculosis.

After the reading by Dr Valintine, before the Medical Congress ia Wellington, last Wednesday, of an interesting paper on “ The prevalence of tuberculosis in New Zealand, with some suggestions as to its administrative control,” Dr W. H. Hosking, of Masterton, remarked that although attention had been devoted to the spread of consumption, cancer and other diseases, the way in which these fatal diseases were systematically perpetuated by ill-arranged marriages had been overlooked. He maintained that the hereditary nature of many diseases was indisputable, and that nothing was more clearly demonstrated than the fact that in the human subject, as in the lower animals, the physical condition of the parent largely influenced, if it did not entirely regulate, the health of its progeny. The injury done to the human race through the facility afforded by the marriage tie for the transmission! of contagious and fearfully destructive diseases would, in bis opinion, have to ,be boldly recognised and firmly grappled with by legislative enactment before any great improvement in the existing unsatisfactory state of things coul<| be expected.