Rangitikei Advocate TWO EDITIONS DAILY. THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1916. THE WHITE SCOURGE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11644, 10 August 1916, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate TWO EDITIONS DAILY. THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1916. THE WHITE SCOURGE.

THERE is absolutely no war under Heaven which can be so completely justified as war against the tuberculosis microbe. There is also no onein which neutrality towards it can be so lacking in justification as in regard to that conflict. A few days ago Dr. Blaokmore, medical superintendent of the North Canterbury Consumption Sanatorium, at Christchurch, delivered a striking lecture on “Consumption and its Prevention’’ in one of the Christchurch halls—striking, perhaps, not on account of its containing much that was new, but because of the manner in whicli ”it was presented. The shambles of which the world is made by the tuberculosis microbe is only comparable in its awful carnage to the European war “qow raging, though, of course, not so spectacular nor accompanied by so much noise and effort. What a toll it takes of humanity, however, may be indicated by the tact that in Great Britain alone it slays 70,000 people yearly, or one every seven minutes. Throughout Europe one in seven dies from consumption, and in New Zealand one in twelve. The doctor mnst have caused an uncanny thrill to run down the backs of his auditors when he told them-that, accord ing to statistics, which are as true as the truest gospel, forty of them were doomed to ‘ die of ting terrible scourge. Of course, this average does not work out at all ages. The old are practically immune from the disease, possibly on the divine assumption that they are prone to sufficient ailments without that.

Now, when we regard thia slaughter of the race from the most ordinary commonsense standpoint, we must feet it one of the greatest puzzles of the age why the world, or even the most enlightened nations of the world, have not long ago risen grimly and determinedly to the work of stamping out the disease. It is because they lack imagination. If the seventy thousand victims of the disease in the United Kingdom all died in one city and in one day, or the germ were large enough to be seen worrying the lungs of the condemned there would be a’ferment of terror and a panic demand for the instant stamping out of the disease, which would not abate until the last plague atom had been destroyed. But because only one patient fades away here and another there, and the destroyers are invisible to the naked eye there is comparatively official cognisance of the danger and methods of prevention and hardly any on the part of the public. If, however, we were all called upon to pass through some ordeal of death, fully apparent to our seven senses, knowing that one out of a dozen of us could , not possibly emerge alive—and that is certainly the permanent condition under which we live—there would be such a clamour of'fright, protest and rebellion as would very quickly secure its abolition if the resources of humanity contained within them the means of doing so. There was some excuse for our forefathers for not taking means to abolish consumption. They did not understand its nature, and life was cheap because it was abundant. For us, however, there is no excuse, because we have fathomed its cause ami we‘ cannot afford this continuous process of decimination.

One of the most tragic and pitiable aspects of the of results the disease is that its ravages are among the young, the eager for life, and its fancied deligbts, the -comparatively young father or mothor whose family responsibilities weigh more heavily upon them, perhaps, than the'fear of death itself. Lately acquired knowledge of microbic diseases’ has, however, abolished one nightmare in connection with this scourago. Owing to the manner in which one after another in a family fell victims to the disease it was formerly believed that consumption tvas hereditary. The belief has died hard. Probably it is not yet extinct. But none, or very few, children come into the

world predestined to an early grave by the fact of their parentage. 'Their fate is settled by their surroundings and the wisdom or the ignoruiuo of those who have charge of them. It is also curable if taken in its early stages, and it is the conscious neglect ot these initial stages in the disease which is responsible for the greater part ot the mortality from it. Possibly Dr. Blackmore’s lecture may stimulate interest in the matter and secure another short term of official activity in the fight against the scournge. We remember that a few years ago there was quite a furore of hostility in the battle against the microbe. Its extinction appeared to be imminent and complete. But tho offensive has practically died down leaving the enemy in full possession of the field.