POPULAR PREJUDICES.

Shannon News, 25 March 1924, Page 2

POPULAR PREJUDICES.

The injury that arises from popular' misconceptions regarding tuberculosis and its treatment is emphasised in the journal of tlje League of Red Cross Societies. “People., dread the neighbourhood of consumptives,* says the writer. “By a curious paradox, the stigma of the disease has attached itself more to those who, take precautions to protect others than ta those. who ( with guilty indifference, spread the disease blindly around them. The neighbourhood 1 of sanatoria is looked upon with distrust and the public seems to dread the building of sanatoria or tuberculosis hospitals near their homes, as if infection would spread from these institutions. We know by experience, however, that wherever the tuberculous and the public have been properly taught and provided with the means of taking simple hygienic precautions, the patients and the healthy members of their families can live together without risk. _of infection.” The writer quotes a pronouncement by jthe French Academp. of Medicine in which it declared: “The tuberculous are dangerous only when they are left to their own de. vices; if, on the contrary, they are obliged to conform to health regulations in • a sanatorium, they cannot spread'infection: Disease cannot escape from a well-managed homo receiving tuberculosis patients. Tuberculosis infection is transmitted by the sputum and can be avoided by very simple methods. A tuberculosis . institution must not be regarded as an unhealthy institution; it is in no sense a danger to the neighbourhood but, on the contrary, constitutes a safeguard for the population.