HOUSES THAT CATCH CONSUMP TION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 85, 30 March 1908, Page 4

HOUSES THAT CATCH CONSUMP TION.

The Paris municipal council hay just made the alarming discovery that some hundreds of houses in the districts of the city are smitten with consumption. This means that tliey arc literally dwellings of death, since anybody inhabiting one of them for any length of time is practically certain to catoh the complaint. That buildings have Income saturated with disease germs after this fashion has long been known to medical men.

"Cantor houses/' for instance*, wciv discovered by Mr. Senune* Smith in tin; Ijineolnshiro Kens, and elsewhere, which were literally eaten up with this most terrible of maladies. Another, instanced by Air. lVArey Power, claimed as victims three tenants, who inhabited it one after the other. It was then set light to by the landlord, and burnt all landing. together with everything tlmr it contained.

Plague, too, ha.-s been proved to infect certain dwellings after a like fasltion. Jn one ca-e, mentioned in a recent report of the Jndian Commissioners, a large tenement house in Bombay was so badly diseased that it meant death to anyone rash enough to enter it. Jt was, therefore, boardeu up, and remained empty for over a year. Then two families of vagrant beggar*, numbering eleven persons iu all, broke in, and tooK up their abode there without the knowledge of the authorities. Within a week not one of them was left alive.

Perhaps, however, the must extraordinary instance in point is afforded by the ease of Amber, the ancient capital of Joyporc, which contracted leprosy ao badly that no one would dwell within its walls who could help it, for fear of infection. So, eventually, Jey Sing, the then rajah, ordered a general eXodus of all the inhabitants that were left alive.

The edict was duly carried out, and from that day to this the city has remained unpeopled, ;i prcv to tho loathe* some disease that recent experience ha* shown to still linger in its silent streets and deserted squares.